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I really didnt want any black tea, malt is not my thing at all. so much tea with ‘golden’ in the title lying around not being finished I try not to buy any more. But this one came recommended from Alistair, and I liked the description so I went for some – & really glad I did.

Possibly one of the nicest black teas I have tried. It has a fruity blackberry taste & aroma, with honey-sweet smoothness, & an slight oily leaf taste reminiscent of wuyi yancha running through it. In fact it has the taste of a steeped wuyi, you know when the roast has gone and you are left with the leafy taste (in a good way?) it kinda has that, under the bolder black tea taste. It also has a nice tongue-whetting aspect from the sweetness.

If you like the other smoother black teas that what-cha have/had (the georgian one springs to mind) or just want something slightly different from the usual golden malty blacks, you should consider trying this, the blackberry fruit really lifts it into special territory.

I have been drinking it gongfu, but I’m pretty sure a well made cup of this would sing at the right times.

re review as I have been drinking this one of late

You can either:

flash steep it and towards the end of the session it has a sour plum taste. You know the one where you have a plum with stone in your mouth and you try to remove the stone with your mouth and spit it to the ground hoping a plum tree will grow? It has that flavour – I was most surprised.

or -

Hit it hard from the beginning and have a really caramel thick creamy session with odd medicinal leafy stuff. Its hard to place sometimes, yiwu ish.

The plummy taste has been my favourite but I’m having trouble finding it again. If you like caramel & medicinal & floral and other weirdness in your puerh or just yiwu in general (is this yiwu? i dont know) then this one is a good choice

Wow, that was hard – I literally had to not come here for a few months due to money constraints. So there has been a lot of sipdowns going on in the household. Then I caved and had to make some orders as I ran out of some staples!

Thought I would try this on a whim – I don’t seem to have much luck with rou gui or cinnamon-type oolongs, the ones I have tried seem a bit too easily dissipated, losing flavour rapidly, and I thought this one sounded similar.

But this one is really good, with nice longevity, the ginger aroma lasting even as the tea soup gets thinner.. I think I was up to ten flash steep style and it was still giving. Its an interesting flavour that i have no idea how its imparted – doesn’t taste fake but also doesn’t quite taste real, but works with the rest of the tea, it isnt too sweet or too much of anything bad, really. But kind of dessert-esque. Nice bitterness lingering in the back.

A hard one to place but happy with it & glad to have found a dan cong like this that gives out as much as it should for the price.

Mysterious packet with ‘this tea sucks’ on it came through the letterbox from Mr Bad Pasty.

Has that cloudy thick fruity sour thing, with a touch of mentholated medicine in it, also a leafy Yiwu-esque something.

I think its a white 2 production, 2 late?

Slight fruity flavours intermingled with the classic lesser milk & vegetal perfumed TGY aroma. With the sourness coming from an apricot-like place, it works differently than coming from a milky or vegetal place.

Also tastes very ‘fresh’, ‘natural’, ‘good’, rather than ‘perfumed’ (which is what I expected being a winter harvest. (Not saying one is better than the other, its just in that area of taste). I actually thought ‘vine-y’ for the greenness. Quite similar to how the imperial grade from YS compares to more perfumed examples, like the whispering pines one.

This is very up my street, maybe the most no-fuss TGY i’ve had in ages. The balance is very good, and nice longevity.

So happy this was added as a sample, it might have slipped under my fruity Oolong radar!

Love this stuff.

Burnt honey with a glossy, almost cloying sweetness-effect. Vanilla aroma.

I cant believe these GABA teas get such mixed reviews, whats not to like about burnt honey & vanilla?

I do it gongfu, slightly more aggressive than for shengs. Nom factor 10

This is a review from memory, as I have had a busy weekend & been drinking tea on the move, so its a bit short.

This Oolong was a nice surprise, the perfume has elements of Tie Guan Yin, alongside the more expected Dan Cong Aroma. What was also nice was that the subtle buttery flavour had a citrus edge which is also reminiscent of the aforementioned green Oolong, that reminded me a bit of sour yogurt. Again, a nice surprise.

Another nice aspect was that it was quite forgiving to brew and remained nicely balanced – well, until the body gave out and I was just left with lovely fragrant water.

Thinking back, and if I had more to try it might come across like a Jin Xuan-Dan Cong, with a citrusy-milky thing, but at the time all I could think of was Tie Guan Yin had a baby with Ya Shii.