Top 3 Teas for Newbies

hey th-this was done from a leaf in this video top three teas for newbies in this video I'm going to be presenting to you three teas that I think makes a perfect gateway teas and then we're going to be tasting them this video is going to go under the basic tea education playlist if any point in time you enjoy this video then please give the video the thumbs up the more thumbs in the air the more tea videos are going to come your way and if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet go click that button maybe you are somebody that's just getting into - you're just starting to explore this wonderful world afforded by this amazing plant or maybe you are already an experienced and passionate tea head that is looking for a little bit of help to convert their friends and families well this video is for you we have been in the industry for 10 years we've been selling tea a tower tea house in Camden in London for over 10 years so we've got a fair amount of experience at teas that convert people into the world of true tea now if you go to our website main leaf , put a link in the description below there is one area of the website where you can answer one simple question and I will give you my personally curated selection of 5 TS that I think would be suitable for you I've also done another video called how to make people fall in love with tea go and check that one out I put an I'll put a link in the description below as well and in that video I express how important it is if you are a tea head somebody that's passionate about tea that you Piketty which you are passionate about which you love because it's your passion and your enthusiasm that is going to be so infectious and bring people into the world of true tea and I stand by that but given our experience I have found that there are some teas that are more successful than others and I picked three teas today that I want to share with you before we do that I want to make it very clear that even though this is a video for tea newbies and to convert people into tea it doesn't mean that these are basic or introductory teens these are still high quality teas that everybody and anybody should try alright ready let's start with our first tea our first tea is Imperial green Imperial green also known as dragon well green also known as long jing this is a classic classic tea one of the most famous Chinese green teas and for good reason the reputation is justified you can get this in many places that be wary of quality because there are so many different grades out there why have I pick this teeth well one of the reasons why people want to get into tea is because of health reasons and rightly or wrongly the media tends to focus in on green tea always you see reports about green tea whenever there's a health article about tea it always uses green tea and this is predominantly because green tea is higher in Capitan's which are the very powerful antioxidants however between you and me or tea is healthy and green tea is being picked on because of its higher level of antioxidants in the test tube it doesn't necessarily mean it's that way in your body but that's the subject of a completely different video so people coming into the world of tea for health reasons are looking for green tea and maybe you have had those terrible green tea experiences usually from a tea bag or from some very poor quality green tea that has given you this stewed bitter nasty green tea taste and a lot of people come back to green tea with a lot of trepidation a feeling that they should get into green tea but in fact they don't really like it and they kind of walk in with a little bit of like well I know I should but I don't really like it and this is the perfect tea for them because good quality green tea is a world away from that nasty teabag green tea or the dusty musty bitter astringent nasty stuff which is commonly solved so this is the way to open your eyes up to the wonders of green tea right let's scope this to the season for this tea has to be early spring it has to be early spring preferably preaching mint which means preferably basically before April 4th around then so early spring tea very very important the cultivar there are a few different cultivars that are used for Dragon Well or launching but the one that we use is long ding 43 which is a very very good cultivar for this tea origen this has to come from sir Jiang province so Jiang province is the protected area for Long Jing tea it has to come from that area otherwise technically you can't call it Longjing tea now there are launching style teas made in other provinces but if you want the real deal then I suggest you start off with a Jiang tea picking and processing this is bud and one leaf or bud in two leaves and it's pan baked and that's the key difference between Chinese green teas and Japanese green tea sits pan bait which gives it the nuttiness and warmth which is so special about this team particular and most Chinese green teas finally the elevation this is 600 meter high tea so that's the information that I would be looking for if I was purchasing Longjing okay let's get on with tasting okay so let's begin before we blew up this tea I want to show you a quick quality marker for Longjing tea when you are selecting your long junky looks a tea that has this kind of white