Winnie Yu, the owner of Teance, was the special guest speaker of TeaCal today. Instead of trying new teas, we spent the hours doing 3 blind taste tests.
1. Chinese red tea vs. Assam:
They’re both in the “black tea” category. They smell and taste distinctively different, one was stronger than the other by at least two times. Thinking of the Darjeeling First Flush, which is the only Indian tea we’ve tried here and which is quite light, I voted that the strong one was the Chinese tea, but it was the assam. Winnie said that assam always produces a stronger first steep with a bright red color because the leaves are cut, whereas the Chinese red tea usually have whole leaves. But that difference makes the Chinese red improve their flavor in subsequent steeps, while the assam is a one-timer.
Darjeeling comes from a varietal of the Chinese Camellia sinensis sinensis, Assam comes from the native Indian tea Camellia sinensis assam.
2. Bi Luo Chun vs. Sencha:
This green tea pair makes the most obvious test: the sencha has the stronger umami (i.e., the fishy seaweed taste) and a visible shine or seeming viscosity. Winnie explained that this particular sencha came from Uji, a city south of Kyoto, where the farmers fertilize the tea with fish bone meal, which results in the umami taste. She said that there are farmers who use natto to fertilize their tea too, but she didn’t try their tea.
Strangely, I did find the bi luo chun a little fishier than I remembered from last time.
3. Chinese oolong vs. Taiwanese oolong (Tung Ting):
These two are really similar. At first I thought that the darker one was the Taiwanese one, but as it cooled, it gave a multi-layered taste, by which I mean the taste changes from the first second it comes in contact with your mouth to when it fades, as if the leaves had different coatings on top of one another. The other tea tastes simple and unchanging except in strength. So I said that the darker one was Chinese. My group disagreed with me. At the end, my hypothesis still holds. 😉