Wednesday TeaDay 12/16/09 Your Tea of the Year?

[Chip]

Greetings TeaFriends and welcome to TeaDay. Please stop in and share what is in your cup throughout the day.

Yesterday we discussed unexpected turns in our personal TeaJourneys. You can still discuss yesterday's topic.

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic. End of the year TeaBusiness ... your choice for BEST tea of the year? Please share details with us.

I am looking forward to sharing this TeaDay with everyone. Bottoms up.

[Seeker]

This was my first year of shincha, and I was amazed.
Shincha Yutaka Midori gets my vote. Really stands out.
I can hardly wait for shincha season again.
I'll be much more into it this time.
Drinkin a cuppa puerh just now.

[JBaymore]

Green. Bought in Japan..... Kyoto....... can't remember the name.

best,

................john

[Victoria]

Best tea of the year - has to be an oolong.
Probably DaYuLing.

This morning I am trying Adagio Sesame Black. It's not bad.
The flavor is rather integrated, doesn't taste fake or added on.

Have a nice day everyone!

[Janine]

Can't really name a best. Anyway it would just be best that *I* tasted - if I could taste all competition winning tea that would be another story. One would be competition winner BaoJong from Red Circle, plus a Tibetan brick tea and many more I cannot name. Another would be Roy Fong's (Imperial Tea Court) Tribute Purple Tip Puerh and an extraordinary dragonwell (brewed by Roy, not me!) Tillerman Tea has some delicious teas I hadn't tried before: Taiwan Ruby and Yixing black. But tea is where you enjoy it... and there are a lot of teas I have been greatly blessed to enjoy

Today a fenghuang (phoenix) shuixian I oversteeped on the first brew! Well, Roy Fong says to push the first brew if you are tasting something is a good practice. Let's see if that works with this tea I've stored for a couple of years now

[depravitea]

Wow, good question, and difficult to answer.
This was a huge learning year for me. Not just bombing everyone here with questions, but reading books and trying anything I could afford...

I'd have to say that this year, my favorite tea was Pu Erh.
I really enjoyed one in particular, a small shu tuo from Menghai.
Making myself salivate...
Pavlov's tea snob. lol

[AdamMY]

My tea of the year has had to have been a Puerh sample from Hou De. Now Whether it was the '96 Orange in Orange, or the '94 8582 I do not know. But looking forward to knowing Japanese greens so much more next year, to sort of answer Yesterdays Teaday, My big turn was my realization of what Japanese Greens can be.

[Chip]

Thanks for adding color to TD, Depravitea and Adam.

Thought I woke up in an alternate universe when I turned TC on today, only 2 subforums had posts, and only 5 topics. Tis the season of distractions as well I suppose.

Well, clearly Japanese Greens as one would expect. I should have asked for top 5, but that might have been too tough. I am going to give the nod to Yutaka Midori from O-Cha, however there were some others from O-Cha, Den's Zencha, Rishi, and Yuuki-Cha that were also outstanding. And then there is Matcha ... Den's Miyabi and the 2 Zencha Yame offerings.

In non greens, Organic Fuding Silver Needle Grand Cru and Bai Hao Oolong Hsinchu, both from Rishi topped my list this year.

Began the day with the best, Yutaka Midori from O-Cha! SweeTea likes this one as well and was front and center, while Little Bit made a return to the TeaTable after a very long absence.

[Janine]

wow - Deprav & Adam -- nice pics, beautiful puerh and cup

[silvermage2000]

I just finished a cup of a strawberry apple green tea.

[edkrueger]

This is a hard one. I think I might need to answer this by category and I'll just talk about Japanese greens for now.

Gyokuro:
1. Tenka-ichi (Ippodo)
2. 1st Grade (Fukujuen)
3. Susuricha (Maiko)

Sencha (Excluding Shincha):
1. Kaboku (Ippodo)
2. Kumpu (Ippodo)
3. Hosen (Ippodo)

Shincha
1. Honyama (The Steeping Room)
2. Hatsumi (Den's)
3. Shincha (Ippodo)

Bancha:
1. Obukucha (Ippodo)

[cha-fu]

The best tea I had this year was early 80s 7581 Pu-Erh (mixed Sheng and Shu) with yellow paper wrapper.

early 80s 7581

80s_7581_yellow_wrapper.png (214.7 KiB) Viewed 851 times

(picture from vendor)

I ordered some samples to try out and this was the best in the batch. Ordered one brick and some other teas which are expected to arrive in a few weeks. This will be a late Christmas gift.

[edkrueger]

Did that come from Nadacha? I really like the 7581.

[Victoria]

In my cup this afternoon AliShan from Camellia Sinensis.
I will be sad to see this one end. Probably my 3rd favorite
of the Spring oolongs this year.

[Drax]

This question's a toss-up between pu'erh and Japanese greens for me, by far my favorites. I think I give the win to pu'erh from having tried some exceptionally nice aged pu'erh this year.

I sat down with a few cups of some sencha from yuuki-cha this evening using my new tokoname pot. This evening was a great reminder of why I love Japanese greens so much, and why I started drinking tea regularly for a reason...!