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This is my three hundredth tasting note! Let’s hope there will be many more to come. Even without the swaps, Steepster is a great place to explore new teas and hone my tasting skills. I appreciate you guys!

When I ordered from Wang Family Tea last summer, I got every high mountain oolong except for Dayuling, which only came in a 50 g bag. Fortunately, Daylon remedied this situation with a generous sample. I steeped it according to the vendor’s instructions using 6 g in 120 ml of boiling water for 60, 50, 65, 90, 120, 160, and 240 seconds, plus 4, 5, and 10 minute steeps.

The dry aroma is of orchids, veggies, and sugarcane. The first steep has notes of fresh veggies, including lettuce and green beans, plus orchid, peach, cookie, and sugarcane. The sweet orchid aftertaste goes on for minutes. The second steep gives me even headier orchid, veggies (I get cabbage in this steep), white sugar, peach, and other flowers I can’t name. There’s a green, sappy, “plant-like” quality to this tea. The next steep is quite similar, with orchid, peach, plants, cabbage, green beans, and sugarcane sweetness. Daylon detects hyacinths, and that might be the flower I’m also getting. The aftertaste is almost as good as the tea itself. The peach has bowed out by the fourth steep, though the veggies, florals, and sweetness are still prominent. By the seventh steep, this tea is mostly grassy and vegetal, though there’s no hint of the astringency that plagues most green oolongs in their final steeps. This seems to be a characteristic of Wang’s teas.

This tea is elegant, elusive, and ethereal while still having lots of flavour. I don’t claim to taste misty mountain forests, but I understand where that’s coming from. This tea deserves careful attention, and I’m going to hold off on rating it until I do a couple more sessions.