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When it comes to scented teas, some flowers translate into better flavor than others. I was excited to try this blend because I love the fragrance of gardenia and had never experienced it in tea form before.

I brewed 4g in a 120ml gaiwan using almost boiling water for 1 minute, adding 20s to each subsequent steep. In a heated gaiwan, the tea leaves have an alluring aroma of perfume and flowers. The taste is like jasmine and rose combined, sweet with notes of warm spice. It reminds me of a high grade jasmine green tea but lacks the clean and delicate taste of a real jasmine tea. It’s pleasant enough though not particularly remarkable. The heavenly, lustrous aroma of gardenia flowers unfortunately can’t be found in the taste.

The first time I tried this tea, I didn’t care for it at all. Despite the enchanting cream and honeysuckle aroma, the tea itself was flat, insipid, and utterly lacking in flavor. It tasted muted, like a stale TGY and was more savory than sweet. Mind you, this was following the flash steeping instructions from Verdant.

Luckily I had a second sample because otherwise I might have never bothered with this tea again. This time I brewed it longer with steep times of 50s/40s/50s/60s/90s/2m/3m/5m. The first couple of steeps were bitter, probably because I used boiling water . But from the 3rd steep onwards, I used water just under boiling and that’s when its flavor began to come out: a honey graham cracker savory-sweet flavor with some vanilla and light maple. The aftertaste was syrupy and later steeps became sweeter but lost a bit of the biscuit taste.

This is one of the better Chinese green oolongs I’ve tried. It’s not obnoxiously floral as some of them tend to be and in many ways, actually resembles a Taiwanese Jin Xuan.

This was my second wuyi from Yunnan Sourcing and it’s quite different than others I’ve tried in the past. I would describe the flavor profile as wood-spice and black licorice. It has a thick mouthfeel and a sharp cinnamon taste that really hits your palette. I don’t get the floral notes that YS describes. Not a bad tea, but just not my style of yancha due to the pungency and heavy spice flavor.

Received a generous sample of this with my Bitterleaf order. I’ve been seeking to expand my tea repertoire beyond green tea and oolong and this sheng was a great intro to the world of puerh. My puerh experience, while limited, has been a mixed bag. This is the first puerh I’ve not only liked but truly enjoyed.

The dry leaf is has a deep fragrance of brown sugar/molasses, flowers, and wet clay. The first few steeps were sweet, full-bodied yet light with lots of fruitiness. Low on bitterness and the earthiness that characterize puerh. Later steeps though became metallic, typical of a young sheng.

This is a nice tea for easy sipping. It’s gentle character will appeal to green tea drinkers and puerh noobs like myself. I can definitely see myself buying more of this tea.

The autumn version of this tea is delicious. Similar to regular laoshan green but nuttier and with fruity overtones. The nuttiness reminds me of oats and basmati rice. Sometimes I get a little chestnut or toasted rice type of flavor too. The liquor is a pale green color and has a green bean like taste. The mouthfeel is thick, buttery, and sweet. Steeped at lower temps, around <175 F, it’s sweet and fruity. Higher temps produce a more savory flavor profile.

A fine green tea typical of the Laoshan style though not as complex nor full flavored as the spring reserve bilochun was.

I bought this tea because the description sounded similar to WP’s Wildcrafted Da Hong Pao, one of my all time favorite wuyi oolongs. This tea has a lot of characteristics that I like in DHP.

At first it was a little aggressive, but after resting a few months the roast has mellowed out and the char flavor is gone. The dry leaf smells like dark chocolate and wet wood. When brewed, it has the classic wuyi rock flavor, along with some oak and a hint of florals in the finish. There’s some honey that pops in occasionally. It’s a quite potent tea so less is definitely more. I grandpa steep this with just a pinch of leaves and it can go all day.

This is a smooth, enjoyable wuyi that’s not quite as sublime as the WP one but is stellar tea in its own right and a better value at half the price.

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A nice citrusy, light bodied oolong. There are notes of flowers, white balsamic, and lemon verbena. It’s similar in flavor to long feng xia, but with a thinner body. This is a very delicate tea, soft and relaxing. I liked it, but it’s not my favorite style of Taiwanese oolong.

Received this as a free sample with my Den’s order a while back.  Given that it’s a culinary grade matcha, I wasn’t expecting too much but it makes fantastic matcha lattes and is even pleasant to drink straight.

The matcha powder smells fresh and grassy like a good matcha should. The tea has a sweet vegetative taste with some minty tones and a hint of astringency in the finish. The body is robust enough to hold up to milk and sweeter with great flavor.

This is far above the low grade stuff that passes as culinary matcha. Recommend checking it out if you prefer matcha that’s naturally sweet and less bitter.

The refrigerator can have interesting effects on tea. So after my less than wonderful experience with this tea earlier, I tried a small batch I had refrigerated about a month ago. And wouldn’t you know it, this time it tasted like a totally different tea. The harsh bitterness that made it unpalatable before? Gone. The chill from the fridge seems to have transformed the tea, smoothing out its rough edges and giving it a nice, mellow flavor.

Now I can’t guarantee refrigeration will help all teas. My own experiences with it have been mixed. I recently had to chuck sencha which had turned foul sitting in the fridge and finer dragon wells haven’t fared too well. But other senchas, kamairicha, and some Chinese green teas like bilochun have in fact benefited from cold storage. This is very much a YMMV thing, but it can’t hurt to try it on lackluster teas.

In the past year, I’ve had the good fortune of trying a number of competition grade bao zhongs and the experience has ruined all other bao zhongs for me. This winter BZ from BTTC has a vegetal character that puts it closer to a green tea than an oolong. There are subtle notes of butter and flowers, but lack the depth of the higher grade teas. This is a good tea for easy sipping but doesn’t quite reach the heights that better BZs do.