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Sipdown. This is last of my TTC teas before I move on to my Taiwan Sourcing order. Once again, a stellar baozhong from TTC. This one is a bright, juicy tea with the flavor and aroma of fresh cut lilacs and a touch of vegetation. There’s a greenish quality to it that reminds me of morning dew. Letting it cool before drinking brings out amazing flavors and intensifies the sweetness. Wish I had gotten more than 10g of this tea.

Backlog.

By now I feel like I’ve exhausted the entire Laoshan tea category because I’ve tried all of the varietals from every season and every picking from both Verdant and Yunnan Sourcing. This tea is the latest installment in my Laoshan green tea odyssey.

I would describe this one as more savory than the regular version. The first cup was light-bodied and almost colorless with soy and cilantro. The second cup was brothy and accented with a hint of fennel. By the third cup, almost all of the flavor was washed out. A little disappointing considering I usually get 3-4 good steeps from Laoshan greens.

This one really didn’t do anything for me. Not as zesty or sweet as the spring picked variety. Weirdly enough, at times it tasted chocolately as if it was blended with Laoshan black tea. I remember tasting cocoa tones in the spring harvest as well so that seems to be something peculiar to this tea.

Anyhoo, I’ve come to the realization that the OG Laoshan green tea is my favorite in this tea category. It has the most well rounded flavor and is more robust than the expensive first flushes. I appreciate Verdant’s experimental offerings and will likely continue to sample them, but will stick to my tried and true for regular drinking.

I received this little toucha as a sample with my Teaware House order over a year ago and it had been buried beneath a pile of teas in my drawer for months. In the mood for something different yesterday, I dug it out and steeped the entire sample in my 120ml shiboridashi.

Upon unwrapping, I found inside a handsome silver dollar sized cake with dark camouflage colors and auburn streaks. The tea cake itself had no aroma until hit with hot water and then I was greeted by familiar puerh aromas of leather, smoke, and hay. It was pretty tightly compressed and took about 3 steeps before it began to unravel. The taste was true to the aroma. It began with the smokey, wet forest notes of sheng but unlike sheng, there was no heavy bitterness that followed. In fact there was virtually no bitterness to speak of. As the steeps progressed, I picked up pleasant tobacco/cigar notes, hints of incense, ash, and autumn leaves type woodsiness.

This is technically a white tea but has the profile of raw puerh minus the bitterness. As someone who tends to shy away from sheng due to it’s bitterness, I found this to be a great alternative and can see myself reaching for this once in a while.

This is a very light dong ding and by light I mean it has no discernible roast to it whatsoever. It tastes closer to a green oolong like Li Shan than a typical Dong Ding. The aroma is floral with hints of toasted pecan and camphor but the taste is nearly indistinguishable from a gaoshan. There is a deep fruitiness to it, something like roasted stone fruit, and a flowery tingle as it fades in the mouth. The flavor doesn’t change much from steep to steep but remains strong and steady. I find that these less nuanced teas work well grandpa style. It’s a great tea to throw in your tumbler to take to work. It thickens and becomes sweeter once the leaves steep for a while.

I didn’t like this tea at all when I first received it. It had an earthy, yam like profile which I don’t care for in black tea. So I put it away for a while and this afternoon, out of sheer boredom brewed up a gram in my 65ml mini kyusu. It seems to have benefited from the resting time because today it tasted like a very different tea. It’s less earthy, less musty than I remember and the yams have transformed into pumpkin pie. The texture in the mouth is pillowy soft with a lingering fig-like sweetness. The flavor profile reminds me a lot of Verdant’s Golden Fleece.

I gongfued this using boiling water for 30 seconds followed by 4 flash steeps. Subsequent steeps were kind of thin, so next time I’ll try increasing steep times. Flavor mostly remains constant between infusions and doesn’t evolve much.

This was a pretty mediocre tea. It’s one of those dark oolongs that tastes more like a black tea than an oolong which isn’t necessarily bad if the flavor is there. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case here. It started off with with roasty, malty, tobacco-like flavors. On the nose I got notes of resin and sweet potato. The next steep tasted like an dry pile of leaves. On the third steeping, there’s tobacco, a mushroomy earthiness, and a shou puerh like flavor. The last steep tasted like a generic black tea. I stopped here because I couldn’t stomach any more of it.

