Gong Fu!
I thought that this was going to be a sipdown, but turns out that I had slightly more tea leaf left than I thought so it’s not – I chose not to overleaf my shibo because I thought it would ruin the balance of the session, and I think that was the right call. Now I have a weird/awkward amount of tea leaf left though.
I used 7.5 grams for this session, and while I did not time my infusions (because in general I just seem to not do that anymore; I trust my gut and intuition) I did actually count the infusion number this time! I ended up having a healthy nine infusions of this delicious, delicious oolong…
Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BwPuw8QHzU5/
As I described in my instagram post, I found that this Dong Ding tasted quite nice with a very sweet creamed honey note in the top of the sip with orchid and soft, subtle and supple red apple notes more moving into the body of the sip – especially in the first few infusions before the leaves had fully opened up. There’s still a nice roasted quality to the tea, but it’s definitely a lighter roast – nutty with a hint of brown rice, maybe? Those toasty, warming roasted notes are definitely some of my all time favourites in oolong (and most tea in general) so they were very well received by myself during this session. Because of those orchid/apple notes, I definitely didn’t lose that “Springtime” feeling though, and the whole tea was very well balanced. I seem to have enjoyed it more than my last experience with this tea, based on my memory.
I was also eating Granadilla during this session, which is one of my favourite tropical fruits because it’s sweet but surprisingly very mellow and a lot less acidic than most other tropical fruits tend to be. Like the mature older sister of Passion Fruit, if you will. I was a little worried how this might pair with the tea, but it turned out to be quite nice. The granadilla didn’t take away or add anything super significant to my experience, but I thought it complimented and drew attention to the creamed honey notes and floral elements in a nice way.
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApXoWvfEYVU