Verdant Tea (Special)

This is yummy, a little more astringent/woody than other keemuns I’ve had but in a nice way. Getting ready for an evening of fun (couples massage and dinner courtesy R’s parents, then Alloy Orchestra at the movie theater). Trying to figure out what to dress as for Halloween as for once we have a party to attend!

Was out of town for a few days at a friend’s wedding back at my old college stomping grounds (Pittsburgh!), was the perfect time of year to visit (even the vine-y leaves growing on the sides of brick buildings had turned red) and I love to see how much the city’s changed in a good way (Oakland looks like it’s cleaned up a bit, Lawrenceville is thriving, the Strip is as bustling as ever on Sunday morning). And it’s so fun to show my husband all the places that used to mean so much to me 13 years (!) ago. Bizarrely, as in other recent trips I just stumbled onto good tea without trying—we parked to kill time right before the wedding across the street from a brand new loose tea shop where they offered Silk Oolong and Lavender Earl Grey (my car smelled like lavender and bergamot the rest of the trip, glorious) and were working on an intriguing white chai. The hotel my parents reserved (they live 5 hours from Pittsburgh so were eager to meet up, which was great) offered good tea in the morning too! And a handful of the restaurants we went to had good tea on offer. Even with all of those unexpected convenient and good tea surprises (Steepster is turning me to the dark side…this was the first trip where beforehand I briefly considered packing loose tea brewing paraphernalia), I found myself missing my tea buddy (we exchange messages multiple times a week on what we’re drinking) and my home set up. Uh oh. When we got in late Tuesday night, this tea was waiting in the mail for me.

I’ve been drinking multiple steepings of this Dancong since about 4:00, alongside the Mi Lan Xiang Phoenix Mountain Dancong, to see if I can really tell a difference. I can!

I used the same steeping parameters with both, 4G in Gaiwan, rinse, then 2 sec for the first 3 steeps, adding 2 seconds per steep.

To me, this one smelled like ripe cherries, tart apples, flowers, & sweet incense.
The other one smelled of tart pink grapefruit, apricot, & a thicker incense.

Both teas were sweet, & delicious. I found this one to be a little more refined, in that the the floral & incense aromas were very delicate, but amazingly heady, & the cup was sweeter in general. The other tea had a stronger & denser incense to it overall, with a red grapefruit mouthfeel early on.

Quite honestly, I think they both have more steeps left in them, & I may try refreshing them tomorrow with a quick rinse, & then go for a few more cups!

Hello and welcome to a belated taste note on the Verdant Tea (special) Wild Arbor Shu!!! .
Thanks to David Duckler of Verdant Tea for the exquisite Tea tasting experience! So it is my understanding that Shu and Sheng, but more often shu is served with Dim Sum when you request tea whilst there having lunch. My first impression of Tea at Dim-sum is that tea is extent in the meal as having it not really be the star of the meal, but as a complement. That impression has changed somewhat after sampling the Haixintang Shu.
Initially, the smell of mossy ground in the forest pervades the nose. I’m certain of one thing, it’s going into the cup for many steeps ( No rules apply here, among this despareate crowd, once you go in you are never coming out,…sorry I had a Star-One flashback) And the first steep is mild yet I can sense a thickness already. Quite refreshing in the throat, maybe it has a different flavor later on.
Further, it takes on clear fresh mint flavor by steeping three. I’m quite fond of mint leaf tisane and somehow it’s managed to get into my shu. I’ll be unsurprised if this doesn’t go for round seven and eight. Like eating at Dim Sum, I just keep refilling my teapot.
It would taste so decadent with some chicken shu mai, or a little fried potato and bacon cake. I know, how come my tasting notes always makes me hungry? Don’ worry it’s causing the same sensation for me.
Further still, The total steep I went up was the last one with a pretty conservative long steep(4min) so It’s got many of the initial tastes now, rather I have acquired the sum of all the flavors in the final cup and even much more of the camphor trace. I normally don’t get chem-traces from tea, but this one is unique! How like a sheng, or then again a trip to the international district might be in order. Looks like the comparison to sheng is that this one has a darker liquor and highlights of mint. I really can’t stress the mintiness on the later steeps enough, don’t forget to take this one all the way to 8 or more.

I’m finally getting around to sampling this Sheng, from the September (Final) edition of the Reserve TOMC. I’ve been drinking this for a couple of hours. The leaf is beautiful, expertly separated off the cake to preserve each piece without breakage. The initial dry smell is a rich & creamy green aroma that I love. After a quick initial rinse, I steeped in rounds of 3, sipping from each cup separately.
The earliest cups were gentle & like freshly mown hay, sweet & green. The 2nd round was a little astringent.
In the third round a citrus taste came into play, but it was more in the after-taste than in the actual sip.
One thing I’ve learned about shengs is that it’s important not to write them of as ‘just another sheng’ at the beginning, because if I stick it out, the interesting flavors gradually rise to set one apart from another. With this one, it’s kind of a sweet-lime taste. My parents have a lime tree & they tend to leave limes on there for a long time. I mean, you can only use so much lime, right? So they pick one when they need it, & sometimes there is a new crop of limes & last year’s limes are also on the tree. They just keep getting a little juicier & sweeter, unless they are picked or fall off. So the flavor of this reminds me of those sweet limes, still waiting to be picked from months ago. The 4th & 5th rounds have a creamy texture, a lovely sweet taste, a nice tongue & brain tingle, & even a slight salty sprinkle in the after-the-after taste (4th round), as if teeny tiny geysers of sea water sprayed up out of my taste buds in celebration. Admittedly, I have a tea buzz, & this last cup of tea is like drinking ‘clarity’ itself.

Sipdown, 128. Ah, yabao. I know when I drink it, I am going to be drinking a forest.

It is gross out today, hot and humid. I want my fall weather, dammit. I thought maybe drinking a piney forest would be cooling. First sip of the first steep is interesting! Not as piney as I was expecting. Actually very smooth, creamy, and a bit sweet. Notes of green leaves, but not entirely in a savory way. Like kale ice cream or something, although that sounds horrible. This is not, and I’m surprised that I am enjoying it as much as I am. This yabao reminds me more of the silver buds yabao than of the older yabao that came previously in the reserve club.

A few steeps in it loses the sweetness and becomes more leafy, but it’s never as earthy, woody, or piney as I expected. This was a really interesting and lovely tea, and one I’m really glad I got a chance to try.

extra fun tea time from Tastybrew! via the BBB Box. It was nice to visit with this one again, though i’m still not sure i’m truly understanding the amazingness of this tea…for it to be one of the rare sort of teas :) still though, delicious to me and great to have again!

sipdown! Morning tea! I actually am really glad i had at least one sipdown today because my verdant monthly teas arrived via my tea mule. Hence i’m even further away from my black friday goal, even though i HAD actually made it at one point. Here’s hoping i can get a couple more in this week before the weekend hits!

I am greatful to dinosara for sharing this one with me. While i have loved drinking this one, I have to admit it’s not an unsually spectacular keemun, and therefore i’m not sure how it ended up as a reserve tea. Still though, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Thank you dinosara! This tea surprised me. I didn’t expect it to taste as it does, since most of the keemuns that i have tried have also been sort of lightly smokey with a darker note to them. This one is almost fruity, sweet and then it smacks you in the face with it’s smokiness, which isn’t overwhelming in my opinion but it IS obviously smokey. I drank half of this straight (western brewed) and then did as i usually do with keemuns and added a small bit of maple syrup. oh man…now THAT is the sweet spot. i love the way the two flavours blend together in this one. Looking forward to a few more steeps of this one. As others have mentioned, not sure it’s worthy of the reserve club BUT it is tasty :) and i’m super awesomely glad dinosara sent it to me because i am loving it!

Kittenna – this is probably not one for you.

Sipdown! On the 17th day of December, my tea advent calendar gave to me… a specialty yabao from Verdant! This was still pretty tasty; a bit smoky-flavoured but very characteristically yabao (sprucey is the best way I can describe it).

I had previously only tried one yabao tea, that being Verdant’s Silver Buds Yabao, which I find to be tasty enough, although it’s not a tea I’d want all the time. It tasted very much of juniper, in my opinion. This tea, however, is quite different. I can taste the similarity to the other yabao, but there’s a smokiness and the flavour is much less juniper-like and green – a richer, almost more complex, aged flavour. It’s actually really quite good, and makes me want to try more yabaos! One difference is that this one is darker in colour than the silver buds yabao; I’m not sure why, but I’m guessing it’s affecting the flavour (I don’t know if it’s aged or roasted specifically, or anything). Anyhow, mission: try more yabao tea will be happening. Eventually.

Sipdown, 129 (had to add the Yezi tea samples that I just got to my cupboard!). Gongfu session.

I think I prefer this one a bit more gongfu. The smokiness is lightly present in each steep, but it doesn’t multiply so much to be super strong as in the western steep. It’s a bit fruitier, and a bit more honeyed. Of course, it also has surprising “bite” to it, which I wouldn’t have expected in this format, but it’s there. Definitely bitter chocolate qualities. Still not my favorite black tea, but a nice session this afternoon.

