Verdant Tea

Oh goodness, I feel so grateful to be sipping this tea this morning. The last two days I thought perhaps I had a sinus/ear infection and while I’m still a bit foggy this morning, my throat isn’t sore and my tongue feels primed and ready. The dried leaves smell decadent and that’s exactly the word I would use to describe the taste as well. It’s amazing that such a short steep can yield such a luxurious experience. There is sweetness yes and mild veg and nut, but more than anything it’s the mouthfeel on this that blows me away. Oh the creamyness it coats the roof of my mouth with, swoon. And I’m only on the first steep.

In searching for this page (Steepster was being slow to load) I came across I believe LiberTeas’s review of this Spring’s Laoshan Green, where she makes the comparison to fresh milk from grass fed cows on a small family dairy farm, and that really resonates with me on this one as well. I also definitely get the comparison to Gyokuro. I got six steeps out of this and I’m sure I could have done more if I hadn’t switched to pu’erh after dinner, very respectable for a green.

The first three were my favorite with the mouthfeel being the smoothest on the first and the second two being the most flavorful. The first sip of the second steep literally made me sip up straight and take notice, then mellowed itself out. The third started off mellow but built upon itself all the way to the bottom of the cup. Will have to try this grandpa style (leaving the leafs in the glass and sipping) can anyone recommend a temperature for that?

I wish I liked more tea.

I wish I could be like many of you here who seem to like pretty much any quality tea, no matter what type it is-but it is not to be. I’ve been expanding a bit more beyond the teas that I am used to and I have found that I have definite preferences-new things I like and new things I don’t. I enter the process open-minded, but there are just some things my senses don’t care for and Laoshan black is one of them. It’s kinda disheartening to hear people rave about a tea that I just don’t care for. I’d like to join the club exalting various great teas and have people think I know a lot about tea because I agree with them. But no words-no matter how cogent-can convince my senses that they enjoy something when they just don’t.

I KNEW this was not your typical breakfast tea when I ordered it. Still, it seemed worth a shot. However, by the time I got around to trying this tea, I have already discovered that I was less than enthralled with 2 of its components (Laoshan Black and Big Red Robe). So this puts a lot of pressure on Yunnan Golden Buds and Xingyang 2007 Imperial Pu’er. Considering I’ve never had Pu’er before (and that there’s probably not much in it), it’s mostly up to the Golden Buds-those poor buds never stood a chance.

The best thing about this tea is how striking all those golden buds look mixed in with the Laoshan Black leaves-very nice. Sadly, the black overwhelms those buds and I can’t really taste them. I taste the chocolate notes in the black, but it’s not remotely sweet. I eat 72% dark chocolate (not sweet enough for most) and I taste enough sweetness. The chocolate notes in the black are bland. Thick, heavy and bland. At least they are NOT bitter, like unsweetened chocolate. Not sure whether I can taste the pu-er. I catch a glimpse of mineral now and then from the oolong. Even if I enjoyed this more, I can’t imagine wanting this as my first cup in the morning. For that, I guess I prefer your typical Assam/Yunnans straight or in blends. But, even as an afternoon tea, this just doesn’t work for me.

After trying the powerhouse that is Laoshan Green Autumn, this one does it more sneakily.. You have to be a little more quiet, a little more attentive, but the serenity is there. Between salaried work and a 14 month old, those quiet times are fleeting but this cup is great company!

EDIT After trying several others and gaining even just a small amount of perspective, it doesn’t seem fair to Verdant not to rate this one as it really is worth your consideration!

Yay! I was so very excited to receive this order a few days ago from Verdant. After reading what seems like volumes of reviews and snippets around the web, I was finally going to try my first Pu’er! Now enough blabbering, it’s time to set the tone..

Mid-mornings in Colorado during this time of year are very centering in and of themselves. Warm sunlight that basks without baking and the slightest of constant breezes are enough to turn my feet into lead when I am sitting on the back porch facing the front range of the Rockies. It was on just the right kind of in-between sort of morning that I came to know my first Pu’er.

Measuring 2.6g into the glass gaiwan, I let a rinse course through the leaves twice. 4 seconds and zero breaths later I sat holding a cup of the lightest of amber colored odysseys. And then it began.