and yellow fluff or small hairs on the leaves and you may see some little balls of white yellow fluff also this is a very good sign it means that the tea is early spring pick tea because young leaves it very early spring will still have those fine white yellow downy hairs and when the tea master is pan roasting the tea pan baking the tea then he will be using or she will be using circular motions which will strip those hairs off the leaves and make these little balls so these little balls of white yellow fluff are a very good sign don't think that it's mold we've had complaints from clients saying your tea is molding it's not moldy that is a sign for very high quality tea okay so let's brew this up I have a guar chai one here and I've got water here which is around 80 degrees Celsius it's about 175 Fahrenheit I'm just going to quickly give the Glasgow one a rinse I'm not going to be doing a full tasting for these teas today because that would take too long I'm just going to give you a snapshot of what you should expect when you purchase and take these teas so dry leaf goes in let's give this a smell ah so creamy notes nutty notes the classic flavor descriptors that we use our hazelnut chestnut but it's also got grassy fresh grass nodes to it but not as high as say a nanji-bhai char and it's that balance for launching which is what makes it so alluring and so successful for converting people to the world of green tea as I say most people they have very very very bad experiences of green tea because they've had awful stewed teas because the there that leaves are broken and or they're made into teabags which makes it tea dust and that produces very very low quality tea you can see the tea rinse how clear vibrant beautiful bright yellow green color that is and I'm already getting an amazing scent of this liqueur and we quickly smell the dry to the wet leaf so now it's been hydrated so I'm getting more of those summer notes summer Meadows some fruit there as well wonderful I'm just going to pull this away so we're just doing the tea rinse just to get rid of any broken leaves that are in the guy one and we're going to go for our first brew we're going to be doing flash brewing here this is going through start brewing if you don't know what gongfu start brewing is there are plenty of videos out there that I've made about gone through start brewing I'm not going to get involved in that now but this is the best way to brew your Chinese tea again beautiful bright colored liqueur really really nice and let's move in for the taste I'll show it to the camera one more time clear clean but you can still see there's some those white hairs that you saw before in the lease you can see that they've kind of broken up and that gives texture and thickness to the teeth it's been a while since I've had some long doing this is one of our staples any client of may lease you know we're always going on about how great this two years and and it's one of our most successful teas cheers everybody so you get this buttery start you get some hazelnuts not roasted so much maybe more raw hazelnuts green chestnuts that's light them smell when you walk pastor at Christmastime when they're roasting chestnuts very very slight a whisper of that but I'm also getting some floral notes I'm getting some orchid I'm getting some vegetal notes it's got a definite brothy aroma to the leaf or keep some sticking yeah it's definitely got a vegetal aroma as well asparagus some spinach it's got a slight savory kind of chicken broth II kind of aroma that's the umami that's the theanine in the T so the joy of green tea is having something which is very light very pure but at the same time having an intensity of aroma and fragrance which is as I said dancing it it's fleeting it comes it goes you breathe out through your nose and now I'm getting I'm getting some rocking minerality a little bit of the of the slate enos that comes from good Long Jing pistachio nuts it's also a kind of pistachio green but pistachio nuts that kind of savory nutty and creamy together and then vegetal spinach asparagus and a little hint of orchid a little hint of flower and this it's disbalance this has beautiful balance of flavors which makes this a great gateway tea this is one that will open up your eyes if you haven't tried a good green tea before and anybody who's a tea head out there you know about this too you're ready and it is a great tea that opens people's eyes to what green tea should taste like it's the perfect jumping-off point to launch yourself into the world of green teas to explore Chinese green teas and then explore the difference between Chinese and Japanese or Korean green teas etc but longing is where I think everybody should start so that's your first tea okay let's move on to our second T the second tea is that entire Eastern Beauty another classic Eastern Beauty also known as oriental Beauty also known as by our long dong Fang Mei Ren Braga's t5 color tea there's lots of names for this tea is another very very very famous tea classic I got again lots of different grades so make sure you pick a good grade tea and it's very close to my heart and everybody at Mei leaves because it's such an incredibly fragrant fruity and rich tea and the reasons why I've picked this as a good gateway tea well the first reason is because it's dark it's