This is the 4th of the 6 dancongs from Verdant’s August 2016 box that I’ve tried, and this one straight away stands out as being the most different from the others. I almost don’t know how to describe it, it’s quite floral, almost reminiscent of a shou mei, with a similar sort of light thin earthiness, and pretty prominent orange notes. it’s also quite woody with that I want to call a woody texture, at first. It’s got a wonderful full body, this is something I’ve been really appreciating about these dancongs. They all have had really nice mouthfeels, but also different textures with each one, which I’m loving to explore. I got more notes of sour cherry, lemon, apricot, flower stems, there’s a decent amount of dark chocolate in the aroma, but I can’t find any in the taste.
I struggled to really find any new flavours after the 5th(ish?) steep, but it becomes light, with sharp florals, tangerine, apricot,and a bit of seaweed, with bitterness I can’t seem to avoid.
I did prefer the darker, chocolatier dancongs, but this was also thoroughly enjoyable
I did a 7-8 second rinse (woulda been shorter but I’m not used to the new kettle, it pours slow) and then I used 100C water for the first steep, 99 for the second and 98 from there on out, cause it seemed to work well on the Ya Shi I drank yesterday. I filled the gaiwan about 3/4 of the way this time