The first steep coated my mouth in ambience, it was an overture of something indefinable. By the second, there was a sparkling tingle that held what I can only describe as a memory of a vanilla wafer. Not the taste itself, mind you, but the way your mind creates a flavor when you think back on having tasted something. The third, fourth, and fifth took the memory and made it real. A taste that matches what cedar planks smell of continued to build just behind the vanilla and overtook it by the sixth, as the vanilla wafer retracted into a wider sweetness that lost any defining characteristic but presented most openly on the exhale. Seven through ten were muddled in my mind as my thoughts strayed from concentration on what I was drinking to chasing fleeting ruminations on the patchy cloud patterns and a passing squirrel. Strange how this cup makes it both incredibly easy and incredibly hard to focus!

If this is what I can expect from Pu’er going forward, I believe I will have to examine it in a far different light from other teas. No rating on this one though – seems like bad form to rate the first.

EDIT After trying several others and gaining even just a small amount of perspective, it doesn’t seem fair to Verdant not to rate this one as it really is worth your consideration!

Backlog.

Tasty first infusion… in the future, I will endeavour not to accumulate so much green tea and then not drink it quickly, because it’s definitely much tastier when it’s fresh.

Bleh, I’m getting a minerally (or chlorine?) water flavour marring the gentle sweetness of this tea. I do need to change my Brita filter; perhaps that’s part of the problem. Also possible that travel mug flavours are causing issues. Ah well, if I get past the weird flavour, I am rewarded with some of the expected deliciousness. Just not as much as I’d like.

I’ve completely lost track of which harvest this was from, but it was absolutely divine today. Sweet, rock sugary, a bit vegetal – even though I’ve apparently managed to crunch up some of the leaves by transporting it around. I still have bags of this from other harvests, but it’s a definite restock once I’m out.

Again, too lazy to figure out which season this is from. 2012, though. Probably spring 2012.

Anyhow! Tasty, but weaker than I would have liked. Likely didn’t use enough tea, or didn’t infuse long enough (because it’s old… I know I know!) It was still pretty good though, I just need to remember to adjust parameters a bit for older teas. I’ll be re-stocking this tea for sure once I’m out, as I find it superior to “real” dragonwell tea, for the most part.

Delicious. I’m close to a sipdown with this particular baggie of tea… but have at least one or two more of various harvests. They’re all equally delicious, so no woes about finishing off the last of this one, since I’ll still have something similar :) I really have to start making more of an effort to brew multiple cups of this in quick succession so that I don’t waste the leaves… too often I brew it up for a travel mug and then let the leaves sit all day, and they just don’t taste as good when I manage to get back to them.

I have been chewing through a lot of this lately, and am nearing a sipdown of one packet! Yay! This one’s great in a travel mug if brewed a bit strong and consumed within a couple hours, otherwise it does that green tea thing and starts tasting off. This is so tasty though.

Should have steeped this a bit less time, but… sooooo tasty. I really want to try this as a cold-brew/iced tea. Good thing I have tons left!

Idk which harvest I drank…. but it was tasty. Two delicious cups of this while having supper/playing board games with my boy and his mom (and brother).

Don’t have a clue whether this is a spring or autumn picking anymore…. but it’s tasty.

Anyways, farewell for a while, most likely… life is too busy for this stuff right now! This is all the tea I’ve had in the last two days (oh yeah, a Tropicalia cold brew as well, better log that). If I have internet in Mexico, I’ll snoop around a bit… On that note… anyone know if I should be able to get tea through customs? Teabags, if nothing else? I’m dreading the thought of no tea/cheap Orange Pekoe. Or whatever they give you on Mexican resorts.

Ok… this is (I think) the 2012 Spring Harvest. I know there’s a page for it now, but I last reviewed it under this heading, so oh well. I suspect the quality is always going to be quite similar between all the spring harvests, so the only thing that may change for people using these reviews to make purchase decisions is the specific notes that are present in the tea. But… everyone gets it different with the same tea, so I don’t really think it matters! Off my soapbox now…

Anyways! I have been quite absent from Steepster lately; I miss it here! I have loads of things to catch up on… holidays are never as relaxing as they sounds like they should be. At least I’m done my conference now, so have 5 days of whatever I feel like doing left. Hopefully I can catch up a bit here before getting back to the grind :)

So yes. Managed to brew this one up well tonight, although my palate must have been a bit off initially because I wasn’t tasting the sweetness, although it showed up later. Gave a sample of this one to my mom, and she thought it was sweet and different.

Really love this tea, though it’s definitely best savoured on its own.

