Iron Goddess -Famous Chinese Oolong

In late 2015 I discovered one of the most pleasant teas Iever to crossed my tea coolers aka lips, the famous and very traditional Iron Goddess Oolong aka Tie Guan Yin. This tea opened up the world to me in so many ways. It exposed me to complexity and extreme attended to detail within the art of tea. Oolongs in general are the perfect mix of earth note of green tea with the bold and robust flavors of black tea. Tie Guan Yin Oolongs are a complex sub category with the oolong family. The roasting styles range from light to heavy. The tasting notes can range for floral to earth or smokey. I think I could spend over a year tasting a new Tie Guan Yin everyday and never get bored or try the same one twice. Its a magical leaf that is plucked with the most care by Chinese ladies with little hands. Once processed its tightly curled in little balls using many different methods. Those rolling methods are what make some of the unique variations of Tie Guan Yin. After steeping an when processed correctly they open to full its original full leaf.

The word Tie Guan Yins means Iron Goddess in Chinese and is "steeped" in rich history amazing story's and traditions. The famous Chinese story for this particular tea is that the mother seeds were given as a gifted to a good Samaritan Chinese farmer by the Iron Goddess of Mercy in the Fujian Province. Check out my picture of the mother plant in Anxi, China. Dont worry ill tell you all about that trip in another post.

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Tasting Notes: The dried leaves are very tightly curled and range from light green to dark green. The leaves have an earthy smelled of roasted bark and grass. Once the steeped opened I found several full leaves. A majority of the leaves had what I will call a smoke ring as you can see in the picture below. The tea liquor is a very light green-yellow and was very low the astringency level with a hint of natural sweetness that lingers on the pallet.