Verdant Tea

A soft, caramely, golden-colored brew.

Can’t say that I’m too well versed with the oolongs, but this is certainly the tastiest one I’ve ever had (it’s the second). It leaves my tongue tingling, which I think is because of the high temperature; I’ll lower it in later infusions.

EDIT: Infusion 2 was even better. As expected, lowering the temperature did wonders.

This is the second Ti Kuan Yin I’ve ordered online going solely on the reviews posted here on Steepster. I ordered one ounce of the tea packed in the gift box (I was curious to see how it looked) I received the tea inside a very nice carton box while the tea itself was inside a small plastic bag.

As I opened the plastic bag, I could instantly smell the aromatic floral essence of this tea. I grabbed a few leaves to check on the dry leaves. I noticed the that curled up tea “balls” were smaller than any TKY’s I’ve ever seen or have.The tightly rolled leaves were fragrant, slightly oily to the touch, and have a dark green jade color.

I prepared the tea using a gaiwan following the suggested brewing guidelines of 205F water and 3 min steep time.

The resulting brew gave me a clear yellow-green cup with a gentle floral aroma. I brewed this tea 7 times and as I kept brewing it, the flavor profile had subtle but noticeable changes.

My first cup was pretty straight forward. It was floral, sweet, smooth textured, and slightly aromatic aftertaste. The second cup remained pretty much the same. On the third steep, the brew became slightly creamy. I could say the best cups were the fourth and fifth steeps, as the tea became deliciously creamier and smoother tasting while retaining its floral aroma but with a slight seaweedy smell. On the sixth steeping I noticed a loss of the creamy texture and floral aroma/flavor. The seventh steeping gave me a very light green cup with floral hints still there, but almost no creaminess and no aroma.

Upon analizing the wet leaf, I could tell they did indeed use smaller leaves. Perhaps the small size indicates only young leaves were used in the production of this tea? Anyways, I enjoyed this tea especially in later steepings. I found the first cups pretty unintresting but later on, this tea becomes literally mouthwatering (my mouth would salivate few seconds after I had my last sip, this was more noticeable during the 3rd-5th steepings). Flavor-wise I think this is a great tea but found it a bit lacking in the aftertaste I look for in Ti Kuan Yins. I was also a little disappointed that after the fifth cup, the tea began to lose its flavor. Overall this is a great TKY and for the price/service(free shipping) verdant tea offers? hard to beat.

This Xingyang Golden Leaf, well, what more can be said about it at this point that has not already been said here below.

The flavor is exceptionally clean, earthy, mossy. Its’ complexity begins to stretch out into notes of molasses and pepper within three steepings. It delivers a mentholated sensation that expands from the hollows of your mouth into the sinus cavity where it sits quite contentedly. The broth coats the tongue, awakening it with a tingling sensation.

Within two steeps your body begins to slow, and by the third and fourth your feet and hands begin to tingle. I have done 8 steepings this afternoon, so you can assume how I am feeling at this point. I am planning a lengthier session for tomorrow morning.

I was actually considering a cold steep. Has anyone else done this with this pu’er, or any other? While in Beijing this past September I had just finished an incredible session with a sheng prepared by a tea master. I was about to leave for an appointment, and suddenly a small yixing pot was lifted from the side of the table and I was given a cold steeping that had been going for hours. In all honesty, I was scared that it was going to be beastly in flavor. It was however, quite the opposite. Despite being near to midnight black, the tea was exceptionally smooth, clean and sweet, and frankly a revelation. I had two porcelain cups full and stumbled out, tea drunk, into the night.

Blessed Lent!

Wild arbor, gongfu madness style: should be a white knuckled ride, you’d think. But as it turns out, combining 7 steepings (all under 10 seconds) produces what I’d almost describe as a “blended scotch” type result. All the hard edges and thin spots are evened out and the result is a very full, if a bit uninteresting, cup.

Uninteresting. That’s an unfair word. This is still phenomenal tea. But I’ve learned lately that with sheng, half the joy of drinking is to see where the personality of yourself, the tea and the moment in which you are drinking it are going to combine to produce a unique experience. That’s not going to happen with this approach.