a little bit richer it's a little bit stronger so for those people that want that more robust flavor the people that may be here they've been drinking black tea already and there are customs - black tea then this is a great great gateway tea into more speciality fine teas the second reason is because this is super super fragrant I've done another video on this before I'll put a link in the description below I've done a full video on the terpenes in Eastern Beauty the terpenes being these very very volatile and powerful aromatic compounds which are given off by the plant and if you get a good Eastern Beauty if you get a good oriental Beauty then hopefully it's also insects bitten and if it's insects bitten then that raises the game further it ramps up those terpenes so you get more terpenes you get more honey notes you get more of that hot tree and old terpenes which is very classic for insect fit and tea so that's the second reason why I picked this tea very very fragrant and the third reason is simply you may sound like marketing but it's a great story right a lot of tea sellers use this as their gateway tea because it's a great story if it genuinely is insect pick teas and every tea seller says that there T is insect bitten not all of them are but if it is insect bit and then it's a great story to tell people right this is bitten by insects and that increases the terpene content and you know it's a nice story that engages people into the tea so those are the three reasons why I picked this tea this is not a black tea this is an oolong tea but it's been but it's been oxidized for a very long time and so it's got that darker flavor and color and is closer to a black tea then a green tea okay let's get tasting it is always a treat when I get to taste Eastern Beauty this is one of my favorite favorite teas if you get a good one it's unforgettable so 5 colors you can see there's white that yellow there's red there's black there's some greens there's lots of colors here you're looking for some hairy bugs there so some of these very delicate fluffy buds but a whole mixture of leaves and colors and textures very very interesting tea but really the only way if you know it's a good one is by taste so lets them get some water in here I'm brewing with slightly hotter water here this was about 90 degrees which is 185 Fahrenheit I find it just increasing the temperature a Brit a bit bring out brings out a little bit more of those Basie woody notes which I think provides a good balance to the tea okay let's give it a sniff ah heavenly heavenly honey but also citrus some citrus peel I would say grapefruit lemons it's got a lot of flowers as well and this would enos a really nice dry wood enos to it that gives it that bass note again a perfectly balanced tea this is why I've picked it as a gateway tea I think it's full of flavor full of terpenes lots of aroma but very very balanced okay let's give it a quick rinse get rid of any of the excessively small broken leaves in this teeth and then we'll quickly scope the tea before we taste it okay quick smell of the wet leaf bringing out more of the wood enos now the wood is wet incredible fruitiness like elderflower some light key and the classic muscatel which is this desert wine grapes that Muscat grape smell okay so let's scope this tea season summer this is one of the very few teas which are picked in summer because it's summer in summer I should say the insects arrived and that's when the insects bite the leaf and then that that action the biting of the leaf brings about reaction in the plant which increases terpenes which have a very kind of honeyed and dessert wine aroma the cultivar there are many cultivars are used to make oriental Beauty or Eastern Beauty chin chin is my favorite so this is the chin chin cultivar this comes from Taiwan's the Taiwanese tea from Hsinchu County but in one leaf and it's a five hundred meter elevation so there's your scope analysis for the tea again if you want to find out a lot more detail about this tea then go check out the other video that I did let me pour this away into the gongfu guru and let's brew up our first infusion for those of you thinking that I'm throwing away the leaves after doing this believe me I'm not there are so many infusions that I'm going to be getting out of these it's a Saturday in London and I've got the whole day to drink these teas so that's a good good day for me okay let's pour this lovely liqueur beautiful kind of green orange and brown liquor beautiful okay cheers everyone texture is nice medium bodies texture with a very clean finish so you know it's not going to challenge anybody's taste buds any anybody in terms of texture in terms of astringency or in terms of dryness but it's got a nice a medium to thick body but the flavor is incredible I'm getting lots of floral notes though zesty notes of a good rose like zesty lemony roses I'm also getting the zestiness of state uranium's so those more citrusy floral notes and then there's the fruit so I'm getting the rose and then that's combined with fruit which is again like great like dried dried desert wine grapes over ripe grapes light cheese some elderflower in there as well I love this too and if you brew it cooler it'll give you all of those notes but what I like is if you brew it at about 90 degrees it just seems to bring out