A Tea Addict's Journal

I wanted something light today, so I figured drinking the baozhong again, this time in my little pot, will be a good thing. Last time’s double tasting means I couldn’t taste each tea very well, individually. Those tasting sessions are great at alerting you to differences in mouthfeel, flavours, etc, but are not so good if you want to really examine a tea on its own with no interference, because the other tea there is interference.

I opted for the more expensive one to drink, but as I noted last time…. when dry, they look basically identical. When brewed:

They also look pretty much the same.

I tend to brew light Taiwan oolongs delicately. Temperature of water is still kept high, but poured from high up and in a small stream, but that depends on what’s going on and can change… There are different schools of thought of what makes a good cup, and as I’ve observed it really runs the gamut, but I find it just fine like this usually. Add to the fact that my body generally doesn’t like a large amount of Taiwan oolongs that are not roasted, and it makes perfect sense why I brew it this way….

The resulting tea is overwhelmingly sweet, with a soft floral aroma and just a slight hint of grassiness if I overbrew it a bit. There’s some qi there, as I could feel my body reacting to the tea after the first few sips. The body is thick enough, and all in all, quite a pleasant drink. It’s a bit mellow, and perhaps less strong than some of the better stuff could be, but those are sometimes too punchy for me in their flavour, making it taste almost artificial. There’s a sort of saccharine quality to that kind of aroma/feeling that I don’t personally enjoy.

The tea passed on with about 6 infusions. It’s not an overly complex tea, but once in a while… it’s good for what it is.