Zhu Rong Yunnan Black

I’m recuperating from a 5 hour gig last night. (Just for the record, WTF is up with auto correct these days? It just tried to turn recuperating into * recto opera* . Seriously! )
A 5 hour gig is a very long gig, for a harpist anyway. It was a fun gig, mostly Jazz & Originals, & I got to really crank up the volume on my Electric Harp. Maplewood, where I live, is the first suburb west of St Louis city, & this is our big annual event, a huge art show, with one of the main streets blocked off, music everywhere, food, belly dancers, hula hopers, all kinds of art on display, all kinds of artists in the act of whatever art they do. They call it Let Them Eat Art because the event is loosely based on Bastille Day, with crazy contests like The Marie Antoinette hairdo contest (think huge tall crazy white wigs), dog contests, etc.

Lots of fun for the entire family, & I’m sure there will be lots of photos too, cuz I think they have a photo contest as well.

Regarding this tea: it’s still good tea, but not the same as the original zhu rong I fell in love with.

my other half woke me up this morning with cinnamon raisin toast and this tea..which he figured out how to make on his own using teh internets lol I love that man!

First tasting note
It is an odd occasion that this tea information was posted today May 23, 2012 and the tea arrived at my home today also, and today is my Birthday “64”! It was meant to be.

With the rain pouring down outside and a day that was going to be spent alone with no plans, the arrival of my Verdant tea was extra joyful. David (the owner of Verdant) put a little something extra inside my shipment besides the regular sample for me to try which brought a tear to my eye. The kindness of strangers as they say. More and more the people I encounter on Steepster, and several tea providers, are less like strangers and are individuals that I care about. Thank you!

I was determined NOT to do a complicated long review of this tea.
I followed the instructions on the Verdant site for Western Style preparation because it was later in the day when my tea arrived. Using Spring water I could count on a great pot of tea.

My first flavor impression was Chocolate. A big, then bigger, then huge mouthful of chocolate at first… followed by what I imagined was pecan pound cake. (Now I think the cake was not made with wheat flour but potato. I know…that sounds crazy.) The tea wasn’t vanilla, yam, cinnamon or malty tasting like so many other popular black tea’s. This was fruity (but not discernable as to what fruit) and clean. I hunted for some acid or tannin…but couldn’t find any. The smoothness was creamy and rich. The difference between this black tea and others was…well…this was like an expensive satin covered down comforter and the others are wool blankets, rough and kind of thin. Everything in a cup like liquid, shimmering amber gold.

I let the tea cool down. It was so good plain. Straight up it was sweet, genteel and smooth with NO acid at all! The finish was creamy and I am in love with it!

I love this tea! I really am amazed! This is the first Black Tea of any kind that I can and would drink straight up without sugar or cream always! I love the Laoshan Black but I think it’s a tie here. This is so mellow!

Second Steep Still amazing! I forgot to say that when I stuck my nose way down into the cup I was reminded of the fruity scent of wine inside the barrels at Fortino’s Winery where I worked one Summer but without sourness and just the sweet dry wine. The wine produced in that area of California was like liquid sunshine. Ripe sunkissed berries. That’s the fruit somewhere in the scent.
The flavor of this tea has no sourness either, but now I taste that distant berry. I feel the cedar and pepper on the front of my tongue but not at the finish so the smoothness is still good. Chocolate delight. Naked!
Third Steeping I’m not going into the flavor that much. I has all the same qualities that it had before. Such a strong leaf! What I have found at this point is another dimension. One that I stumbled upon because I had an Artist friend that cooked a fantastic dinner served outdoors in the evening served by candlelight. The end of the meal was followed by fine cigars and an aged, expensive Port. Here’s the part I want to share. This tea has the essense of fine cigars and port about it. A taste, scent…something.
There I’ve done it. I can’t explain why. See for yourself. I’m putting it out for you to tell me if I’m right or wrong! Because of this brilliance, I’ve upped the rating! I could not help myself!

Sipdown! 817 (finally added in teas from momo… sigh). I thought that I didn’t have any of this left, but apparently I did… and not just the remnants from one package, but two are apparently listed in my tea spreadsheet. Interesting – I’ll have to see if I can find the second one… I swear I finished it, though.

Anyhow! This is still pretty darn delicious, though I definitely prefer the heavier blacks in the winter, it seems. Dark, rich chocolatey flavours. Looking forward to another couple infusions.

ETA: My previous tasting notes indicate that I did in fact sipdown my other sample already, so 816! Hurrah!

Enjoying a delicious cup right now. This tea is very rich almost like drinking dessert. A real treat – loving every sip!

