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Michael Plant

Dominic 12/19/06

> Michael Plant wrote:
>> That would be a quality level of Long Jing,
>> not a type of tea in and of itself, if I'm
>> not mistaken, which I could be. That said,
>> LJ and Gyokuro have different profiles.
>> Correct me if I'm wrong here.
>
> I'm not a specialist in Chinese greens, I have had a number of "bird's
> tongue" green and they have all been very similar. They are not
> roasted/nutty like LJ. What I have brews a very light cup, that is
> sweet, has a very low astringency, and is very pale. FWIW

What is the shape of the leaf? Or is this
a shapeshifting tea? Hehe.
is tea struck you, what it tasted like,

snip snip snip

> The brew is a very pale almost non-existant color, the taste is subtle
> and not grassy nor roasty/nutty like LJ. It kind of reminds me of a
> very delicate Pi Lo Chun if I had to come up with something... light,
> sweet, maybe a bit vegetal. It is more of a feeling to me than a
> flavor, as strange as that may seem. That was the part I meant by the
> focus and intensity required.

Very good indeed. Your description put taste in
my mouth. I get it much better now. I also get
the "more...feeling...than...flavor" thing. That
speaks highly of the tea, not strange at all.

> The Gyokuro's I have tried from online vendors are more like a higher
> end green tea like a sencha/bancha but less harsh and not grassy or as
> pronounced. It is certainly Gyokuro, just not as subtle and nuanced.

I've gotten butter and astringency from Gyokuros,
and I mean both in the best possible way. Another
source of pleasure is the beauty of those yellow-
green leaves floating on the water in a black or
even a white kyusu. (Mine are white.) No Chinese
tea hits quite that rich deep color, even the best
Long Jing I've drunk.

> The bottom line to me is that while I really enjoy it, even mid-grades,
> it just never fits the bill as a daily enjoyable tea for me.

Nor for me.

> That is
> more the issue than the price, availability, or anything else. Brewing
> Gyokuro correctly requires a lot of leaf, 2 *tablespoons* of tea to 4
> oz. of water is not unheard of. It is good for 2-3 infusions. That's
> expensive. I tend to brew it around 130F sometimes upwards of 140F,
> this is one tea I use a thermometer for.

Smart. You want to get it just right. I've
gone as low as 125F, but 130-140 sounds
right. I've heard of people brewing it off
the boil, and would like to learn more
from that point of view.

>To me the hype I spoke of is
> not the price and stuff but the real lack of anything that is going to
> bowl you over when drank... it just doesn't happen. It's subtle, it's
> finicky, it's hard to store and really useless to even try, and it is
> hard to get. That just doesn't lend itself to an enjoyable tea in my
> book.

All your points, especially the storage issue,
are well taken, believe me. It's one of the
reasons why, if I can, I buy my Gyokoru
by the gram.

> Hopefully that was more along the lines of what you were after. I've
> been extremely busy at work so this took some time to actually
> finish... sorry for the wait.

No problem. I just thought that the description
of the taste/smell/qi experience was the missing
piece of your orgiinal posts.

Michael