That being said, I’m actually a bit glad for the gentle results because today marks the difficult beginning of a long journey and I am pleased to be easing into it with this tea.

The RoTea sheng was nice, but completely failed to stir my chi in any way.

So I returned to the Wild Arbor. Nothing like it was last week. A very mild mannered tea, today. I must have used far too much leaf last time — or there was something in the air, in the water… something.

This is also failing to stir my chi. Maybe I’m just all blocked up, today.

Today this tea is completely kicking my head in.

After a good 18 steeps on the wang shu over the past day and a half, and today’s on again off again rainy day pattern, I wanted to take things to another level. I have wuji qigongquan tonight and I want to take that to the next level as well.

So one turns to sheng.

Wild Arbor is right. This tea is a haggis fueled Scotsman like my college roommate of 20 years past. Huge, rough, uncouth, but tenacious, warm and giving.

I cannot claim that I am enjoying the flavor profile right now. I feel like I am drinking cups of mothball soup with an insulation garnish.

But the energy is stretching straight to my toes, and fingers, and my yi has grown full and heavy. And right now, that is a delicious feeling.

3rd & 4th steeps:

I have been very surprised a the color of all of these steeps. None of them have been particularly dark in color. This is a big part of why I insist that sheng and shu really should be discussed as almost completely distinct teas, these days. Yes, initially, shu was an attempt at a short cut. But the results, even very high quality, long shelved results, are nothing like sheng. Good shu is amazing tea. But it doesn’t come close to replicating sheng in anyway way, and at this point we’re better served severing the mental connection and in the same way that you wouldn’t really compare Assam to Yunnan just because they are both “black” tea, we should stop thinking of shu as somehow the bastard step-child baby brother of sheng. Yes, they’re both pu-erh. But they fulfill radically different niche in my wants and desires when choosing a tea.

This particular sheng is fairly wooly while having enough age on it that you don’t feel like you’re being rubbed raw and bleeding by the rough edges. It is a tea that forces you to be present every time you sip it. There is no way to have this tea “in the background”. During a hectic day, this tea snaps you out of your wool gathering and says “STOP” and be awake for a moment.

By contrast, good shu does nearly the opposite. It buries your underground, slowly, quietly, softly, piling on fresh earth and old loam until the present couldn’t be further away. Shu is a cocoon.

(WE JUST FOUND OUR LOST DOG!!!!!)

OK forget tea. Back later.

Second steep is softer, but still biting.

Maybe next time I will do one very long steep instead of the series of short steeps. Just to see what we get.

OK. Finally time to taste the sheng.

I have to say, I’m a bit surprised with this first steep. When the leaf first got wet there was actually a kind of a flowery aroma. Not the kind of deep floral you get from jasmine or osmanthus, but certainly a “I used to be a living plant” kind of smell — something you wouldn’t expect sheng to remember about itself, if you know what I mean. There are some other typical sheng notes, but there are none of the baritone earthy tones one typically thinks of with pu-erh. No loam, no tilled fields, none of that.

But then the cup itself is pretty typical compared to other sheng I’ve had. Strong camphor in this first steep. Sadly, none of that “hot cabin wood in the sun” type notes I’ve had with others and enjoyed so much. Maybe they will come out in later steeps, but I’m going to post these steeps one at a time because my morning is very busy and it may take a while (sadly).

The rating will go up as I get more comfortable with the tea.

This is my after lunch treat. I have had so many boring green teas lately and this one is really full of flavor – see my previous notes. I had to up the score a little bit today. I’m looking forward to more Laoshan teas from Verdant in the future.

This came as a sample in my last order from Verdant. I was very surprised to find that this does smell a lot like cocoa – intriguing! I steeped it for around 3 minutes at 175 F or so. I may have used a bit too much leaf however.