I put off trying this one for a while because keemuns are very hit-or-miss for me, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the quality. Rather, it mostly has to do with whether they are smoky or not… I can’t deal with smoky teas. When I opened this one to sniff it, it smelled quite smoky. I ended up sending off most of this tea, saving enough for one western cup (which I am having now) and one gongfu session (which I will probably have this weekend).

I have to say, my suspicions were confirmed with this one. It has a somewhat sweet note, with a hint of fruit (raisins, perhaps?) in the background, but most of the other flavors are swamped on my palate by the flavor of an extinguished campfire and a somewhat sharp astringency. I’ll be interested to see if the gongfu brew is remarkably different, but at this point, this is not the tea for me. I like this tea less than I liked all the puerhs I’ve been through lately, and that is something I never thought I’d say!

Glad to sipdown this one soon; I added the oolongs I won from Teavivre to my cupboard and I am at 128. I have even more oolongs coming, as well as a swap, so I really want to push to get through some of the one-session samples that I have left.

This sipdown is from the final Reserve TOMC. I haven’t ever gotten around to comparing this ‘reserve’ huang zhi xiang to the ‘regular’ huang zhi xiang, so I can’t really tell you if it was amazingly better or not.

It is an interesting tea, & has been my companion during this afternoon of teaching, yielding a gentle fruitiness, some incense after-aroma, & a building citrus mouth that to me is more like grapefruit than orange. It’s a lovely tea, & it’s a sipdown!
374

I started drinking this tea yesterday. Verdant has some new Dancongs available, & part of me want to rush headlong into placing another order (I say ‘another’ because last week I talked myself into placing an order, in order to spend my ‘tea cash’ from Chinese new year. At least I had a good excuse, right?)

So yesterday evening I enjoyed several steepings, & then realizing how late it was getting, I tabled it until today. After a quick rinse, I’ve had several more cups. There are elements of tangerine, incense, & for awhile it was kind of like marshmallow cream. This is, of course, one of my lame reviews, as I have another musician due to show up for a rehearsal any minute, but I wanted to at least mention that I had drank it. I think I wrote a much more extensive review when I first got this tea, if you’re looking for that sort of thing.

Final comment: Sometimes with fancy teas such as this one, teas that require me to be fully present (which I strive to be at all times, but who’s perfect, right?), teas that boast such a wonderful array of flavors, textures, aromas, etc…sigh…sometimes I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen. I mean, there are days where every sip is a revelation. Then there are days where I can’t identify a vowel (if a vowel were a flavor). Sometimes it’s familiar, I know that I know it, I know that I have tasted it…somewhere…but what is it?
Other times I’m caught up in the headiness of an amazingly intricate nirvana of flavors, and I love those times, when I am fully present like I was back in the day, tripping on shrooms & watching houseplants move. (Not an indorsement here, but I ate so many of those back then, I can still watch houseplants move, & they make soft slurping sounds when you water them too. BTW, a few years ago I spent an entire afternoon in my sunroom, watching a meyer lemon flower bloom…it was amazing…so I am capable of being present, sometimes…lol).

ummm….where was I?

Here I am again…the only person reviewing one of the Verdant Reserve TOMC teas. Oh well…This is from the FINAL month of the Reserve club.
Inspired by KS, I was determined to make it through the full 15 recommended steepings, & I did.
The dry leaf fragrance was rich & fruity, with roasty peachy notes.
Following suggestions, I heated my little pot, added 4G of tea, put the lid on for a minute to heat the leaf, & then took another whiff. OMG! This is like smelling the best incense & some peach dessert in the oven at the same time.
After a quick rinse, the aroma was rediculously awesome, like peach jam with a little orange marmalade mixed in.
I’m not going to bore you with notes on every single steep, even though I actually wrote them down. The early steepings featured a very ‘fresh’ taste, lightly fruity like dried peach, a little citrusy too, but all very delicate. The ‘after aroma’ in my sinuses was really amazing, again like an wonderful incense. By the 3rd cup a camphor-like essence rose, which gave a tingling sensation to my sinuses, soft palate, & lips, but the background of dried peach & the tangy citrus mouth were still present. During the next couple of cups the roastiness evokes a fruity wood in the smoker, at least in my imagination. My tongue became tingly & tart. There was a briefly astringent cup, & then sweet peach, drizzled with OJ, grilled over a fruit smoke fire.
In the middle tastings the fruit flavor changed, the roastiness faded. By cup number 10 it was all delicate sweet fruitiness, & I developed a craving for pancakes. I took a break from tea sipping, made a batch of almond flour pancakes, consuming massive quantities with apricot jelly.
Then I resumed my steeping. The last several cups had a kind of cereal like taste, a little metalic, slightly astringent, with a tinge of bitterness & brightness, like grape peels.

