2016 Winter Dayuling

I won a sample of this tea before it went on sale from an Instagram contest. It’s the first really high quality Taiwanese oolong I’ve gotten the opportunity to try. The dry leaf smelled green, crisp, and floral. After a rinse with boiling water, I smelled buttery/creamy floral notes with a touch of an herbal aroma in there as well. I drank the rinse off this one and it had a light and crisply sweet vegetal flavor. For the rest of the session, I allowed the water to cool to 190F.

This tea was pretty consistent throughout the session, unlike a lot of the puerh I drink more often. It had a crisp vegetal taste in the front of the sip followed by a sweet floral finish with hints of peach in the finish and aftertaste. I sometimes noted a slight cooling effect in the mouth after a sip.

The real highlight here was the texture. I could have sworn I was drinking whole milk a few times during the session. I could feel it go down my throat and plop down into my stomach. This tea actually made me feel full as I was drinking it. Very satisfying. It also had a very relaxing qi that made my body feel loose and my head a little bit swimmy.

This tea is of a quality and freshness that I likely won’t be able to experience too often, so I’m quite grateful for the opportunity to taste it now. It was a very nice and long session, going around 17 steeps. It just seemed like I could get endless infusions of sweet and thick liquor off these leaves. This tea has had me drinking more Taiwanese oolong the last couple weeks than I have in the months preceding. I wanted to reacclimate my palate to the style of tea before I tried this fine example. Now I’m finding myself getting back into Taiwanese oolong when I had kind of written it off for the last little while. My wallet weeps as my belly cries tears of joy.