Xiu Xian Tea

I love this tea, its luxurious perfumed flavor is without compare. Brew carefully though, you really don’t want a tea this good to go bitter on you. I would recommend this to anyone looking to splurge on a great tea. My advice is to brew it about 10-15 seconds, no more, no less.

Low astringency, Lovely color and taste. This is your basic jasmine tea done right, even if it’s a little expensive.

I’ve had this tea for a very long time and I have never tried it! I’m getting more and more into white teas now and thought it might finally be time to try this one. I’m not really sure what they ingredients are in this one, but I definitely see some flowery-looking thing.
The instructions recommended 30 seconds per teaspoon, so I went with that at 1 minute fore two teaspoons. It definitely came out a bit light. I will resteep and attempt to get more flavor out of this. There is a strong herb smell that is slightly detectable in the taste. I recognize it but I just can’t name it! Grrrr this is going to bother me until I figure it out…

This is a tea I received in a “Secret Santea” exchange over at www.reddit.com/r/teaexchange. I was given this story along with it: "oh another note that black tea called “Tender Lovers” has a story with it that i think makes it even tastier and special :-).
When me and my gf went on vacation last year we visited Washington state and in a strip mall in Renton there is a tea shop names Xiu Xian tea and we stayed at the store for no less than 4 hours talking with the owner all the while tasting at least 10-15 teas and multiple steeping of each.
I asked if she had any rare tea or interesting tea and she pulled out “Tender Lovers” and explained that her family had a wedding a few months ago in china and they had picked and processed this tea specifically for the wedding. She had only 3 pounds of it left and then there would be no more of that specific tea.
I know this story wasn’t bs because the woman was very honest and it wasn’t any more expensive than the other teas so she wasn’t trying to up-sell it. Hell she even had me taste it to be sure and it was “so damn good” as she would say about a lot of her teas.
So when you drink that tea it is a one of a kind!"

I’ve been putting off trying it because it sounds so special, I almost didn’t feel like I deserved to get to try it! I’m glad I do get the chance though. There weren’t any brewing instructions with it, so I went with boiling and three minutes. I always see people mentioning hints of chocolate flavor in straight black teas, but I never really got it. At least until this tea. When I finished steeping it, I picked it up to move it and got a big whiff of creamy, slightly smokey chocolate. It tasted like it smelled, very lovely and smooth, with no bitterness. I’ll play around with steep times and temperatures to see what personality this tea has.

Emilie Thanks so much for this one!

Yes…it’s true…I’m rapidly trying to get thru my NEW-TO-ME Teas! I need to get the pile down to a HILL rather than the MOUNTAIN it is now.

This is flowery/herbal in every way. I usually don’t care much for tisanes like this…especially when it consists of mostly Chamomile, Lavender, Fennel, etc. But this one really surprised me! It’s really pleasant. I really like the name of this. The tisane is a good one to sip without getting a mouth full of bitter flowers. This seems to work really well! Perhaps it’s the lemon balm and/or grass…not completely sure…but it’s mighty-fine for an herbal tisane!

Its Monday. I don’t really feel I need to go into any further detail to explain the reason that I needed a comfort tea this evening. I’ve recently finished the last of the golden yunnan I bought from puerhshop.com, good riddance to the vile stuff. I really love my dian hongs but I had a hard time finishing that crap, sorry I’m in a mood, I mean less than quality tea.

So on to better things, I picked this up from Xiu Xian a couple months ago and have been patiently waiting to try it. Its awesome. It does help that compared to what I was drinking just about anything would be awesome, but this is definitely what a golden tip yunnan should be like. Its not dusty and doesn’t taste like coffee, yes I realize these are simple qualifiers but I am still bitter about the last stuff.

The liquor brews up very crisp and clean, gorgeous stuff really. But the flavor profile is awesome, really sweet. I could see this becoming too sweet after a couple months of drinking it but for the moment it is a nice change of pace. It has a really mild flavor, I mean its good and distinct, but not in your face and overbearing. The current drawback is it doesn’t seem to resteep as well as some that I have had, I’ll keep playing with it though.

Absolutely delicious oolong! Needs nothing added to it and can be resteeped several times. I will be buying this again.

First tea purchased from Xiu Xian Tea in Bellevue, WA. I’ve resteeped it several times now, still tastes fantastic, though the vanilla notes become a bit more faint with resteeping. Very smooth.