Was absolutely craving a sweet vegetal green tonight on top of my delicious milk oolong, so chose this one (at least I think I chose this one. It was a Verdant dragonwell, anyhow). Infusions at ~175F for 1:00, 1:15, 1:45. All smooth, vegetal, and amazing. I definitely prefer the infusions in order, i.e. the first is best, probably because the rock sugar note is most prominent in earlier infusions. But, they are all delicious. :D

This review is for the 2012 Spring Harvest version of this tea, for which I don’t think there is a page. David Duckler generously sent me this tea and a couple others due to some issues I had with a previous order, and I’m thrilled to have the chance to try this tea far sooner than I would have otherwise, since I’m trying to avoid too many more orders until I’ve drank my way through a bit more tea. Although I haven’t yet compared this to the Autumn 2011 harvest, I get the impression that the flavour will be a fair bit stronger, just based on the stronger aroma from the bag. Whether that’s related to freshness or not, I’m not sure. I used probably about 3g of leaves in my tiny glass teapot, which is more than I have used in the past, so I can get a bit more flavour out.

First infusion (175F/1:30):
Smells strongly of cooked green beans/boiled veggies. Strongly enough that I’m concerned I may have overleafed/oversteeped. However, there’s not even a touch of astringency. This is seriously delicious. Sweet and vegetal. I think I probably tried this at a stupid time as I have killed my tastebuds temporarily by eating a lime teriyaki sauce with copious raw ginger/garlic, so I’m not catching flavour nuances at all. This same sauce ruined my second day of cheese panel tasting, because I couldn’t tell the bitter samples apart the next day due to the tastebud-killing action of the raw garlic – so I think the same is perhaps occurring now. Anyhow, I can tell this is delicious, and has exactly the sort of primary flavours I want in an excellent green tea.

Second infusion (2min/175F):
Similar aroma, but lighter. Moving into a more mineral taste here, with veggies as more of a supporting flavour. Again, I’m having some trouble – it’s like my sense of taste is foggy. I can tell it’s good though, and I think there’s more lingering green tea aftertaste here. There’s maybe a hint of astringency, but perhaps keeping the infusion at 1:30 would have helped with that.

Must say that the first infusion of green teas is most often by far my favourite, so the more reliably I can get a delicious first infusion, the more highly I think of a tea. Verdant’s greens have yet to disappoint in that respect! Mmmm…

ETA: A third infusion, at I think 175F for 2 minutes, was actually quite good! Still no bitterness, and lost the intense vegetal flavour, but nutty and quite tasty. Likely a consequence of using more leaf. I’m impressed :D

Cold brewed this again with some brown sugar. I absolutely love this tea, this is quickly becoming my favorite.

Cold brewed this time. I had to, after brewing both traditional and western styles I had to give cold brewing a try. It even says in the description that it’s great iced. So, here we are. Last log of this one for a while since I have very little left of the 1 oz already. I really want to buy more but I’m trying to reign in my spending habits for a little until I get money flowing back in sometime in July. Unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to last another week before I buy more tea, specifically this one! Perhaps 4 oz next time.

So, to the actual review. After such a change in taste brewing it western style yesterday I was very curious as to what todays cold brew would bring. Let me just say it is once again wonderful. The floral notes are there and not overpowering at all, I’m mostly getting rose. The pine notes are more pronounced than the cedar notes but both are taking a bit of a backseat, not that it’s a bad thing. It has a nice creamy texture and I can taste and feel the sparkling qualities again as well. I can taste the grapefruit notes, there is definitely a little bit of tartness, it’s well paired with the sweetness of the tea.

After drinking half of the mug I added a little bit of brown sugar (my go-to sweetener for iced tea) and it tempered the tartness and brought out the sweet notes even more. I can taste the individual notes of rose and jasmine. Hints of the pine and cedar. I can still taste the grapefruit, but it is more pleasant, less tart. The sparkling qualities I can feel on the tip of my tongue at the beginning of the sip and feel it going the whole way to the back of my tongue.

In the aftertaste I get the some grapefruit with some pine and a little bit of cedar. The creaminess, more a texture than a taste, coating my tongue with a little of the sparkling quality hanging onto the sides of my tongue.

Definitely better than yesterdays brewing. I really love this tea, and I don’t see myself waiting too much longer to order more of it!

After having this gaiwanish style yesterday I brewed it up western style today thanks to a comment from Bonnie. Which means I should also cold brew this up later as well. Anyway, western style 2 tsp per 8 oz, 205F at 2 minutes steeping time. This tea tastes relatively the same yet not quite. It’s still wonderfully delicious but it lacks the minute nuances that I had tasted from yesterday.

