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I’m dipping a little further into my backlog of tea reviews with this posting. I only had a 10g sample pouch of this tea to play around with, and I think I finished it sometime during the first half of September. I loved the spring 2017 version of this tea, so I had high hopes for this production. While it did not strike me as being quite as good as the previous year’s offering, this was still a very good Dancong oolong.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After the rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 203 F water for 6 seconds. This infusion was chased by 17 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, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of cream, cherry, black raspberry, wood, and cinnamon. After the rinse, I picked up new aromas of orchid, spinach, roasted almond, cannabis, and geranium. The first infusion introduced aromas of roasted peanut, grass, and orange zest. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented notes of grass, spinach, butter, cream, wood, and roasted peanut that were chased by hints of roasted almond, sugarcane, cherry, pomegranate, orchid, cinnamon, geranium, spinach, and cannabis. The bulk of the subsequent infusions brought out aromas of coriander, baked bread, vanilla, sour plum, lychee, green apple, pear, and earth. Stronger and more immediately notable flavors of roasted almond, cherry, pomegranate, geranium, and orchid appeared in the mouth alongside impressions of orange zest, baked bread, coriander, minerals, vanilla, sour plum, green apple, pear, cattail shoots, and lychee. Subtle hints of earth and black raspberry could also be found in places. As the tea faded, the liquor shifted and emphasized notes of minerals, cream, butter, roasted almond, pear, orange zest, wood, and roasted peanut that were balanced by lingering hints of baked bread, spinach, grass, sour plum, lychee, orchid, geranium, and earth.

As mentioned above, this was a very nice Dancong oolong. Much like the spring 2017 Old Tree Shui Xian from Feng Xi, it displayed a very unique and appealing mix of aromas and flavors. Compared to many other Dancong oolongs (which are also produced from the Shui Xian cultivar or hybrids thereof), these Feng Xi teas seem to consistently show off the aromas and flavors one would typically expect of a classic Shui Xian oolong.