Tan Yang Gongfu Golden Tips

Second tea of the morning…..

This one comes from a swap with Dinosara. She went on a small tea adventure while she was in China, and this was one she brought back. I am so appreciative that she gave up some of her precious suitcase space to bring a few things back to share with me. I am pretty certain I may never make it there in my lifetime, so it is always fun to read about her travels and experiences. I love that she tries to include the hunt for tea in her free time when she is travelling, because her work takes her to such interesting places.

This is very, very good. I do think it is a little higher quality than Tan Yang Te Ji from TeaSpring. The leaves are longer and predominantly golden, where TYTJ has only a few golden tips. The brew is very similar, but it reads a little less cocoa and more caramely and honeyed which generally translates to sweeter. I am sure that is pretty normal for a comparison between teas with golden tips and those with fewer. I would definitely not call them interchangeable. Both are very enjoyable, and I will cherish the remainder of this one, as I am not sure I can get more! (I still like the other one just a little better, but that could be my subconscious picking that one because I can get more…..)

Usual mug method.

This is one of the teas I brought back from China. I had a tasting of this tea in the shop in the Jingmin Tea City, and as I understood it, this is the highest of the three grades of Tan Yang Gongfu (Panyang Congou) black tea in the shop. We tried all three and this one was, not shockingly, my favorite. The leaf is long and squiggly, with tons of golden leaves in the mix, which is why I ended up calling it “Golden Tips” here.

I tried this one gong fu style in the shop, but I’m brewing it western style here just to see how it works this way. I used the steeping parameters from Teavivre’s Bailin Gongfu black tea, since that is the most similar tea I have to this one. It steeped to a dark amber color, and it has a great aroma of chocolate, honey, caramel and malty black tea. I remember this tea as smooth and sweet and lovely, and that’s what I’m getting here as well. I’m getting better than I remember, actually. At the shop it was hard to truly appreciate it because by the time I had this one my taste buds were getting a bit overwhelmed by Tan Yangs, but this is really a delicious tea. So so sweet! It’s amazing. With all those lovely chocolatey, malty, caramel, honey, raisin, wheaty notes. Of course I wish I had bought more, and I curse the luggage restrictions that made me buy what will not last very long for me. Shoulda coulda woulda, but I should have tried it while I was still in China (I didn’t want to break the airtight seal until I got home) because I might have realized that I needed way more of this. Sigh.

Gah I am almost angry about how much I like this tea. The funny thing is, I’m sure that this is not super special Tan Yang, it’s probably just your standard high-level commercial grade tea you can probably pick up in lots of those shops in Maliandao, but it’s still so good!

I paid about the same price for this as Teaspring’s Tan Yang Te Ji sells for. I am interested to see how they compare (and it is all I can do not to immediately order Tan Yangs from Teaspring right now! :P)