Spoonvonstup

Take note of the description: “almost candy-like.” What an understatement!

This tea really does taste like you’re sucking on a delicious sweet piece of hard candy. And even more fun, the real heart of the flavors lies mostly in the aftertaste, building and building over time, blossoming up from your throat and the back of your tongue. Candy sweetness, orchid, lots of yummy brown sugar. What a treat! It’s hard to believe you’re not racking up calorie points as you sip this.

This is a sure favorite “traditional” tea for anyone who usually lingers by heavily-flavored only. A sure-fire winner at any little girl’s tea party, even if those girls are now all grown up. Feminine, clean and refined, without having any of the choking/heavy floral dustiness of grandma’s old perfumes. And the flavor really stays with the tea throughout multiple steepings.

This tea is very yummy iced, too. No one will believe there’s not a trace of sugar added to your brew. Just add some leaves to a pitcher or tupperware, fill with cold water, and let them sit over-night. Pour yourself a glass in the morning, and go relax in the hammock on your summer porch.

Definitely fun for anyone to try; guaranteed to please!

Note coming soon- I need a little bit of time to share my thoughts on this one.

(simple summary: incredible)

EDIT:

So – this tea is really cool. Every time I think about someone trying this for the first time, I’m so pleased and proud for them! I think, “Oh- you lucky person! You’re about to have a real treat. Lucky….”

This is a shu pu’er, and by now, it’s almost 13 years old. I’m always impressed by this, not because it’s just old, but because it is clearly so fine. From my understanding and experience of old shu’s, things this old and older generally just taste really musty and (well) “old”- any further complexity is usually just straight dirt or heavy sweetness. They’re boring, and why not? Shu pu’er was (and still is) a relatively new thing, still being perfected as something more than swindler-trying-to-sell-you-fake-old-sheng.

But enough of those- onto this one!

Whenever I’ve gone to one of their tastings that includes this tea, Verdant always has us try this tea last. Thank goodness! It would be so unfair to the other pu’ers to start a tasting with this tea. It is the culmination of an afternoon’s education, and the glimmering hopeful promise of all that could await you in your future tea-life.

How can I describe the taste of this tea? Sure- I could tell you all of the things my tongue is telling me: sweet, sparkling / musty like a grandest library, full of books and the feeling of shared knowledge / incredibly crystalline and light-weight, almost like a vapor / the guilty pleasure of the smell of book-binding glue in new books, or the back of a stamp, or fresh-minted money / clean vegetal sweetness, like celery or grass after the rain / lunar.

All of those things are true, but (as Nate has said, and as others will surely corroborate) the real strenght of this tea comes with the connections and memories it pulls out of you and the company you drink it with. Do not drink this tea if you do not want to reminisce. Do not drink this tea if you do not want to find yourself opening up with honesty and truth to those you’re drinking with. Drink this tea with good true friends, or with people you really want to know better. Drink this tea if you’re willing to still yourself and listen to what it could help you uncover, if you want to meet again a younger version of yourself, and if you’re ready to revisit the places of your youth.

This is a quiet tea. This is a tea drinker’s tea. This is a tea for memories, and a tea for honesty, and a tea for connections. If you like tea, then this is a tea you just have to try.

….

It’s pretty inconceivable, but this tea could continue to age and grow! I cannot imagine where this one might go in another ten or twelve years, and I do not know if I’ve got the self control to make it that far on one canister.
Also, the tin mentions that there was an even higher grade of this tea produced, but it was reserved solely for state dignitaries. Incredible. What must that taste like now??
For now- I will hide the tea in the back of my closet, at the bottom of my box of pu’ers. I will save this for special occasions, or for very beautiful, rainy days. I will keep going to Verdant’s tastings, and I will be sure to stick around for the end.

This is quite honestly the best Tieguanyin I’ve ever had the privilege to try. And now I own some – so awesome! Considering my best tea friend and teacher in China spent several straight months of my life having me try about 70 different kinds of Iron Goddess of Mercy, that’s saying something.

