Tieguanyin Black Tea

Not sure if this is the right one. Mine said Liu Family on it. It was from a Verdant Tea in the tea of the month box. Don’t ask me which year or month as it’s been awhile since I have ordered tea. Anyway this one is yummy. Not something I might order on my own. I can’t seem to pin down the taste but I blame eating practically a whole pizza earlier for that.

thanks kittenna for letting me try this one. I was surprised at how much i enjoyed this one. I really didn’t get any floral notes…it was mostly just sweet…and as it got colder, it struck me as being a little like a nice ceylon…but not sure where that was coming from. Given the likely priciness of this one, it’s not something that i see as being different enough to warrant keeping around, but it wasn’t bad. Maybe i just didn’t have particular expectations going in to this one either :)

Backlogged; probably the tea I was most excited about for this particular box. Sadly, that doesn’t mean I wrote anything down for it, either. I see that other people wrote about florals in this tea, which I wouldn’t have overly enjoyed, but it’s hard to say – sniffing the dry tea, I’m not really getting anything floral, mostly a plain black tea with a bit of minerally/rock oolong aroma.

Holiday TTB

Although I’ve loved most of the teas I’ve tried from Verdant, this one just wasn’t up my alley. I’m not a fan of floral tea, so finding floral notes in a straight black tea was unsettling! Plus, I found it to be slightly bitter. (Which, admittedly, may be user error…there were no steeping instructions on the sample, so I just did my standard 3 minutes at 205 degrees.) I think I’ll be sticking with my beloved Laoshan black the next time I order from Verdant!

This is the second new offer from Verdant that I’ve drank and I’m not feeling it.
There isn’t any floral notes that I associate with TGY teas :/

The liquid is thick like an Assam and brew rather quick so I ended up switching to 12 second steeps because it was a bit strong. The end result was essentially a honey black tea. With 90c at 12 seconds it was smooth, but at 100c for 10+ seconds there were dry and bitter notes.
I had to test this tea pretty thoroughly because of the sales going on as well as my new thing is to send off teas that I don’t particular become fond of to others. I’ll try to find this a place were someone likes there blacks to be a bit bold (though, I love me a bold Dian Hong)

Another new leaf from Verdant’s partner the Liu Family.

This is even more disarming than the big red robe tieguanyin was.

Starts out like a very soft black tea, and by the 10th steep or so, suddenly you’re drinking tieguanyin with its bright, floral notes.

Very exciting to see these kinds of experiments happening.