Mi Lan Xiang Dancong

Sipdown

A decent oolong, but somewhat unremarkable if you are seeking lots of layers and nuance. Toasty and reminds me of Dong Ding. Wonderful with breakfast. I would definitely buy it again if I wanted something with a toasty profile.

Around 23:00 (11pm), I wanted more tea, but neither sheng nor shou. Puerh will either keep me up too long or at minimum give me the most vivid and obscure dreams.

I steeped 3-4 infusions in a gaiwan, as I multitasked through the end of day reports, etc. This was a warming tea with a nice touch of the roasted process lingering on in the aftertaste. One can always know whether a tea is capable of being pushed based on the roasted notes. Dancong, from my understanding, can or can’t be pushed, all based on the level of roasting (?). I’m still working through the remaining bit of the tea this morning, but it’s petering out after 3 more infusions. It’s an overall short-lived session, but definitely inviting.

I’m certain this was from a Verdant Monthly Tea Club a long while ago. About the time we were in the process of moving. The reason that it may have been is that it was left unopened, in a storage bin with the teas I had obtained during said process and/or nearly toward the start of it.

This is yet another review I have put off posting for some time. I have been sitting on this one since mid-late July, but oddly, this was a review I was looking forward to posting. Aside from the fact that I kept finding older reviews I needed to post and ended up prioritizing them, I did not have much reason to keep this one waiting in the queue. I know that Verdant Tea’s Dancong offerings get a bit of a bad rap these days, but honestly, I did not find much wrong with this one. I cannot say that it was one of the best Mi Lan Xiangs I have tried, but it was very good nonetheless.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 208 F water for 6 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 9 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, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of orchid, honey, lychee, and citrus. After the rinse, I detected stronger orchid and honey aromas as well as more defined scents of pomelo and candied orange peel. The first infusion then brought out some woody scents as well as aromas of caraway and baked bread. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered notes honey, wood, baked bread, and orchid that were chased by a pleasant creaminess. The subsequent infusions brought out aromas of violet, roasted almond, and cream on the nose. Notes of candied orange peel, pomelo, lychee, and caraway belatedly appeared in the mouth along with interesting impressions of sandalwood and wholly new notes of minerals, malt, violet, roasted almond, pear, caramel, and grass. The final few infusions offered notes of minerals, malt, cream, roasted almond, and wood backed by caramel and grass impressions.

This was not all that deep of a tea, but it was very pleasant and easy to drink. I could see it making a fine introductory Mi Lan Xiang or a very nice daily drinker if the price were a little lower. I loved the way the honey and orchid aromas and flavors popped in this tea. Check it out if you are looking for a more approachable Dancong oolong.

It’s a sunny 81 F in Chicago today and the summer like weather makes this lockdown feel a little less miserable. It also calls for cold brew which is what I did with my last spoonful of this tea. This reminded me of peach cobbler. It has a sweet, jammy peach flavor with some brown sugar notes and a slight roasted edge.

Going with 3-4g, 200F, 90ml.

Started off with a 5s wash. The aroma post wash was wonderful!

lychee, apple, apple wood, lemon, pear, prune, and a roasted smell (when smelling the leaves directly) come about. I would reckon this to be my first true ‘fruity’ tea (when excluding herbal teas)

Larger leaves, so gotta steep slow.

After going through several steeps, I would have to say the taste profile was just like the wash aroma, but I would reckon it to be a tad more ‘bitter’. I did not detect any profound changes in flavour, just reduction in intensity as the further steeps were reached.

One nice, or perhaps bad depending on your perspective, of this tea is the aftertaste. The aftertaste maintains the fruityness of the tea itself, and it lingers for quite a long duration.

Due to the physical properties of the tea, I do not recommend gongfu’ing this tea with a lower amount of tea leaves like the 3g that I did. Normally this isn’t too much of a big deal, but your tea experience will suffer if you skimp out on tea leaf amount. I settled for 3g because that was the last of the tea that I had remaining.

As I’m pulling out Christmas decorations, I’m sipping down some of my oolong samples from my tea friend.

This tea is also dark and a little toasty, which is a nice warming flavor for a winter night. There’s a light floral flavor that, when combined with the roast, kind of tastes like roasted flowers. It works.

What I didn’t care for in this tea was the fruit element. The site says it’s lychee. I wouldn’t know, having never tried lychee. To me it’s that wild kind of funk that is translated by my brain as chemical. It’s tolerable, but not my favorite flavor.

This tastes like some sort of sour green apple candy, in an amazing way. woody, earth, lychee, during the second cup I feel so relaxed and calm that I was having a hard time moving my cup all the way up to my mouth, there’s definitely some florals here and what I almost want to say is honey, but the texture.. Okay the texture is incredible, it’s so silky smooth but it’s also thick, tonguing it a little before swallowing feels like I’m moving my tongue through hot, thick air, also there is a lot more lychee in steep 4 than when I first noticed the note, that’s wonderful. This tea looks thicker, the colour is a bit more opaque than the others that I’ve tried, a nice thick yellow-orange, as opposed to the mustard yellow I’ve been seeing, the lychee turns into something like pear with some.. pineapple? maybe guava, with a bit of toastiness, the tropical fruit only lasted one steep, it moves to a sweeter, deeper red appley kind of taste, even slightly reminiscent of apple pie, there’s still lychee there though, through it all. I get a peachy lemony lychee brew after that.

this one was so deliciously fruity! I love that I had the chocolatey dark one, the ya shi, the floral one, da wu ye, and now this. I really was expecting these to taste a lot more like eachother than they have been, considering my inexperience (the first time I tried a few different pu’ers they all tasted the same to me) all of this variety from one farm, plus the next 2 that I have to get to, (the two that came in 10g sizes, vs the 15g and one 25g, which makes me think/hope they’ll be the fanciest) smell lighter and very aromatic and different so I’m definitely excited to get to one of those tomorrow :)

I did a 5ish second rinse and then I used 100C water for the first steep, 99C for the second and third, and 98C from there on out, cause it seemed to work well on the previous ones, and I guess it’s good to have consistency to compare them. I filled the gaiwan about 2/3 of the way this time

yay dancong oolong