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the dry leaves of this TGY looks and smells very nice, a lovely floral buttery aroma, the leaves are nicely balled and vibrant in colour.

The package says 100C for temperature, which I’m a bit uncomfortable with (is this typical for tie guan yins? I honestly don’t know, I’d never think to do them this high though). Well whatever, I’ll try and brew it there.

I think I’m a really atypical example, I have a lot of experience with green oolongs, mostly from taiwan, but very little experience with tie guan yin, this is my second or third ever, and it’s been a looong time since the last one, this should be interesting.

I get a nice buttery creamy grassy, spinachy aroma from after the rinse, the aroma’s very powerful, I can smell it from like a foot away,

The taste is very smooth, with a cooling sensation, there’s a very grassy taste to it, but it’s sweet like peas, like very freshly cooked peas, it’s incredibly aromatic, lovely fruity orange notes, sweet like candy my goodness this is delicious, I get candied lemon-lime notes, a nice thick body, some grape notes, there’s something so satisfying right when I swallow, it’s so thick and creamy in texture, it just coats the mouth, and the sweetness is just perfect, it’s like drinking cream right from the .. cream thing. It tastes like it should be really unhealthy. It’s just such a dessert-like tea.

I get further notes of green beans and cabbage entering in steep 3, there’s this teeny bit of that acidity that really bothered me in verdant’s mao xie, there’s also a tiny bit of astringency that enters here, but it’s so pure, there’s absolutely no bitterness with it that makes it really pleasant.

It loses a bit of complexity, and just becomes this fruity vegetal sweet soup, which actually happened on steep 4, increasingly on steep 5, also by this point the leaves had unrolled entirely, which seems a bit fast, but this could be the 100c brewing temp or maybe the leaves are just loosely balled, either way, this brewing style for this tea gave me a really concentrated sweetness and fruitiness in the first few steeps and then it sort of faded, creaminess and thickness are still there though.
There’s sort of a spiciness that comes forth, raddish notes,
I got maybe 6 or 7 steeps in until the sweetness faded and it wasn’t really enjoyable for me after that, I think this would be appropriate for quick dessert sessions, also this one might do really well western because it lacks some of that longevity, but damn that was tasty for those 3 steeps. It had me thinking it might’ve been the best green oolong I’d ever had, and if it lasted a bit more it would’ve been replacing the dayulin in my hall of fame.