In the past few decades, Tieguanyin oolongs from Anxi have flooded the market with highly floral, ultra green teas that are all fragrance and no soul. In this sea new-style oolongs, the traditional teas produced by Master Zhang stand out like diamonds.
This tea is one of Zhang's medium oxidized traditional Tieguanyin teas, meaning the flavors go deeper and last longer in the mouth than the more lightly oxidized styles more preveleant on the market.
The dry leaves in a warmed gaiwan exude dessert like sweetness redolent of baked pastries and cream, strawberry shortcake and floral notes. The brew is a clear, pale gold with a lot of fragrance lingering in the tea soup. The wet leaves show their herbaceous side as soon as they are infused with hot water offering notes of sweetgrass, cinnamon, and sage.
The brew itself is incredibly satisfying, very mellow and warm for how green/gold the soup is. The traditional nature of the tea is expressed most clearly in the brew, we get cream, faint traces of flowers, and a long aftertaste that is pleasant and unusual when compared to the bright fragrances of many modern Tieguanyin teas.
The mouthfeel is thick and well-rounded, evenly coating the mouth and settling warm in the stomach. There is a gentle bitterness that comes out when the tea is pushed, but it creates a lasting huigan keep us brewing this tea. As the brews progress the creaminess comes to dominate leaving behind its own kind of sweetness.
The tea maker Zhang Jiyuan is dedicated to bringing the traditional craft of Tieguanyin back to the forefront after the recent explosion of ultra-green modern style oolongs and the overproduction of monoculture in Anxi. As a result, this tea comes not only from an ecologically dense, organically managed garden, but is also produced more in the traditional style for Tieguanyin: what this means is a longer oxidization process, more complex flavors from the heirloom cultivar, and a much longer lasting aftertaste.
Due to the longer oxidization of this tea, it falls somewhere between the two standard categories used to differentiate Anxi Tieguanyin; between the contemporary high-fragrance Qingxiang (清香) style and the more heavily oxidized and roasted Nongxiang (浓香) tradition.
While this tea is visually greener than the traditional roasted examples, it underwent a longer and more expressive yaoqing (摇青 shake-wilting). Zhang calls this tea a ‘medium oxidized’ tea which accounts for the deeper enzymatic transformation that occurred during the withering and oxidization before the kill green, or fixing of the tea.
The roast is intentionally light and carefully controlled. Essentially intended to completely dry the tea and seal it for potential aging in the years to come, allowing the flavors to deepen with time. We expect this tea to continue to mellow out over the next few years.
Read more about the maker Zhang Jiyuan and his organic gardens here!