I am finding this slightly less sweet and more vegetal than the spring Laoshan green. It has a full and rich flavor, definitely green beans are the predominant note here. I felt it got a bit pungent so I may need to revise my steeping parameters. I like it though…

Second steep here at 2 minutes was a lot better, I guess you don’t need much with this tea!

I had some of this afternoon to mix with a bit of plain rooibos, there is something about this chai blend which is slightly weird and I can’t put my finger on it…

I got this as a blend to mix with other teas, I don’t intend to drink it on its own. Last night I added about 1 tsp. to some plain generic honeybush and it was great, I also want to try it with assam. I think the saffron and the elderberry are both nice touches to this blend which make it a little bit out of the ordinary.

This came in the December tea of the month club from Verdant.
What a unique tea . . . my first reaction was to think how strange it was, but by the fifth steep, I found I enjoyed it a lot.

The dry leaf of course didn’t look anything like tea, and smelled interesting, a little like hay. I brewed it western style, but in a kyusu. The first steeping was probably the least flavorful. Like hay, cedar, or dry pine needles. I expected some sweetness, as the tasting notes/suggestions said it is added to other teas to add sweetness, but the first steeping didn’t have any. It actually reminded me of sheng, because it caused the same drying sensation as I’ve experienced with young sheng.

The next four steepings were good, and even, getting better with each one. The drying sensation was no longer there, the hay became slightly more floral, and overall it began to be very juicy and slightly astringent. It was exactly like white grape juice, actually (without the sweetness). However, there was a sweetness present – not in the sip, but these last steepings left a very nice returning sweetness in the throat. That was easily my favorite part about this tea.

This tea is great it just for the aftertaste (which remains for quite a long time, too).
I can see why you would want to add this to another tea – it won’t have a significant impact on the other tea’s profile during the sip, but it will intensify the aftertaste noticeably, as well as add a juiciness. It would add more depth and interest to the other tea, without overpowering it. I look forward to mixing it with their Golden Buds (as suggested) to see the result.

The description, which states that in many ways this could be a straight up pu’ehr, is totally spot-on. The flavoring is really subtle, and don’t let the elderberry scare you away if you’re a bit wary of berries in tea, as I am. The berry is certainly as mild as the other flavor components- yay, no kool-aid taste. This seems to be a decent pu’ehr, and the flavoring softens it a bit, and sweetens it too.

Second steeping is actually even less flavored and more straight pu’ehr.

I’m so into flavored pu-ehrs lately… open to anyone who wants to swap me one of these for just about anything.

This is my first straight pu-erh, my only other experiences being DavidsTea’s blends.

This is beautiful. I definitely get the pipe tobacco and cloves, it’s a lovely little tea that I am thoroughly enjoying. I love the earthiness of it! I added sugar because I always add sugar. It’s not fair for me to rate a tea without it. But it is delicious. I am very pleased and very impressed by my first straight pu-erh! I’m suddenly very glad we just ordered another sampler pack from Verdant, I want to try everything they have!

my foot has been hurting so I’ve been drinking a lot of tea today at home today. Time to switch to decaf. This was incredibly good with a bag of decaffeinated Ahmad Evening Tea. It ended up being like a berry flavored coffee somehow. yum!

Out of all the things that I purchased from Verdant recently, this was the one I was most curious to try. I am always on the lookout for nice herbal teas especially ones that don’t have hibiscus in them (I am not a huge fan).

This did not steep up bright pink so I wonder if I should have let it steep longer – I did mine about 3 minutes. The roses definitely smell wonderful when you open up the bag. It is flowery for sure but the licorice adds in a bit of sweetness, while the elderberry provides some fruit/tart and the cinnamon rounds everything out pretty well. I was also thinking this might be nice blended with something else like a formosa oolong or an oriental beauty. Very flavorful and relaxing tea for the evening time.

Knocking the rating down a touch. I’m not nearly as fond of this late-autumn harvest. It’s still good but has more of the somewhat odd buckwheat flavor and less of the chocolate quality that made this tea so craveable for me.

Sooooo goooooood. Chocolately and malty and mmmm. I love black tea with malty notes to it and this is perfect.