Ruan Zhi

Wow, the floral scent really comes through when steeping. Like very faint lilacs underneath the milk and a hint of steamed rice. The flavor is green and floral and milk.

According to Verdant’s site, this is supposed to have creamy and floral notes. It does. In fact, it smells and tastes quite a bit like a Taiwanese Dong Ding / Tung Ting — likely because it’s the same variety used to make Dong Dig and because it’s grown at a similar elevation. The problem is that it’s a like a timid version of them, perhaps due to being a fairly green oolong. So I’d far rather have one of those Formosa oolongs than this.

All the new Anxi varietals from Master Zhang are slowly but surely making their way onto the Verdant website, but the one I opted to open first isn’t one of them, so apologies for the sparse details and lack of photo.

I freely admit that floral teas, even green oolongs which aren’t even scented with flowers it is just the natural floral nature of the leaf itself, are not really my thing.

That being said, Master Zhang’s tieguanyin has always surprised and impressed me and this is no exception. I can’t claim to find the notes described by David’s team, but I tend to get overwhelmed by flowers.

The cup has excellent mouth feel, very thick & velvety. I expect the floral to dissipate in a couple of steeps and for other notes to emerge.

I was surprised that their steeping notes called for 205 water, rather than a more typical 190 for oolong.