Up in the Mountains.

Pretty spring flowers.


Which is my tea for today certainly is, very floral. It is Adagio's Ali Shan and comes from the highest peaks of Taiwan. In the can it smells like a flower laden heaven, it is so sweet, not sugar sweet, but that of nectar. The tea is almost green, tightly wrapped in little balls. I rinsed it with boiling water, waited a minute and then added the water and infused it for 1.5 minutes. The resulting brew was a soft gold, with the same wonderful aroma, slightly muted. The tea feels thick and full with a great orchid floral taste, grounded with a vegetal edge.

The second infusion was 2 minutes and had more of a vegetal character, but not green - more in the neighborhood of squash. It remained thick tasting and as it cooled, more of the floral character came out.

Since I was playing around with another tea, I did a third infusion of boiling water. The color was nearly the same gold and the more floral aroma had returned. The taste was weaker and I would say the floral edged out the vegetal by a good bit. Altogether a really tasty interesting tea.

The tea leaves, which started out less than a quarter inch in diameter, unfurled to be quite large. One was 5 inches long! They were pretty green when I finished and you could see where the bugs had chewed the edges, which forces the plant to produce an enzyme that produces good flavor, in addition to the tea master's art in production.


My second tea was an Oolong from Nilgiri, but you have to wait until tomorrow for the review.

The Tea Giveaway will close Sat. Nov 6 at 2 am. Just in time for us all to turn our clocks back and get 1 hour less sleep.