It’s easy to fall in love with tea. With Sip Spring, you will never ever want to fall out of love. This hand-shaken tieguanyin is the perfection among Chinese green oolongs.
I know, I might not be completely unbiased about this tea. I love tieguanyin. It’s one of the teas that makes me the happiest person in the world. This tea made me start my blog and writing reviews almost a decade ago. Seriously. Since then, except some tieguanyins from tea markets, I have never ever tried one so good like Sip Spring. Most of tieguanyin teas are exceptionally bad. Not even good enough to be called a mass market product. I kind of lost my faith. Some were OK, passable and had some good intentions. But, with tieguanyin, your tea vendor really needs to have the knowledge and passion for tea. Thank you Mei Leaf.
Name: Sip Spring
Tea Vendor: Mei Leaf (UK)
Type: Chinese oolong tea
Every Fresh Flowery Creamy Joy
Sip Spring is a hand shaken spring qing xiang tieguanyin from Xiping. I prefer green style tieguanyin’s over the traditional ones, but somehow I think the one from Mei Leaf with give me a pleasant surprise as well. This tea is amazingly fresh. I like the leaves so much – very different from what I’m used to, something I didn’t see for quite some time. Deep crocodile green with and jade yellowish with no stalks (finally!) with very fresh green, light flowery and a creamy scent. I like the feeling of tieguanyin leaves in hand, more dry and lighter than teas from Taiwan. Sip Spring was grown at 1600 meters. 40 grams costs 16,50 GBP or around 21,50 USD.
To Sip Spring, is My Favorite Thing
Brewing: 8 grams, 150ml, 95 degrees Celsius, 20 seconds, +5 for each
I don’t want to write detailed tasting notes for this tea. I just wanted to enjoy it without pen in my hand, because I only had 8 grams and a very rare opportunity. This tea is amazing. Leaves can be steeped at least 8 times (in my case 10), and they get better and better with each steeping. Not many tieguanyins on the market can offer that. Leaves have an amazing scent in a hot teapot, deep creamy and flowery, very close to some gao shan oolongs, but with distinctive flowery scent and lighter texture with green background. Taste is very full, and feels like flowers are floating on the top and gently sinking in. There is no bitterness at all, not even one single trace. Only after the fifth steeping they get more sharp, more vegetal and green, very beautiful.
It’s incredible how leaves get more aromatic and intense after each steeping, almost like water is adding power to them, not taking it away. Mei Leaf already has very detail and true tasting notes, so there is little to add to it. Except, this tea trully is exceptional.
Maybe if some other teas are in question, I would agree to something average or above the average. But, with my biggest love, I really do not want to make any exceptions.
