Oriental Beauty scents often vary

This weekend, I conclude my third online class about tea scents with the fragrances of spent leaves. (You can see part #1 and part #2 in the links). If you drink natural, whole leaf tea often, you may already take it for granted that the dry tea leaves, the brew and the spent leaves have very different scents! It's only with artificially scented leaves that the scents remain similar from one state to another.

And it's for higher oxidized teas like this 2021 summer Oriental Beauty from Hsin Chu that the scents are changing the most from leaf to brew and spent leaf. Dry, the OB smells like sweet wood with an intoxicating element that asks to be sniffed again and again. The brew is all about ripe, exotic, summer fruits and honey. The wet leaves exude the scents of the tea process: the oxidized leaves scents that fill the moist air in the tea factory. 

I'll tell you what we can learn from smelling the brewed leaves and, if we have time, I'll also give some advice on what we can learn from looking at the spent leaves. Otherwise, the view could be a good topic for another class that we could also split in 3: the dry leaves, the brew and the spent leaves! Please let me know in the comments section if this is a topic that interests you. 

My goal is to create harmony between all senses during the tea experience. But to achieve this overall harmony, it helps to understand each sense and what drives quality and pleasure. Then you also have to understand the relationship between each of the elements in contact with the tea: the jar, the teapot, the water, the cups. Finally, there's also the impact of the brewer. And since there are hundreds of teas, the combinations are limitless, just like the number of scents our noses can differentiate! 

With so much choice, the best place to start learning is with the classics. This summer Oriental Beauty, for instance, is made from (the most suitable) Qingxin DaPang cultivar during (the most suitable) summer season, an excellent dry year and by a tea farmer specializing in Oriental Beauty in (the most suitable region of) Hsin Chu where OB was invented!

Note: starting this weekend, I'm giving away 25 gr of winter 2020 Shan Lin Xi Oolong for any order of 200 USD or more (which is also the amount where EMS shipping starts to be free). 

There's also a new gift for orders above 120 USD: 25 gr of winter 2020 Jinxuan Oolong from Alishan. 

The free samples for orders above 60 USD (Hung Shui Dong Pian) remains the same. And there's still free Airmail shipping above 100 USD.