I don’t understand how Verdant hasn’t sold out of all of this within the first weeks of offering it in America! It is so good- just so good.

Incredible, thick and creamy lilac. So sweet, but very balanced. Also really really juicy. Am I the only one who’s reminded of delicious creamy key-lime pie in the after taste of this? And what an aftertaste- this lingers in my mouth for ten or twenty minutes after I’ve finished steeping the tea. I found myself wandering around the house two days ago just smacking my lips together, savoring the after-tastes and mouth-feel, wondering what I could have done to deserve something so ridiculously yummy. Considering that I can usually steep this tea at least thirty times, this makes for one crazy-delicious afternoon.

I usually make this in a gaiwan with basically boiling water. Traditional gongfu-style, with steepings that last just a few seconds. It goes without saying that this would also be killer iced, in a mug, or in a big pot, but why oh why would you waste the tea like that? While this is still so fresh and good, treat yourself to ambrosia. Make sure you invite someone over to drink this with you, too. It gets so much better when you can look at your friend in disbelief and say.. “Are you tasting this?”….and have them say….“I know, right?!?!”.. and then laugh conspiratorially together.

In conclusion, this tea is ridiculously, almost-offensively good. Treat yourself, please, while there’s still fresh Spring stuff left!

With Spring oolong this good, I can’t wait to see what the autumn-picking later this year will be.

I love this green tea! I think Lao Shan will always be my favorite kind of green tea, and I am so excited to have found so many kinds from Verdant Tea (does anyone else import this to the US? I haven’t seen it anywhere).

Ultimately, the First Spring Picking is probably a “finer” tea (it would and should score higher in a competition because of it’s early spring sweetness still buoyed by complexity), but this Lao Shan has all of the ice-creamy thick sweet goodness you might ever want, coupled with that signature “bean” Lao Shan taste! Really- you have to try this stuff. In my opinion, it’s a perfect balance between a sweeter more traditional Chinese green and a Japanese. Absolutely not astringent; idiot proof. Very hearty without being in your face or overly grassy. It just offers so much more than your typical green’s sweetness and…well..“green” taste.

If you like green tea, you just have to try this! Unless boring and sweet is all you look for (why stop there?), you’ll find a tea to fall in love with. And if you’re a super Japanese fan, you’ll finally find something from China that easily compares to (and in many cases, surpasses) what you’ve been drinking. Also- the leaves turn the water bright green, so it’s always very fun to make! These leaves are still tender and young enough that you can turn them into a salad with soy sauce and sesame oil when they’re all steeped out.

I’ve made this tea in many different ways, and it always performs for me. If it’s a nice spring morning, I’ll just put leaves into a (tempered!) glass tumbler so that they thinly cover the bottom, and then pour in my not-quite-boiling water. Drink on it all morning and just keep refilling the glass. I also make this in a gaiwan (great for more serious tastings, so that each steeping can be appreciated in full).
For a more traditional Northern China experience, this tea is fun to do with two glass pitchers. Put leaves in one (about as much as in your gaiwan), and then pour in boiling water (let it hit the sides first so as not to “shock” the leaves). Almost immediately pour out half of this into the other pitcher. Then pour everything right back into the first pitcher. Swirl swirl swirl for just a few seconds, and pour back into the other pitcher through a strainer. This practice keeps the leaves moving, and the glass makes sure the water doesn’t stay too hot. It also shows of just how gorgeous the curled leaves are when they open up!

I’ve also made this tea in big pots (more “English” / western style) and it’s fantastic. Even more fun (especially as summer comes along) is to ice this tea! Just put some in a pitcher, add cold water, and let it sit overnight. The result is really creamy, sweet and delicious. Makes for a full-bodied ice-tea that is strong without being the least bit bitter or drying or astringent.

Seriously- I love this green tea.

This tea is so much fun! I love sharing this with people, because as soon as they smell it, they can’t help smiling and saying, “That smells like…corn?!”

