Ben Shan

Tea type
Oolong Tea
Ingredients
Oolong Tea Leaves
Flavors
Cream, Floral, Honeysuckle, Vegetal, Lime, Pear, Powdered Sugar, Custard, Mineral, Toasty, Grass, Jasmine, Lettuce, Pastries, Sweet
Sold in
Not available
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by eastkyteaguy
Average preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 0 min, 45 sec 6 g 7 oz / 215 ml

Currently unavailable

We don't know when or if this item will be available.

From Our Community

1 Image

2 Want it Want it

1 Own it Own it

6 Tasting Notes View all

From Verdant Tea

Product description not available yet.

About Verdant Tea View company

Company description not available.

6 Tasting Notes

70
47 tasting notes

Quick note

Really tastes like honeysuckle, a little creamy, but not too overpowering floral.

Flavors: Cream, Floral, Honeysuckle, Vegetal

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 15 sec 5 g 5 OZ / 150 ML

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

67
1429 tasting notes

It’s floral, flavourful, and smells good, but I don’t think it’s going to stick out from the 15 or so Tieguanyin samples I have right now… and before you ask, no, I don’t know why I have that much Tieguanyin, especially since I’m a simple Milk Oolong person.

Steep Count: 4

The second steep brought the sweet and lilac cream custard Verdant advertised, with lingering tart fruit notes.

Third steep I left a minute over. The liquid’s aroma has taken on a quality like powdered sugar on light pastry, with a dash of tart. It’s sort of dessert-like and light.

(2016 Harvest)

Flavors: Cream, Floral, Lime, Pear, Powdered Sugar

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 2 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML
Evol Ving Ness

and before you ask, no, I don’t know why I have that much Tieguanyin, especially since I’m a simple Milk Oolong person.

It’s like every time I go to the grocery store, I imagine that I need capers and so I buy some. In my cupboard, I have something like seventeen jars of capers.

Daylon R Thomas

Lol but capers are so yummy, especially on pizza…or that’s just me.

Crowkettle

Nah, you’re not the only one; I love capers on everything. There are far worse *food items to keep in bulk supply. At least capers keep! :P

Evol Ving Ness

One cannot have enough anchovies or capers on hand.

Arby

I’m pretty sure one can have enough anchovies on hand. The right number of anchovies for me to keep on hand is 0.

(Jk, I used to buy canned tuna and salmon in 6 or 12 packs at Costco.)

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

62
1048 tasting notes

So, here we go with another oolong review. I have been dedicating my time to drinking more oolong teas lately, and today we come to Verdant Tea’s Ben Shan. Part of Master Zhang’s collection, Ben Shan is a type of oolong that many tea drinkers may be familiar with only in passing. It is well known in China, but in the West it doesn’t seem to get a ton of attention. I have heard that some vendors mix it with Tieguanyin in order to emphasize floral aromas and flavors.

I brewed this tea using the gongfu method suggested on Verdant Tea’s website. I steeped approximately 7 grams of loose tea leaves in 208 F water. The initial infusion was 10 seconds, with an increase of 2 seconds for each subsequent infusion. I conducted 9 total steepings for this review (steep times of 10 seconds, 12 seconds, 14 seconds, 16 seconds, 18 seconds, 20 seconds, 22 seconds, 24 seconds, 26 seconds).

Rather than detail the results of each individual steeping, I will simply provide any potential readers with my overall impressions of how this tea changed over the course of a single session. Initially, the aroma was quite delicate, offering mild aromas of lilac, jasmine, chrysanthemum, cream, and custard. The aroma became more subdued over the course of the session, as traces of mineral and vegetal (lettuce, watercress) scents began to emerge. In the mouth, initial steepings offered a balance of delicate chrysanthemum, lilac, jasmine, cream, and custard notes with faint impressions of pear, lime zest, and puff pastry, though mineral, lettuce, and watercress notes began to emerge in subsequent steepings.

In the end, I am not sure how I feel about this oolong. To me, it kind of falls into a gray area between a greener Tieguanyin and something like Huang Jin Gui. The flavor is pretty evenly split between creamy, savory notes and sweet, floral notes, but there really isn’t enough of anything else to provide some needed depth and balance. After drinking this tea, I can kind of understand why Ben Shan is supposedly often blended with Tieguanyin-it really doesn’t seem to hold up very well on its own. In my opinion the aromas and flavors that are here are really pleasant, but they are too light and superficial to keep me intrigued over the course of a lengthy session.

Flavors: Cream, Custard, Floral, Jasmine, Lettuce, Lime, Mineral, Pastries, Pear, Sweet, Vegetal

Preparation
Boiling 7 g

Login or sign up to leave a comment.