Curious, what samples should I get?

[plant partaker]

I wanted to venture off into different vendors and was reading about jingteashop and was curious what samples should i get the names just confuse me and i don't see ali shan which everyone is raving about anyone have any recommendations

[Victoria]

The spring oolongs are not available yet.
If you prefer lighter oolongs then try some of
An Xi TGY. If you decide to order, maybe try some of
the freshly re-stocked Wu Yi too.

[plant partaker]

would it be better to wait for the spring order to arrive and in the mean time just grab some other tea im fairly new to tea and the only olongs ive had are adagios oolong #18, huang jin bolero, and wuyi ensamble. and from house of cha,the iron buddha fire roasted oolong which is a tiy guan yin

[entropyembrace]

Ali Shan is a Taiwanese tea, Jing Tea Shop only has tea from mainland China...if you want to try Ali Shan I recomend Floating Leaves Tea. Jing Tea Shop on the other hand has very good Tie Guan Yin and Rou Gui from An Xi, several good Wu Yi oolongs and a few good Dancong oolongs too

Also no need to wait for spring harvest Wu Yi and Dancong oolongs generally get better with age so it´s actually better to buy 2009 than wait for 2010 and for the greener style of oolong like the TGY from An Xi and Taiwan mountain oolong the Winter 2009 harvest is excellent...again no need to wait for 2010 harvests...for these green style oolongs I actually prefer winter harvest over spring. Only thing you would need to wait for spring for is the Ali Shan...

[Victoria]

I would definitely wait.
The spring oolongs are awesome.

[plant partaker]

awesome thank you for the information it was much helpful and much appreciated

[Geekgirl]

not to contradict anyone who says "wait" for the spring oolongs, (because I'm waiting too... ) but if you want some oolong now, you can't really go wrong ordering from Floating Leaves Tea. They have last year's oolongs on markdown prices (they were reasonable to begin with,) and I can personally vouch for them being very good, even if not SUPER fresh. I am still drinking the last of my oolongs from her and they are still as good if not better than any other Taiwanese oolong in my tea cabinet.

Also, she has quite a few Winter Oolong in stock.

By the way, the tea in my avatar is from FLT.

[Alucard]

how does FLT compare to say teafromtaiwan or ishopo? FLT seems expensive for highmountain oolongs, but then again with quality comes cost.

[Victoria]

Then I guess you answered your own question.

[brad4419]

plant partaker,
Can you give use some more info on what kinds of tea you like? Do you like more green oolongs or do you want to try more roasted oolongs or some of both?

Either way you can't go wrong with sampleing the wuyi seasonal Da hong Pao, for the price its very good.

[iannon]

how does FLT compare to say teafromtaiwan or ishopo? FLT seems expensive for highmountain oolongs, but then again with quality comes cost.

i have really enjoyed everything i got from all three of those places TBH. you can order some decent different sample sizes from ishopo though which i found helpful.. a bit more so than TFT's sizes

[debunix]

Don't wait for spring. Drink nice tea now.

Order some fall or winter harvest Ali Shan oolong, just not too much, so you have room for the spring harvest when it comes in.

And then you can compare fall or winter to spring.

These are some notes I took in November:

"Working on the head-to-head comparison of the 2009 Ali Shan High Mountain Oolong Teas from norbutea.com. 2 grams each of the spring, summer, and fall teas, in gaiwans, about 2 ounces of water per infusion, with water that started at 185 degrees and then cooled because I was too lazy to keep reheating the kettle.

I think I am up to the 5th infusion or so, and all are just lovely teas. The spring and fall are very similar in flavor--very sweet, mellow, hay/straw/caramel notes, with the spring tea perhaps holding up little better with more infusions than the fall, and the summer tea is least sweet but more of the warm caramel notes--it just tastes more like fall and harvest than the fall tea does."

All were beautiful teas. I haven't tried the winter 2009 only because I still have some of the summer and fall left.

[teachatter]

if you want to order, you can choose some kinds of green tea such as longjing or biluochun. they all have sweet taste and mellow smell. you can go to 5ktea to know more about green teas.

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[Geekgirl]

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