I’d tried another corny pu’er when I was in China, and that one was great- it was thick, sweet, corny or reminiscent of wheat crackers, and then again it was a little bit too heavy and tended to build up and sit on the tongue.

When I first smelled this tea, I was excited to find that “corn” taste again, but I was so so pleasantly surprised to find that these little tuocha’s were so much better and more interesting!

The corn flavor really only lingers in the smell, and even then, corn is a bit too strong of a word. It’s more like corn husks or hay or buttered popcorn or fancy stone-milled wheat crackers. When you taste this, it’s the light mintiness that shines through as a delightful reversal of expectations. Warming and cooling at the same time, and the flavors do change as you keep steeping these.
And the texture? It’s absolutely blessedly weightless in the mouth. It’s so put together and /not/ heavy that you forget this drink was made by steeping leaves in water and not by coming out of some bottle in a store.

This is probably most fun if you’re introducing pu’er to someone who’s never had it before. Very accessible, very easy on the drinker, very easy to describe and remember. At the same time, it’s also not in the least boring for someone who really loves pu’er and has been drinking and thinking about the aged tea for years!

I now have this at my office, and everyone who’s tried it has liked it. I gave a few to a co-worker who wanted to quit coffee but still wanted a bold, delicious flavor in the morning. He came upstairs to my desk that afternoon and told me this was the best drink he’d ever had.

All in all, a really fun and rewarding tea, for all tea or pu’er drinking experience-levels.

This is quite a decent, middle of the road pu’er.

It’s great, because it’s so widely available and there’s definitely nothing offensive about it.

I would not be compelled to stock up on this or age it, however, because it just seems so flat and uninteresting for the price. I don’t find anything to explore or think about or watch grow.
I would, however, use this for blending. It forms pretty basic, thick base for blends, and will stand up even if you put in lemonade for a twist on the Arnie Palmer.

Well, you might say, why not just have this around to drink in big mugs on cold and stormy nights? I’d say, good point, except that I find this tea really heavy. I can feel it weighing down in my mouth. It’s not at all weightless, like really fine exciting pu’er, and that heaviness starts to make me feel sick after a while. I never make it through more than half a mug before I quietly say…blehck…to myself and make something else.

For me, it’s just not worth spending the money unless I’m using for a blend. And even with blends, I have to work to cover up the inescapable heaviness in the mouth.

So all in all?
Good for blends
Very widely available (getting pu’er to the people!)
Not offensive
Pretty darn boring
Ultimately leaves a heaviness in the mouth that makes want something else to wash out the aftertaste

When I lived in Northern China, there was a green tea from Lao Shan (Mt.) that I just loved.I was sad to come back to the States knowing I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on Lao Shan anytime soon. But then, my local tea shop had Rishi’s kukicha, and I was so excited!

This tea is rich and beany, while still being sweet. It’s not murkily sea-weedy, nor is it astringent. True, it does not have the depth or complexity I found in my favorite Chinese green tea, but it certainly filled that gap in my cupboard!

Now I’ve found Lao Shan elsewhere (Verdant Tea, for one) I do not know if I will be re-stocking this anytime soon. It is pricier for something that’s not as complex, but if I ever see this at a tea shop? I will definitely get this as my default green tea.
Great hot, also delicious iced. Nice in a big pot or in a gaiwan or just floating in a glass.

Nice, idiot proof green, that offers so much more bean and butter and yumminess than other greens widely available.

This is a giant ball of tea!

It’s very walnut-y, and reminds me of chewing on a pistachio skin. You might think this would also make it bitter, drying and overly tobacco-ey. Not so! In fact, it is very creamy. As you move through later steepings, it reminds me more and more of some sort of whipped, creamy nut-flavored ice cream.

I am very very excited to see what this will turn into as it gets older. I’ve still got half of a ball hidden away and out of my reach so that I can see how things get creamier and more whipped.