those bass notes a little bit more I'm getting a little bit more woods a little bit more forest e notes a little bit more antique wood actually not just fresh wood but antique wood getting the honey the warmth of the honey as well which comes from the bug bitten effect so the hot tree and all terpenes are they're really lovely full tea but still light still not something which is going to be overly challenging which is going to cost too much dryness and astringency a perfect perfect gateway tea and anybody there knows tea all UT has out there I'm sure you've tried many versions of this make sure you get yourself a good one bad ones are always the biggest disappointment when it's just woodsy woodsy with a little bit of flowers and not much else it's a real disappointment but you want that honey you want that geranium you want those fruits those must get fruits those desert wine grapes a wonderful tea I want to keep drinking keep drinking keep drinking however I know that we have to move on to our third tea so final final in the empty cup more cream cream and honey beautiful okay final tea the final tea in our top three teas for newbies is oz mansis along osmanthus along less of a classic some people may be raising their eyebrow right now because I've picked a scented tea but this is not artificially centered this is centered with osmanthus flowers now a lot of people know jasmine tea we all have heard of jasmine tea most people have tried jasmine tea and there are again varying qualities in jasmine tea and I do like jasmine to in fact I love a lot of good jasmine tea however sometimes jasmine can be a bit too sweet a bit too heavy you know it's that that kind of very rich heavy sweetness and sometimes you want that but osmanthus Wow osmanthus for me is one of the most intoxicating smells it's such a wonderful smell it's so so strong and powerful it's very very sweet and floral but it's also got this kind of brightness to it it's got this kind of apricot notes to it tropical fruit notes is kind of brighter more vibrant than this kind of heavy kind of sedating Jasmine aroma so osmanthus too long is a great great tea the reason I picked it is because a lot of people are used to drinking sensitives either jasmine tea or those artificially sensitives I've done videos about that and why I dislike them so much I'll put a link in the description below so a lot of people are used to this very powerful aroma and flavor especially on the nose and so it's more difficult to get them involved into more delicate teas like silver needles like Hong Kong I like the yellow teas which require you to have kind of develop your palate a little bit into the more delicate areas of tea tasting now I'm making generalizations here but this is generally the case and so what we want to do is provide them with a tea which is true tea is naturally scented but it has that rich very vibrant very bold aroma and this is it and it also introduces it introduces people to the creaminess of an oolong tea because most sensitive that they try will be Jasmine green tea so this introduces people to the world of Hunan teas now I know a lot of people a lot of people's gateway tea is chair Guanyin or iron goddess because it's this very floral ulong tea and i absolutely agree that's was i was toying between them but i actually think that if you just ramped up the aroma a little bit more really bring out those aroma notes you're going to get more people involved get more people excited about tea and then hopefully move into more pure teas so those are the reasons why i picked us manthis oolong let's get tasting so take a look at this susanti what you can see is it's a ball rolled oolong and it's got these little yellow tiny little yellow flowers and those are the is mantis flowers they are so so small but they pack such a punch in terms of aroma let's quickly scope this tea this is a spring pick tea it's made from the same cultivar is ta guanine so it's a big one Yin cultivar it's from an XI County the same area as a Chegg wanyan so it's exactly the same area exactly the same cultivar it's long so it's up to the third or fourth leaf and the altitude is not so high it's about 500 meters that's pretty standard altitude so and she County which produces their finest tea a grunion or iron goddess along I can really smell the osmanthus just after opening the pack I can smell this osmanthus and I love love this smell in fact I was so every time I go to China and it's Oz mantis season I end up kind of following the following my nose and finding the osmanthus trees and just spending some time smelling because it's such an intoxicating smell it became so obsessive for me that I actually I shouldn't say this on camera but I actually broke the law and smuggled in a small osmanthus plant into the UK and I've got enough Mathers plant in my home and it's incredible because every time it flowers the whole house is filled with this smell which I will try to describe to you I get apricots it's like dried apricots that that is really the Pradhan smell so it's sweet but it's got that acidity it's got that sourness tried apricots some tropical fruit then I'm picking up the smell of the along which is creamy it's got those honeysuckle floral notes that come from good ta Guanyin okay the temperature that we've got here is again a bit hotter this is 95 