Excursion: Grand Rapids Coffee Roasters & Classic Mao Jian ~ TeaSource

A couple weeks ago I was feeling a bit of cabin fever. My adventure gene managed to get the better of me and I decided to head out to Grand Rapids Coffee Roasters for some rare teas I’d spotted on their website.  Although I went to Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo) for my undergrad, I never spent much time in GR apart from GVSU’s annual anime convention, JAFAX. Also, at this point I have quite a few friends who come from Holland and I’ve always wanted to visit it. So why not? It seemed like a good idea at the time…

I ended up getting WAY carsick when I ran into several rapidly moving storm fronts (I’m really sensitive to barometric pressure changes), and Grand Rapid’s many roller coaster-like hills. Despite my rocky constitution, I somehow managed to find my way to my destination, find the rare teas I was looking for AND take advantage of GR Coffee Roasters’ gorgeous building to shoot some photography. I also spent a minute or two enjoying some well made Rishi Pu-erh courtesy of Madcap Coffee. ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the things that justified this trip was to be able to bring back a bag of TeaSource’s Classic Mao Jian. Mao Jian is the name of a pluck style of Green, namely the bud and first leaf pluck (the standard grade A is generally considered Mao Feng, or bud and first two leaves), which signifies a second-only-to-the-best (bud only pluck) in refinement. My apologies if none of that made much sense–I don’t think I’ve reviewed any Mao Jian before so I was geeking out when I wrote this post.

Classic Mao Jian smells like a Liu An Gua Pian in that it’s a more raw Chinese Green with a great deal of chlorophyll. I can also smell caffeine (duh) and maybe some tippy hairs? This Chinese Green actually reminds me more of a gyokuro or kamairicha in that it’s very refined and probably would be excellent for a full Chinese tea tasting (even though those are Japanese teas). In taste it’s much sweeter and robust than it smells and it has the tiniest acidic aftertaste. Classic Mao Jian feels like it only has the most minute amount of grit. Classic Mao Jian is easily the best Hunan Green I’ve ever had–I wish i could drink this tea out of a gaiwan, as it was meant to be drank. Easily worth the trouble to acquire.

1. Aroma – 91
2. Taste – 89
3. Texture – 93
4. Spunk – 90
5. Price – 90
6. Availability – 88
7. Appearance – 91

Mean score – 90%!