Whew! BRB…GGP!! ;)

Sipdown, 123. Last sheng, this is the youngest.

Through today and my recent serious of shu tastings, I think I’ve pinpointed why puerh doesn’t do it for me. To me, puerh is a supremely savory type of tea. Shengs are leafy, like cooked spinach, pine needles, or perhaps fallen autumn leaves. Shus are earthy, woody, oaky, like bourbon barrels without the inherant sweetness of the bourbon. It’s funny, because the tasting notes for these teas often mention a candy-like sweetness, but I’ve never taste it. Maybe one day.

This one is interesting because it tastes initially like spinach and salad greens, but there is a floral note that comes out in the aftertaste long after drinking. Lilacs and/or osmanthus, like a lovely green oolong. I have come across this aftertaste in another sheng, and I really do enjoy it. Maybe that floral aftertaste will be the thing that draws me into puerhs eventually. My tea palate is always changing, after all!

Sipdown, 124. Sheng day continues.

This sheng, too, is rather smooth, with a fairly creamy texture. It leaves a bit of tingly sensation in my mouth. This one is less leafy, although it’s hard for me to figure out exactly what the flavor is. Perhaps a bit asparagus-y. Bitter salad greens (some of the later steepings are getting a slightly sharp edge). At first I thought the idea that the aftertaste was “exactly like vanilla” was crazy, and that I’d never be able to taste it, but then, in the third steep, suddenly the whisper of vanilla was there, playing on my tongue. The power of suggestion, perhaps, but sometimes that’s what it takes to start tasting those things in teas. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll taste the fig, clove, raisin, and tangerine notes too. Haha, but not today.

Sipdown, 125. Another sheng! Getting a bit younger. I am going through a number of gongfu steeps with these, trying each.

This was remarkably smooth. Definitely smoother than I thought it would be. It’s hard for me to say what it tastes like other than sheng; it’s leafy, it’s a bit woody. It’s not piney, and I think it has a hint of autumn leaves to it. I found the previous sheng a bit more interesting, but of course to me, as a non-puerh drinker, I’m not overly fond of either. Next!

Sipdown, 126.

Nope. Shengs still not for me. I have to say, I do get a bit of crisp, fruity pear from this, although perhaps unripe pear there is no sweetness. Like perhaps an extremely dry white wine, except I like dry white wines. :P Slightly bitter and astringent, but the sharpness is followed by a remarkable smoothness. A tea of extremes, I guess. It’s like the woods in the spring, but not pine woods like many shengs I’ve had. Deciduous woods with the first buds coming out. An interesting tea.

I don’t really know why my pouch of this tea (#73) was totally unopened. I think I ordered more of this when I could since it was a Reserve tea, and I guess I finished off my reserve package (?). Or it’s hiding somewhere. Anyway, this tea! I think it is possibly creamier and sweeter than the other Master Zhang Gande TGY I just drank, with fewer floral and fruity notes. (I know I didn’t mention fruity notes in the review I just posted for the other one, but in hindsight, and in comparison to this one, there were hints of apricot, perhaps. This one is definitely less vegetal. It almost reminds me of ATR’s Milk Oolong now that I think about it (although I do get fruity peachiness from that one), which is a high-elevation TGY so I guess that makes sense. Anyway, this tea is freaking amazing. No wonder it was a reserve tea.

AH-mazing. Love this one. It is everything that I love about a green, unroasted tieguanyin. Floral, sweet, buttery. An exceptional example of this type of tea.

This is the fourth and final Gande (green, unroasted, unaged) TGY that I have in my possession currently. There is actually a fair amount of this on sale right now on Verdant’s site, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about ordering more.

It is a lovely TGY. Like the Early Spring Picking (also Master Zhang’s), this one has heavy lilac notes. But I would say that this one is thicker and creamier than the Early Spring Picking. SUPER sweet. Sweet cream butter, for sure. It is the sweetest TGY that I have right now. Which of course means I love it. I want more but my cup is empty.

This oolong was from the April Reserve TOMC. It’s a little roasty, a little incense, pleasant thick mouth. This one has the rock taste more than some of the others I’ve enjoyed, & is not nearly as sweat as the others. I’m wondering if it’s the same Wuyi Qilan that Verdant now offers on their webpage? If it is, I still have some in my Wuyi Oolong box. If it isn’t, then this is a sipdown.
I guess I’ll never know…

I’ve set a new goal to drink one of my TOMC or TOMCR teas a day, at least during the week. So this is the one today, from the April Reserve box. I know I drank this once before, but for some reason I didn’t leave a tasting note. I probably didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.
It’s a lovely lightly roasty Wuyi oolong, with a mineral taste, a delicate floral incense feature that lingers, & a nice thick tongue.