Well I just got in from out of town and I have been inundated with tea! Samples from Teavivre and Fong Mong, and my order from Verdant. I didn’t really know where to start. I did order the Golden Fleece from Verdant but I didn’t want to dive into that one just yet. I decided I wanted to go for a black tea, western steep, from Verdant, and I chose this one. As I’ve mentioned before I’ve been getting into Chinese black teas lately, so I was already intrigued by this tea. Then I also read about it’s namesake and I can’t resist a dagger-wielding warrior woman, so that clinched the order.

The dry leaves are very nice looking, dark with golden streaks, spindley and curly. I can’t smell the dry leaf too well but what I do get smells nice grainy and malty. I steeped exactly according to the instructions on the website for this tea (western style). It smells heavenly. Dark chocolate, molasses, grains, malt, and there’s almost a spiciness that tingles in your nostrils when you take a deep sniff, like sniffing cayenne pepper.

The first part of the sip is sweet, almost honeyed, with chocolate notes that kind of shift from a sweeter chocolate at the beginning to a much darker chocolate toward the end. The flavors that build in the latter part of the sip are rougher, less refined than the first flavors. These are a little bit of wood, a little bit of smoke even that tingles in my mouth. Not smoky even like a keemun is smoky, but more the faintest whisp of smoke or maybe like the woody notes are a little charred. As it cools those flavors toward the end of the sip become stronger, making the whole thing a little prickly in the mouthfeel.

I enjoy this tea a lot, but I have a feeling I will enjoy the other black teas I bought from Verdant more. We shall see! It has a rough quality about it that I’ve found in other fine black teas; it doesn’t really keep me from enjoying the tea, but it’s not my favorite character in black teas, at least at this point.

Alright, time for a real review for the first time in a while.

I brewed this tea with shorter infusions today, and the result was pretty amazing. While the flavor wasn;t as intense as usualy, the depth of the flavor was much greater, exposing fruity flavors that I don’t usually notice till much later infusions. This trend continued till the end, with more subtle flavors like cove and potato really asserting themselves for once. I’m really glad that I decided to experiment today.

Note –
Steep times by order of appearance: 12 sec., 12 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 35 seconds, 60 seconds.

One of those weeks when life is so messy that tea doesn’t taste.’Nuff said.

After crying on and praying with a couple of dear friends and a couple of hours of sun-room/cat/Oreo therapy with my surrogate mom, I’m slightly closer to functional. (When she picked up the phone the other day, I said, “Hello? Is this Rent-A-Mom?”)

So I celebrated slight functionality by closing my eyes, picking a bag at, well, semi-random from the tea swap basket, and here we are.

This one is so good and fleece-blankety, looks like Terri Harplady wrote a song to it in one of her reviews some time back. It’s well deserving of odes and kudoes—-big ol’ blonde leaves; bright and bronzey at the first of the sip, rich and cocoa-y at swallow time.

Had to leave the leaves at home, but I’m eagerly anticipating a second stanza this evening. Thanks, Terri!

I found some black tea in my numerous unsampled sample pouches from Verdant! I have high hopes for the company that turned me on to black tea!

First, the fuzzy little curls of dried leaf were beautiful and cute at the same time. The smell made me swoon. So chocolatey! I never really believed it when people would say a tea was chocolatey, but now I am a believer!

My first impression of this brew is a chocolatey dark roasted oolong. There are sweet honeyed notes along with the roasty autumnal flavor I usually get from dark oolongs. Then there’s a subtle taste of dark chocolate. The end of the sip is a bit bitter. It’s not ideal but it’s also not bad. In between sips, as you let the lingering flavors play over your tongue, you get a sense of wood chips, like for a campfire. And there’s the slightly hint of astringency. I’m thinking I probably should have used cooler water, though I think the website recommended boiling. Maybe less time.

In any case, this tea is delicious! It’s a cross between a dark roasted oolong and my new love, Loashan Black. Tasty!

As it cools, I’m getting more of an oolong taste than a black tea taste. Love that lingering dark chocolate flavor. :)

Steep 2! Used cooler water and then forgot about it for about 10 minutes. doh! But the resulting tea is magnificent! Lots of dark chocolate notes and something fruity like blueberry jam. No astringency this time. :)

This was my good morning cup. Dark and full flavored. I too can see how it can be oversteeped. I love the 5 minute steep. It was awakening. The empty cup aroma was sublime. Totally unique. The second cup was better than the first. I could be wrong but I am getting a coffee flavor. This tea is delicious and I am thoroughly enjoying it. This tea is one of many black teas I have been sampling lately for my coffee replacement. I must add that this was not purchased as a sample. I know from my fellow Steepsterites reviews and Verdants history that this was a must have. And I am glad to have it.