Gamma - "Bulang Shang Yun"

After quite a some time I'm finishing the five samples Hobbes sent out to us in the Yunnan Sourcing tasting event. This is Bulang tea made of semi-aged 2006 autumn maocha harvested in Man Nong village near Ban Zhang. The leaves should be harvested from wild arbor trees.



The beeng looks nice, with medium-light compressions – it separates easily into leaves. The leaves are definitely darkest of all five samples without any detectable smell. The pictures are somewhat darker because of my dark tea tray, but they show off the leaf and liquors real color quite well.



The liquor is orange, maybe a bit too orange for its age. This certainly isn’t a very complex tea; the taste is clean with some aftertaste. I was surprised, how short living is this pu-erh – it turned into sweet juice by sixth infusion. Also, I disliked the mushroomy taste in late infusion – I hate the smell of mushrooms.



I’m not fan of this tea. It’s short living, lacking the so needed kick and real character, just a shade of best Bulang teas. I judged it as last of the first three samples.

The samples so far, from best to not so best:
1. Alpha - Yi Wu
2. Beta - You Le
3. Gamma - Bulang

Other reviews - Tea Goober, MattCha's blog, My Private Tea Collection and The Half-Dipper.

Korean Tea Jelly

One of my favorite blogs is Mattcha’s Blog. I love his photos of Korean pottery – cups, pots and other teaware. Also, his description of Korean teas makes me drool like a Frankensteins monster. Unfortunately, genuine Korean tea is very hard to get, with probably none online sites where one can get few grams of these delicate tea specialties.

So I was very happy, when I discovered, that not far from us there is a grocery store with genuine Korean cuisine – the shop opened for Korean management of automobile factory that opened in Slovakia few years ago. So I made a visit to sea, if they have some decent tea.

Unfortunately, I found only few teabags, one Japanese sencha and a bottle of jelly labeled Honey citron tea.



Ok, I couldn’t resist a tea jelly, so I got a bottle and decided to try it on my colleagues. The preparation was easy – just dissolve a spoon or two of orange gelatinous mass in hot water and let your boss to drink it.



Since the colleagues (both) survived the experiment, I had a cup for myself. Actually, the beverage itself isn’t as bad as it could be – a very sweet citron-like slightly orange “tea”. I can finish the whole bottle in my work, though I will probably not get another one (I will certainly not get another one).



Yet, the hunt for Korean tea still continues.