The floral notes seem stronger in the first few steepings than yesterday. The floral notes yesterday I could taste both the rose and the jasmine, today I can taste the rose but not jasmine. The sparkling qualities are barely discernible in the sip and I didn’t feel it on my tongue, just the taste. The creaminess isn’t quite as nice and smooth, it was there but kind of bland and the nice texture was missing as well. The cedar and pine notes aren’t nearly as strong as they were yesterday either, they were definitely in the background compared to sharing the spotlight yesterday.

I couldn’t really pinpoint any flavors or textures. The aftertaste was practically absent. The texture and feelings on the tongue and mouthfeel were MIA. It’s like the flavors are still there but muddled together and blanched.

While this is ok brewed western style, it just seems like an ordinary floral tea. It is definitely lackluster compared to yesterdays tasting when I steeped it gaiwanish style, so gaiwanish style I shall keep brewing this.

Good golly Miss Molly, this is delicious! That was my first thought upon the initial sip, and it hasn’t changed much.

The appearance of this tea is very pleasing to the eye. There are the big silvery, fuzzy buds mixed with dried goji berries, green tea leaves, marigold petals, rose petals, citrus peels, and dried elder berries.

The dry smell of this tea is wonderful. It’s fresh and crisp yet creamy, with cedar and pine notes and floral notes. It’s like a forest on the edge of a wonderful flower garden. Wet the leaves smell mostly of cedar, pine and floral; while the infusion smells of cedar, rose and jasmine.

Taste is wonderful. Cedar and pine notes with rose and jasmine floral notes. It’s creamy yet is light. It’s sweet and sparkling. There is a sparkling feeling on the tip of the tongue at the beginning of the sip and moves to the back of the tongue and touches the throat at the end of the sip and lingers for the aftertaste. I get the goji berry and citrus notes mostly in the aftertaste.

In further steepings the tea takes on mostly cedar and pine notes with the sparkling quality and still retains some creaminess. It loses the floral notes by the third steep, being predominant in the first steep. It gains some spiciness in further steepings mostly in the aftertaste.

I steeped this gaiwanish-style. I don’t have a gaiwan, which is why I say gaiwanish. I used a 5 oz cup with a infuser basket with 205F water. The first steep was only about 5 seconds and now I’m up to about a minute.

I can’t recall what steeping I’m currently on, somewhere around 8 I believe, and I don’t intend on stopping. This is one tea that I will definitely be reordering. It is absolutely wonderful and I suggest everyone to try it if it is geared toward their tastes, but don’t ask me for any, I am not sharing this treasure!!

OH. MY. GOD. O_O

Never had TGY that was anything like this. Full note later – just jad to post immediately after first sip :)

First of all, yes, I’m alive. I’ve been amazingly busy recently, with professors really ;piling on the work as the semester draws to a close. But today I have a bit of time, so I’m doing a review as quickly as possible. I’m still multitasking, doing my Abstract Algebra homework while writing the beginning of this review.

I was really generous with the ammount of leaf I used today becasue I caved and bought a lot of stuff from the Verdant Tea Cyber Monday sale and I need to do some stash busting. Anyway, I let the first cup steep for a bit more than 20 seconds, which resultedin tea that was a nice amber color, and which had a pleasant earthy aroma. Unlike some shu, where the aroma can be overpowering, this tea is just the right ammount to enhance the experience. The teaste is earthy, yet still surprisingly sweet. Also, lets not forget the thirst-quenching and the cooling sensations that this tea has to offer, which give it that extra uniqueness to make this tea really stand out.

Second cup, steeped for 15 seconds. I usually only let the second cup steep for 10 seconds, but I felt a bit adventurous today. The result is much earthier than the first cup, but still delightfully clear and juicy. The mineral sensation that David mentions in the tea’s description is also more obvious during this steep, rounding off the expereince with a pleasant smooth aftertaste that migrates to the hard palate. Once again, this tea delivers an amazing experience.

Third cup, also 15 seconds. This was a very complex cup of tea, as I seem to have caught it during the middle of the big transition from the bolder flavors of the early steepings to the smooth, cool, sparkling sensations that coem atthe end. The spakling feeling is starting to assert itself, and the mineralish aftertaste has faded significantly. Also, the flavor is clearer, like the musty old flavors have been washed away. It’s very interesting, and I’m savoring it as much as I can.

Alright, actually taking some time to properly review this tea. Unfortunately, my allergies are still acting up a bit, so I can’t really smell it (that, and the grass outside was just cut, which certainly doesn’t help). Anyway, the taste is interesting in that it’s both warming and cooling, and it’s actually very “clear.” The other shu that I had was very murky and tasted a bit like lake water. It’s very complex and flavors are all muddled together, but still enjoyable