Laoshan Roasted Oolong

I am not my best right now. The day really took it out of me. I was considering skipping my much beloved after-school tea and just going home to crash (by crash I mean do more work while watching reruns of Call the Midwife, teachers are never done working). Reading Bonnie’s description of this tea changed my mind! I’m trying the sample I just got. I hope it soothes my achey body and chases away my blues. Is that too much to ask from a tea?

Look at these cute little leaves! So tiny, curly, and almost black. No, looking at them in the light they have a purple cast to them. Interesting!

This tea smells delicious. I detect a slight smell of that Laoshan Black chocolate I love so much but it’s tempered with other scents. It brews up into a lovely golden cup of tea.

I’m having trouble describing this tea. It’s wiping my mind blank in the most peaceful way. I’m so glad I decided to have tea and that I went with this one. I may be blanking on taste and smell descriptions but I can tell you I’m feeling warmer and more relaxed. I don’t know if it’s the ritual of making tea or the tea itself but I am feeling better. I’m so glad Verdant encouraged the He family to try Oolongs! You can taste the love in their tea.

my first verdant tea of the month club package came! okay, i even kept notes this time! (it’s a new level of organization for me, lol).

Celtic knots spill out of the bag.

Warm smell similar to roasted chestnuts mixed with pipe tobacco

No bitterness, no stick, very smooth

Light marine taste, but less seaweed and more sea wind.

Mellow in its evolution, but not lacking in personality.

Warm, golden, a sweet pipe tobacco tone but without the smoke.

Makes me think of a roasted green… unexpected, but brilliant.

Caramel notes

Added cream to my second cup— that was when the citrus tones came out. i hadn’t tasted them until then. almost has an echo that makes me think it should curdle.

brilliant with a simple syrup added!

The kitchen smells like chocolate as I pour this into my beautiful pottery mug from my steeper.
This tastes of dark chocolate, with hints of barley, and just a touch of caramel. The roasted flavour is one that I am enjoying more and more as I taste high quality roasted oolongs such as this one.
However, I got distracted on Steepster and my cup cooled completely. Somehow, I am now getting a sharp note in the aftertaste. That is my fault because I wasn’t paying attention. This tea deserves more focus than I was able to give it today.

I used 1 Tbls of leaf.

I wonder if I decreased the steep time to 2 min, if the sharp note would decrease? I will have to play around with the steeping parameters.

So excited to be trying this tea today! I recently placed an order with Verdant and now have quite a bit of Laoshan black after being out of it for almost a year! I have a soft spot for oolongs and was thrilled to see a new laoshan version. The leaves are thin, slightly curled and a bit of a stormy grey color.

First Infusion: the smell of this tea is quite toasty and reminds me a bit of a sweet bread. The scent has a kind of complexity that I can’t wait to experience! Sipping… very smooth, toasty & sweet. It has a rather thick mouthfeel that I’m enjoying. Mmm.. so far, tasty!

Second Infusion: this cup is a little bit more toasty. It’s changing from being thick and bread-like, to something a little bit thinner and bitter. When I say bitter, I mean the kind of bitter flavor one gets with dark chocolate. It actually reminds me of a watery dark drinking chocolate with a touch of cinnamon.

Third Infusion: It smells a bit more like chocolate + a hint of nuts… perhaps almonds? Sipping… ah, such a strong chocolate note! A creamy chocolate flavor hits my tongue and slowly fades into a bitter cocoa powder. This is absolutely my favorite cup so far!

Fourth Infusion: The scent is not as strong this time, but the wheat bread and sweetness are still present, if a little faint. The chocolate seems to have balanced out with the bread flavor. This cup is a bit more earthy, almost savory and isn’t as sweet. It’s a tiny bit astringent, but still tasty.

Fifth Infusion: A significant loss of flavor — most of the notes are very muted, but the other cups make up for this one!

This is an interesting oolong because it almost seems like a very light black tea to me… that might just be that so many of these flavors are present in the laoshan black tea as well. I think that I would purchase more of the laoshan black over this roasted oolong, but I did indeed enjoy these infusions and wouldn’t mind having more in the future!

I’m a bit tired today, since I went to the Paul McCartney concert in Washington D. C. last night, but this tea did a lot to helping me get through the day. For those of you who like the Beetles, I highly recommend going to the concert if the tour comes to your city, it was a great experience.

