This is the second of the three teas PTS sent me as part of the recent shipping experiment. I was pleased that they selected this one for me as part of my three. I’m sort of loosely and unofficially exploring Dancong (and Da Hong Pao, but that’s not relevant for this post), so it was a very good choice for me.
It has a strong aroma of… something! Annoyingly, I know exactly what this smells of, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is that smells like this. I think it’s some kind of fruit. It seems a little tart and very juicy and with some sweetness to it as well. Maybe something along the lines of a stone fruit. Plums, coming mostly to my mind. Whatever it is, there’s a LOT of it. Makes it smell rather maroon.
Underneath that there’s also a touch of something kind of caramel-y, but it’s hard to be sure. I think it’s there, but some of it might just be due to the sweetness of the fruity note. I quite like a caramel-y quality to my dark oolongs.
My word, this has a fruity flavour! The fruity note is just all over the place with this one, and I sort of have to try and look through it to ‘see’ what’s underneath. Forget the plums, though. At this point, I’m finding it more peach-like, or perhaps nectarine, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed that this stuff had been flavoured.
There is a woody oolongness which is quite prominent (under the fruity note, of course), but I’m not really able to find that caramel-y one that was very almost there in the aroma. There is also a slightly dusty note of floralness in it, but not so much as to be unpleasant. Extreme floral notes, whether they be natural or added, don’t really appeal to me.
I’m quite pleased with this. The huge fruityness is something that I’ll probably have to get used to, but it tastes suspiciously like something that might grow on me, and I wonder if I might not also be able to coax some caramel out of this by adjusting a few things here and there.
I’m still very inexperienced with the two most classic (in my opinion) dark oolongs, Dancong and Da Hong Pao, but I’m growing more and more convinced that Dancong really is my favourite out of the two. Of the ones I’ve had of either relatively recently, the Dancongs have generally seemed more interesting, even if they weren’t necessarily always deemed better.
I went in and asked the husband whether he would say it had a fruity note to it, and he said yes. While he wasn’t completely sure which fruit he thought it was most like, he could tell me the first one he thought of, which was a peach. I feel super-validated now.