Overall, I was bored by this tea. It had little to no aroma, no sweetness, and lacked the warm toasty goodness of a normal baked Taiwanese oolong. Fans of heavier oxidized tea might like it, but I’ll take a humble dong ding over this any day.

Happy new year everyone! Hope 2019 treats you well. I decided to begin the new year with something a little special and so I tore open this TTC sample which I had been holding onto for a while.

Dayuling is the crown jewel of Taiwanese oolongs yet, in my experience, often fails to live up to its reputation and high price. This one however comes close. Flavor wise, it was a real flower bomb presenting an amazing array of floral aromas and flavors, the most prominent being narcissus, honeysuckle, hyacinth, and wildflowers. There was also lots of tropical fruit in the aroma – everything from mango to passionfruit – but little of it came through in the brewed tea. Mouthfeel was clean, bright, and full bodied without being heavy.

Where this tea falls short is staying power. Most high quality oolongs give 8+ quality steeps however this began to peter out around the 6th. Decent by regular oolong standards but I expect a little more from higher altitude teas like Dayuling.

Buying this tea is pretty much a given whenever I order from TTC. Shibi was the first Taiwanese oolong that really floored me and it’s remained a sentimental favorite ever since. I love its sublime florals, the luscious tropical fruit notes, and the cha qi. During a good harvest, few gao shans can beat it.

This particular harvest once again exhibited some excellent qualities but was a bit more finicky to brew. The beautiful florals were still there. It opened with notes of daffodils, magnolia, and white peony. The mouthfeel was silky and soft though fairly light. A couple of times I used water that was too hot early on and I got some vegetal-artichoke flavor and a little bitterness. Later infusions had some mineral and balsalm notes, honeycomb, and a hint of melon. Although there were some tropical aromas in the wet leaf, the brewed tea had more of a generic fruity flavor.

My main problem with this tea is it faded too early. After the 3rd steep, it flattened and tasted like any other high mountain tea. This harvest wasn’t as mind-blowing as Shibi oolongs of past, but that’s the nature of the beast when it comes to single origin teas. Thankful that TTC has samples to allow me to continue purchasing this tea without committing to a huge amount.

This sample had been sitting in my tea drawer for nearly a year, waiting for me to notice it. Finally I got tired of it staring at me and decided to give it a try. Being familiar with Laoshan teas in general, I had a sense of what this tea was going to taste like and for the most part I was right. Dark laoshan teas consistently have a chocolate flavor profile while all laoshan greens have the signature soybean-vegetal taste.

Out of the pouch, the dry leaves smelled of wildflower honey and cocoa. A sweet potato pie aroma wafted out after steeping for a few minutes in the tumbler. The tea began with brown sugar and honey and then as it cooled, the familiar cocoa notes of Laoshan Black appear. In fact that’s exactly what it tasted like with perhaps a tad more sweetness.

A good tea for sure, but there’s also a feeling of been there done that if you’ve had Laoshan Black before.

My car broke down last month forcing me to rely on mass transit to get to work while I try to find a new car. This has effectively doubled my total daily commute time to 3:30 hours, not counting the time to the train station, and involves 4 transfers between buses and trains. As bad as that may sound, its actually a lot less stressful than driving in rush hour traffic. I can easily pass the time reading, YouTubing, and people-watching. It does however expose me to the elements. I’ve really felt it these last couple of days when the weather dipped below freezing here in Chicago prompting me to put aside my green teas in favor of roasted oolongs and blacks.

This is a basic but pleasant dong ding with chocolate and toasted nut overtones. Along the way, there are hints of spice, wet rock minerality, and a peach-like fruitiness. I also picked up whiffs of chocolate chip cookies (Chips Ahoy to be precise) and s’mores in the wet leaf but didn’t taste it in the tea. It’s warm and toasty without ever tasting burnt even when hit with boiling water. The roast on this tea is mellow thus allowing you to taste more of its underlying character. I’m a little disappointed though in how quickly it fades. The flavor starts to drop off around steep #4-5 leaving behind kind of an oily aftertaste. Then again, it’s a budget tea so expectations need to be adjusted accordingly.