'No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its return'
I ordered a set of three teas from Mountain Stream Teas to understand more about how the season when the leaves are harvested impacts the flavor of a tea.
These three oolong's are picked from the same trees, on the same mountain, under the same master, with the same processing. the only difference - the time of year they were picked!
The set comes with a Spring pick (from 2020), Winter pick (from October 2019) and Snow Pick (from December 2019).
Now you might be wondering why I was interested in this, but the time a tea was picked can have a huge impact on its taste and flavor. Weather can have a big impact on the flavor of the tea leaves - for example over the cold winter months, the tea plants do not grow, but they absorb nutrients from the soil that impact their flavor. On the other side of the scale, tea plants will grow quickly in hot, wet months and have higher levels of catechins which is why the Summer pick is often regarded as lower quality.
So the tea tasting - how did it go?
Firstly, I am a bit of an oolong fan, so I knew straight away that I was going to enjoy these teas! I brewed 3g of each tea, and got 7 infusions out of them - 30 secs, 45 secs, 1 min, 2 mins, 3 mins, 5 mins and finally 7.5 mins! I tried to make sure that each tea infused for the same length of time in order to make sure that the emphasis on the tastings was the different harvesting rather than different brewing times!
Spring (2020)
Dry leaves - sweet aroma
Wet leaves - aroma had an off or sour-milk tinge
Winter (Oct 2019)
Dry leaves - buttery aroma with hints of berry
Wet leaves - even more buttery and berry
Snow (Dec 2019)
Dry leaves and wet leaves - soft butteryness, the classic oolong aroma!
The liquor of the three teas was very similar - the soft greenish-yellow hue that you can expect from an oolong, but the snow-pick definitely had more yellow-ness to it than the others.
In terms of flavor, the winter and snow pick were fairly similar, except for the end notes: with the snow having sweeter notes vs the winter's butteryness. The spring harvest however, was quite different to these. The milk flavor definitely came through (although pleasantly! I know it doesn't sound it!) and it moved into some sweetness.
I did try some blind taste-testing to see how the flavor differences would come through, and the spring harvest was definitely easy to pick! The differences between the winter and snow pick however were much more nuanced, and although I was able to differentiate them I think I need some more taste testing to understand them better! (Good excuse for another tea shop!)
Tea Rating:
All 3 of these oolong's were really enjoyable - and although there quite the flavor difference between the Spring Pick and the Winter/Snow Pick.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
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