degree which is about 205 Fahrenheit just going to give it a quick rinse again get rid of any extraneous maybe some leaves have broken up there's a bit of tea dust in there you want to get rid of those just because it will potentially make the tea a little bit more bitter than it needs to be ah almonds almonds it's got a bit of grassiness but the osmanthus that apricot smell now it's more like fresh apricot than dried apricot okay let's give this a groove we're going to leave this for about 20 seconds 15 20 seconds to open up ball roll do lungs just take a little bit longer because you just want them to open up having said that this should be enough so if you like jasmine teas if you are somebody that's coming to tea and you've been drinking mostly teas which have been centered then give this tea try this is a great tea to really introduce you to to high quality tea because the oolong in there is high quality you're going to taste that along and you're going to taste that lovely marriage between flowers and tea ok enough talking let's taste in fact I just want to have a sniff of this wetly well there's a smell coming out of here which is taking me off guard a little bit trying to work it out they're with me I might get it I might not it's a it's a very high high note that's quite spicy it's like a seed of some sort caraway caraway that's what it is caraway you know if you bite a caraway seed it's got this quite a nice sweetness to it that's there as well but then I've got mango definite mango the tropical fruit is coming out of the apricot has become even sweet even more tropical mango mango almonds and butter Cheers texture is light with scented teas like this the smell is more powerful than the so the the smell that you get this very bright fruity aroma is going to be less on the taste and more on the nose but with high quality center two teas it should still be in the mouth as well and when you breathe out through the nose it should still be there and it is so I'm getting that mango I'm getting raw almond I'm getting frangipane that kind of raw dough the marzipan and and and and ground almonds slight butteriness and then that subside and then it comes back with grass and it comes back with mango mango and grass ah real mango tasters I always describe this tea with apricot but this amazing the mango I'm getting yeah it starts off buttery and creamy and comes back fresh grassy and fruity great wonderful combination and it's that again balance that I'm looking for every time I'm selecting teas it's all about that balance how it the character the event the the experience in the mouth so it starts off light and then moves into this great fresh fruity aroma breathe out through your nose you're really going to get a lot of that as well and go let's smell the empty cup pretty simple but again I'm getting that caraway I'm getting the caraway slight medicinal herb enos to it as well caraway maybe a bit of them hmm what's that a little bit of mint a little bit of mint and caraway and this another medicinal herb herbiness accouting which you may or may not know coding is a is a beautiful very bright Chinese herb which has a kind of a nice sweetness to it as well a wonderful wonderful tea and fitting finale to my top three teas for newbies please let me know in the comment section below which teas you think are the perfect tease for newbies the perfect gateway teas the perfect tease to bring people into this wonderful world of true tea if you are new to tea I recommend that you try one or all of these teas so you can really start to train your palate in what really good high-quality tea should taste like so you can really be set off on your tea journey but let me know which teas did it for you which was the tea that really brought you into tea and know a lot of you are going to say chair going in so let me know chair Guanyin is always a popular one if there were any others out there any other teas that really took you back and made you realize that tea was something a lot more than you had thought of before from those horrible tea bags well I've got three barely touched teas to keep drinking today so it's going to be a good day for me but that's it see heads if you made it to the end of this video then please give the video the thumbs up check out our YouTube playlist and let us know if there any videos that you would like us to make if you're ever in London then come visit us in Camden say hi and taste our wares if you have any questions or comments then please fire them over other than that i'm don made from a leaf thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea stay away from those teabags keep drinking the good stuff and spread the word because nobody deserves bad tea bye you

Channel: Mei Leaf

Views: 171,575

Keywords: tea, mei leaf, don mei, loose leaf tea, white tea, green tea, oolong tea, black tea, websites for tea, tea tasting, tea shopping, high quality tea, chinese tea, taiwanese tea, japanese tea, tea ware, teaware, tea gifts, gong fu tea, gong fu brewing, beginner tea, tea for beginners, introduction to tea, eastern beauty, oriental beauty, bai hao oolong, imperial green, long jing, dragonwell, best green tea, osmanthus oolong, gui hua, chinese oolong, tie guan yin

Id: E-h7KNfRs4E

Length: 33min 5sec (1985 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2017