I used my gaiwan and a fairly generous amount of leaf to brew the tea for 15 seconds. The fore-taste of this tea is a rather muted chocolate/malt flavor, which is very well-balanced between savory and sweet. The flavor transitions into a muted caramel in the middle, before lingering on the roof of the mouth with an interesting flavor that is a bit like a Wuyi, but also very Malty. David at Verdant says that this is the flavor of a good scotch, but I’m not familiar with the beverage, so I’ll just have to take his word for it. Another interesting aspect of this tea is that it’s not quite like any other Oolong I’ve had. The unique flavor of the leaves creates something new, and it can certainly be considered a successful experiment.

The second cup was very different from the first. For one, the tea steeped very quickly, and I decided to only let it sit for 5 second. Another difference s that the tea actually tasted sweeter now. It has this fantastic sweet flavor that is very similar to the flavor profile of the Laoshan green tea when properly brewed, but it is tempered by the chocolate and caramel notes introduced by the roasting process. The aftertaste remains mostly the same, but the phenomenal development of this tea is still my main comment for this cup. This is honestly turning out even better than I expected.

Third cup, near-boiling water for 5 seconds. This cut is almost the same is the previous cup, but the flavor is a bit sweeter and the aftertaste is changing from the malty/scotch flavor I described in the first tasting session to something more like a Wuyi mineral/metallic smoothness. There is a bit of sensation associated with this new aftertaste that is a bit like when you put some sort of metal in your mouth and you get that interesting tingling feeling, but it’s not that prominent especially compared to the smoothness of the tea. Also, there is a bit of cinnamon sneaking into the flavor profile. Another series of interesting developments from an already interesting tea.

I got this as a sample from my Laoshan black order. I’m sad to say that I had this under distracted and stressful conditions. This tea deserves better. When I was paying attention, I noted a creamy butterscotch and milk chocolate flavor. This is less roasted than thei black tea, and for this I am thankful. I enjoyed the first cup thoroughly.
Second steep was less amazing. Seemed to taste like generic roasted oolong. First steep is good enough to make this a possible buy though. :)

1.5 tsp for 300mL water @ 85C, steeped three minutes thirty seconds Western style, drunk bare.

I’m not a fan of dark oolongs. It was low-quality, dusty dark oolongs made with too-hot water that scared me off this entire group of tea for years. Stale Formosa, scalded, is just nasty.

I’m in love with Verdant, though, and I’m really excited about the Laoshan teas, so hey, I’ll try the Laoshan Roasted Oolong.

I’ve had it for several days, though, procrastinating, instead getting tea-drunk on the tieguanyin. (Look! Look! Three steeps and still beautiful, ah ha ha ha ha!)

Did I make it too strong? I expect so.

It’s got a lovely toasted barley taste, even some butter notes, and the scent reminds me of wild Yunnan, but there’s also a … what, cooked note? Roasted, I suppose. But it’s flat to me, flat and almost burnt. The dry winey finish is confusing me.

I think this one’s wasted on me, or I made a mess of it. Back to the Iron Goddess of Mercy I go.

Noooooooo! I have been drinking this constantly with the cold weather we have been having. I noticed the other day that Verdant was running low. I just went to the web site and it is gone. All gone. (sad face). I hope this is not just a one time tea. I am in LOVE. I will definitely enjoy what I have left, but I really hope I can have more some day.

Another day, another oolong. I’ve been making relatively few tasting notes because it takes me so long to get through a pot of these Verdant teas, especially when I haven’t tried them before because then it always takes me forever to take the first sip. Case in point, this one. I made this tea before 7am this morning. It is now 2:15pm. I am not going to reheat it. I think my subconscious has something against hot tea right now.

Now, onto the tea. It definitely tastes my definition of ‘roasted’. The bread qualities are really strong. It smells more floral than it tastes. I’m not picking up the pineapple that some people are tasting, nor the cinnamon, for which I am grateful because I don’t like cinnamon. Less chocolate than I would have expected too, although I really have a hard time tasting chocolate unless it’s really blatant. Mostly this tastes like a lot of things rolled together and I can’t pick them apart really well, but the strongest is ‘roastiness’ and bread crusts.

Another tea from Sil (Thank you!) and I agree that this has a lot of similarities to Laoshan Black.

So far I’m enjoying this one more than the black tea. There was a strong aroma of roasted potato in the Laoshan Black that was a bit overpowering for me and it doesn’t seem to be so predominant here.

I’ve decided not to rank this tea because I feel that if I was drinking it in cool weather that I’d probably be ranking it much higher, it seems like a perfect warm cozy cup. We are well into 30ºC+ days now and I find the light floral flavours of green style oolongs much more appealing in this weather. That is hardly this teas fault though and it is delicious.

I only had a sample of this one but if it comes back for sale I’ll try to grab some to stash aside for cool nights.