eastkyteaguy Send Message

Let’s try this again. I just attempted to post a review of this tea, but of course, my browser crashed as I was hitting the submit button. I finished a pouch of this tea early this morning. It had been forever since I had tried a Dong Fang Mei Ren of any sort, and to be honest, I had totally forgotten that I had a pouch of this tea until last week. I found this to be a very nice oolong with more than respectable complexity on the nose and in the mouth.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a brief rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 195 F water for 8 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 10 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, I detected aromas of cedar, honey, nectarine, and raisin coming from the dry tea leaves. After the rinse, I found an emerging aroma of roasted almond coupled with something of an herbal scent. The first infusion then brought out an aroma reminiscent of brown sugar. In the mouth, I found smooth, subtle notes of honey, nectarine, cedar, raisin, roasted almond, and brown sugar. The subsequent infusions brought out the herbal notes in the mouth, though I also began to find cream, butter, vanilla, peach, autumn leaf, cinnamon, white grape, malt, toast, mineral, orange zest, and date notes. The later infusions offered distant, lingering impressions of roasted almond, cream, malt, and cedar with occasional hints of butter, raisin, and brown sugar beneath a layer of minerals.

Overall, this was a complex, aromatic, flavorful tea with nice body and texture in the mouth, but I also found it to be a tea that demanded focus and patience to appreciate. It was a little drier and more savory than I anticipated, which was nice considering that I was initially envisioning something sweeter and more syrupy. I could have cut my review session at least one infusion shorter, but I opted not to considering that I was still getting some color, occasional wisps of flavor, and a lot of texture in the mouth. Had this tea retained just a bit more flavor in the later goings, I would have had no issue giving it a score of 90 or higher. It was, however, still a very worthwhile tea.