Backstory:
I’ve been promising a number of blind taste tests to myself, recently, and I finally went ahead and did one today! I had around 3g of this oolong left, and I still have a number of packets of the “gift tea” DHP that I was given in late 2014. So, I thought they’d make an excellent pair for comparison!
I used my two Gaiwans (Yixing Dragon from Butiki (~100ml) and my Jingdezhen one from Verdant(~120ml)). I prepared everything in an identical way (pre-heated cups, fairness pitcher and gaiwans), added the teas blindly (long story and hard to explain, but I managed XD), let them heat in the hot Gaiwan and then rinsed them both for ~3 seconds). I took notes on the fragrances and appearances of the dry leaf, and then went ahead with the tasting!
Review:
So, I did three steeps in all this morning (and I’ll do more later on): 5", 10", and 15".
The dry leaves for this tea were darker and more tightly rolled/curled than the other tea. They also had a much milder smell, though this may have been because this sample has been opened before… I did keep it in a sealed sample baggie, so it should have been OK, but I reserved judgement.
In the hot Gaiwan, the leaves smelled more – kinda like milk chocolate and that buttery smell of fresh nuts. After the rinse, the smell remained similar though still quite “gentle”. It did develop a roastier note.
On the palette, this tea was really vibrant and “fresh” – after tasting it alongside the other DHP I have, I think “smooth” was the wrong description to use in my previous review. This tea is gently astringent, and definitely has that mineral-metal “texture”. It’s got a very light body reminiscent of Central/Latin American coffees (a major contrast against the other). Visually, this tea also remained different – the wet leaves, after 3 steeps, the leaves from this tea were still slightly curled and were two toned – a mixture of dark-green-brown and just plain chocolate-brown!
Flavour wise, I got a dark-char flavour, with undertones of dark chocolate and roasted nuts. It was much stronger in flavour than the lacking dry scent would have made me think, further leading me to think that the lack of fragrance was just a consequence of how I stored the second half of this sample (sorry, tea T_T).
I checked the “answer” and found out this was the Verdant tea after 3 steeps. I’ll carry on after my dinner and run, later, and see what it does in later steeps. This was really interesting, though! When tasting the two, side-by-side, I think I did marginally prefer this Verdant DHP, though it was just so different to the other one. They’re basically two totally different teas :O