If you haven’t made this before, start with less leaf than you might with other teas. The tastes are definitely assertive, and if you pack your gaiwan or teapot too full of leaves, you might be overwhelmed in the first steeping or so (this is especially true if you’re making the tea for people who are in the mindset to dislike tea because “all tea is nasty and bitter and drying..bleh!”).
That being said, I wouldn’t ever agree with someone who calls this bitter. I’ve even tried making this in a big pot as an experiment; I feared this would become temperamental brewed in a big pot, but I was wrong!

A fun sheng to try now, especially for fans of bolder flavors.
An exciting tea to age for the future, especially with it’s notable creamy flavors and textures. I’m telling you, whipped nut butters…

Bleh! This tea is so drying and astringent, and incredibly smokey!
It’s widely available in tea shops (at least throughout the midwest), and while I commend Rishi for getting sheng pu’er out to the general public, I wish they’d found something of higher quality. just giving sheng pu’er an unnecessarily bad rap..

Really.. the main flavor is smokiness. It’s like a punch in the face that leaves my mouth and throat achingly dry, so I never really want more than a few steepings.I basically only like to use this tea as an example of what the market is currently widely offering. I make this one first for my friends at a tasting to set a benchmark. It really shows off how yummy and sweet and well-behaved my other shengs are!

Really.. the main flavor is smokiness. It’s like a punch in the face that leaves my mouth and throat achingly dry, so I never really want more than a few steepings.I basically only like to use this tea as an example of what the market is currently widely offering. I make this one first for my friends at a tasting to set a benchmark. It really shows off how yummy and sweet and well-behaved my other shengs are!I think of this tea like a rambunctious teenager. It still needs time to grow up and mellow out before it’ll be worth drinking. Then again, do I really want to invest time and money into aging this? I have other shengs that are younger than this, and they are already pleasantly drinkable, hinting at the promise of greater things to come. No matter how long you age something, you’ll never end up with something fantastic if you don’t start out with interesting material. Even if this were dirt cheap, I wouldn’t buy more for myself or ever recommend this to someone else. And it’s actually not that cheap. I feel like this will just grow into a flat, smoky, musty old sheng. If that’s the kind of thing you like (don’t set your bar so low! how about Smokey with hints of nuts? or aftertaste of apples? or a little bit of mint on the sides of the tongue??), then I guess this is what you want.

This will always be one of my favorite kinds of tea.

We used a brick of yabao at our wedding, just because it was one of our most treasured flavours we wanted to share with everyone.

I was so pleased and excited to find more yabao. Even though this one is loose and considerably younger, it still has all of the great things I was looking for: sweet and spicy (almost sparkling), with nutmeg and cinnamon, marshmallows, and a feeling or a flavor that reminds me of fresh white linen in sunshine.

I’m interested to see how this one will grow over time (since it’s loose, it will probably age faster), especially since this one is a little more woodsy and less mushroom-y than others I’ve tried.

If you don’t think you like pu’ers, definitely give this a try! It is a perfect “gateway drug” and it’s practically idiot proof. I accidentally left some leaves steeping in a cup for a few hours one afternoon at work, and it still tasted amazing- not a trace of astringency. I have no idea how you could make this tea bitter or unappealing.

Definitely agreeing with Nate, above. This is such a perfect, well-balanced sheng. Not only that, but it’s incredibly interesting, too! So many decent, acceptable, lovely shengs are simply pleasant and entirely unoffensive. This one goes leaps and bounds beyond to be the kind of tea you want to bring out for special occasions and drink for at least two hours. Definitely a tea to drink with a good friend who loves discussing flavors and memories. It would definitely be great in a pot or a mug, but it would be such a shame to limit yourself to just one of the taste on its long and complex flavor arc.

Terribly delicious and satisfying.

And so young! The only way I could imagine this better is if it were older. But how am I supposed to hold off drinking it until then?! It’s so good now! This is definitely something I want to save up for so that I can have at least three tongs (stacks of seven) hidden away. For now, I’ll make due with the ounce or so I have.

Thank goodness Verdant Tea let’s me buy by the ounce. It brings exquisite pu’ers within reach of those of us who aren’t millionaires.