The first time I tried this tea, I didn’t care for it at all. Despite the enchanting cream and honeysuckle aroma, the tea itself was flat, insipid, and utterly lacking in flavor. It tasted muted, like a stale TGY and was more savory than sweet. Mind you, this was following the flash steeping instructions from Verdant.
Luckily I had a second sample because otherwise I might have never bothered with this tea again. This time I brewed it longer with steep times of 50s/40s/50s/60s/90s/2m/3m/5m. The first couple of steeps were bitter, probably because I used boiling water . But from the 3rd steep onwards, I used water just under boiling and that’s when its flavor began to come out: a honey graham cracker savory-sweet flavor with some vanilla and light maple. The aftertaste was syrupy and later steeps became sweeter but lost a bit of the biscuit taste.
This is one of the better Chinese green oolongs I’ve tried. It’s not obnoxiously floral as some of them tend to be and in many ways, actually resembles a Taiwanese Jin Xuan.
Flavors: Cream, Graham Cracker, Maple, Sweet, Vanilla
