New Tea Arrivals

I recently ordered three teas from the Tea Centre (http://www.theteacentre.com.au), my first purchase from this company. The tea they stocked which I was particularly interested in was a Yunnan Finest FOP (flowery orange pekoe). Their website described this tea as follows: This remarkable tea is littered with fine tips for a delicate yet full flavour. This indeed is a fair description. The appearance of the leaves is an intriguing caramel colour with plenty of tips throughout. It brews into a rich reddish colour in the cup, not dissimilar to a standard Yunnan, (I was expecting a much lighter liquor based on the colour of the leaf). It's aroma is suggestive of peaches and other stone fruits with some maltiness also evident. I was impressed with the depth of flavour and also its ability to maintain this depth through at least three infusions. Overall, a wonderful tea which has replaced Yunnan Golden Monkey as my current favourite black tea.

The second tea is a Chinese Green tea called Lin Yun White Downy. The leaves are slightly wrinkled in appearance and quite large, blended with white tips (as the name suggests). It is therefore quite a delicate tea but still displaying the characteristically unassuming astringency of a Chinese green tea. The website suggests it has a smoky flavour, although I could detect very little of this during my first sampling. I must brew another pot tonight and see what happens. It was a gentler tea than I anticipated, so will need to use more leaf and perhaps slightly hotter water (I used around 75 degrees Celcius the first time) in order to bring out its characteristics more fully. An enjoyable alternative to Long Jing (Dragonwell) or Gunpowder.

The final tea I ordered was a Formosa Fancy Oolong (Taiwan). This is described as a semi-fermented tea, neat leaf, aromatic & fragrant character. 'Fancy' refers to the grade of the tea (higher than 'choice'. This is a much smoother style of oolong than many of the Chinese oolongs I've had, perhaps slightly stronger than a 'green-style' Ti Kuan Yin, yet with a quite different taste altogether. It would be more accurate to describe it as a smoother version of a Wuyi Rock Oolong, because it definately appears more oxidised than most Ti Kuan Yin's I've tried. Like the Lin Yun tea, I was a bit over-cautious with the amount of tea and temperature of the water, so will try increasing both slightly and will expect the aromatic qualities to become more pronounced.

I'm very pleased with all three teas and will consider buying from this company again sometime. I am having difficulty finding an Australian online tea company who stocks the range of teas of the American companies like Uptons and CooksShopHere.

Looking forward to the imminent arrival of my Shincha and Mattcha purchases from Hibiki-an (http://www.hibiki-an.com), a Japanese, family owned tea farm (which I ordered from last year - see earlier post). I should have sampled and reviewed these in the next few days.

Until then,

Happy Gongfu-cha.