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What an amazing tea! I love high mountain oolongs and Floating Leaves has many great options, but I hadn’t been such a big fan of baozhongs because they are usually a little too light/mild for me. This one is not! At its apex, it has a rich honeydew melon-like sweetness and a pleasant bitterness that is distinct from the higher elevation oolongs like Lishan. It tastes much greener, as well. I brewed it gong fu in a ~140 ml yixing-style clay pot with ~96C water for 30 seconds each infusion. The first 2 infusions were very floral and not all that rich, but by the third infusion it had opened up a lot! Significant body high feeling, as well. Brews strong for easily 6+ infusions, increasing time slightly after infusion 4.

An interesting tea that can be quite tasty, but is easily overbrewed, drawing a strong artichoke and chrysanthemum flavor that is a bit odd, but not entirely bad. It’s a long-lasting tea with a silky mouthfeel that’s well rounded in sweetness and tannin, but the artichoke flavor makes this more of a novelty that’s interesting to try rather than a tea I would love to sip on all day.

Fantastic offering! Brewed in 200 ml yixing at ~195F, gets about 8 good steeps. It’s a bug-bitten tea, and the honey notes are immediate and up front in the aroma and the taste. I’ve had dongfang meiren (“Oriental beauty”), another bug-bitten tea, but I think it’s even better here as a black/red tea. Good sweet/tannin balance, long lasting finish, fairly thick mouthfeel. Up there with the best un-aged teas I’ve had.

First off, the packaging is almost definitely lying about this being hand-picked, as the leafs are cut mainly to ~1cm squared pieces. However, it’s a very pleasant tea. The aroma is very floral. Although it said to steep for 1 min, I did only about a 20 sec first infusion in 5 oz. water after a quick rinse. It still had a moderate amount of astringency, which I liked. Beyond that, I agree with the “muscatel” description; pleasant sweetness, not very spicy, mild woodiness. Moderately thick mouthfeel. I can get several enjoyable infusions.

Appearance: twisted reddish-brown whole leaves when dry with very few stems or non-tea parts. When brewed, the leaves appear to be about half oxidized. Aroma: astringent, spicy up front, with fruity and nutty notes. Mouthfeel: middle of the road. Taste: 1st steeping: Considerable astringency, followed by a distinctly lychee-like flavor, with some cinnamon and black pepper mild spice, as well as nutty and woody notes. There’s some of the longer-lasting mild bitterness, but not it’s more at the front of the mouth than the back of the throat like a high mountain greener oolong would have. 2nd steeping: similar, but more of a honey flavor, and the astringency and spice notes are considerably reduced. This trend continues with increased steepings. Overall, I like the first steeping very much, but the following steepings lack some complexity.

This is one of the best teas I’ve ever tasted! It has a long-lasting mildly bitter flavor that sits with you well after you finish sipping It feels warming in the throat. Its flavor is complex – spicy, herbaceous, roasted, fruity, slightly sweet, with a sweet and bitter finish. It has a slightly viscous mouthfeel. I am sad I only have a few grams of it left.

Vegetal, grassy, fresh, and very light, with limited depth, and not much back-of-the-throat pleasant bitterness that I like so much from higher mountain oolongs. It’s quite pleasant, but not particularly remarkable.

What a long-lasting tea! At first steeping of 3 minutes in a 6oz. yixing after rinsing, I was shocked by how forward the smoky flavor was. Very complex nutty, slightly sweet aftertaste, with a slight back-of-the-throat lingering tannic flavor you get from a greener oolong. I steeped this 6 times, and the flavor was still decently strong at that point. The smokiness was less overpowering each steeping, and the sweet, stonefruit-like flavors became stronger until the 5th steeping or so. The first steeping was a bit unbalanced, but the 2nd through 4th steeping were great.

Dramatic stone fruit notes up front, especially plum, with minor hints of papaya, and malted barley, followed by increased sweetness and earthiness with successive steepings.