David Duckler

I am proud to say that this tea just got featured in Serious Eats Magazine in a write up about the unique way we go about sourcing and thinking about tea. Here is the link: http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2012/09/verdant-tea-organic-chinese-interview-profile.html?ref=title

This is the quote from Serious Eats Editor Max Falkowitz: “Brewing a cup of Laoshan Summer Harvest Green makes the air smell like there’s biscuits in the oven, and the brewed tea feels so buttery and creamy on the tongue that it’s almost like there’s milk right in there—the beverage equivalent of trying Haagen Dazs for the first time after only eating Breyers.”

Nice description Max! I will translate it for the He family when I visit them this autumn, though they may not get the cultural reference of the ice cream :)

As an aside, I found out yesterday that Mrs. He, the woman behind Laoshan Black and Laoshan Green, is going to be having a baby in just about a month. Congrats to her and her soon-to-be child. What an intense person to be out picking tea this summer through her pregnancy. Anyways, the He family is really grateful for the success that this tea and the Laoshan black have brought them. Thanks everyone.
-David

For some people, the first flowers unfolding, or the smell of wet earth mark for the senses the true beginning of spring. For me, it is the taste of the fresh spring harvest Tieguanyin. This one was certainly one of the most beautiful yet. The first picking we got in was very floral, sweet and tingling, light and “spring-like.” When that ran out we got a second harvest that was more creamy, more rich, and fruity, like spring edging in to summer.

Yesterday our latest shipment of tea arrived with 18 pounds of the most recent picking of Tieguanyin from early summer. We have never had the chance to try a late spring / early summer picking from this farm because last year our spring harvest lasted all the way through to autumn. This year the tea is so popular that we ordered more. I am so glad we did.

The taste of this Tieguanyin is fully within the spectrum of summer. My tasting notes include warm mist, chilled cream, sweet green beans, velvety young grass, saffron unfolding to lychee, slivered almond, amaretti cookies, amber incense, and Redwood bark. Very interesting tea with an aftertaste that builds up with a tingling sensation on the tongue over several steepings.

The exciting thing is that for the next 2-3 weeks we will have both the early spring and late spring Tieguanyin available. If you loved the early spring harvest, stock up soon, as it won’t be replaced with the same tea. If you are looking to try something new, wait for our Friday 12 noon CST release of the new Tieguanyin to be the first to try it.

No notes yet.

The Zhu Rong has been a wonderful companion. It came to us almost by surprise. We had gone back and forth with Weiwei and Wang Yanxin about different Dian Hong samples, and then suddenly, 15 pounds of this arrived at our doorstep with our last shipment. We were so glad to have it.

The stock has been dwindling each day, now slightly less than a pound. At first I was not going to attempt reordering this one. Some things are best left to chance, and trying to reproduce the serendipity of happenstance is not always best. But people have loved this so thoroughly, and Geoffrey has been concernedly been asking me how we would replace this when it ran out. I gave in and talked with Weiwei about finding more.

When our last shipment came yesterday, I thought this would be a simple restock. Alas, it is not the case. There is no more of the current Zhu Rong. One pound, and then it’s done. But do not despair, an equally serendipitous treasure arrived in our shipment in the Zhu Rong’s place. It is another Dian Hong with more golden buds, but very similar savory spicy flavors. It is like a cross between the Zhu Rong and the Golden Fleece or Jin Jun Mei. I love it. The tea is so exciting to have.

On Friday August 24th, at 12 noon CST, the current Zhu Rong will be discontinued and replaced by the incredible new tea, which will be named in honor of the first edition Zhu Rong. There are 12 pounds total on this edition.

The drawback of working with such small scale farmers and businesses in China is how little the editions I can bring in are. They sell out so fast! The beautiful thing is being exposed to so many nuanced complexities from so many different angles. Here’s to all the wonderful things that tea can be, and to many more wonderful harvests.

Cutting open the first 250g bag of this tea, heat-sealed at the farm just after it was picked a few weeks ago, was a burst of pure nostalgia. The aroma of the tea seemed to ‘waft’ me across the ocean towards Laoshan.

My wife and I were living in a pretty average apartment building in the city of Qingdao near Laoshan while I was conducting research on tea. Every morning before we went to teach classes on western literature and philosophy at Qingdao University, we would stop at a back alley restaurant set up outside with folding car tables and little plastic stools. There were lines down the block to get a bowl of their famous steaming homemade soymilk made from fresh picked soybeans grown on the mountains of Laoshan. This was not your average soymilk thickened with xanthan gum and artificially sweetened. No- this was pure frothed sweetness of soybean, full of hearty earthy flavor. You would pick up a basket (or plastic baggie for those on the go) of fried sticks of dough, hand stretched to order. In Qingdao, the wheat is good and fresh- so these fried “doughnuts” were some of the best. You would dip them in the steaming soymilk. The aroma of the milk, the sweet dough, and the ocean air heavy with morning mist is exactly that aroma that the tea evoked for me.

The flavor is strong and decisive, and very resilient to oversteeping. The rich, confident body of the tea reminds me of the temperament of my friends in Laoshan. The He family is kind beyond belief, but like many in Shandong province, proud, and unafraid to speak their mind. That is the tea I am drinking now.

Yet, just when I think I understand this new harvest, and its frothy sweet flavor, it shifts. There is a cooling and tingling quality like chewing fresh peppermint leaf and basil. It is as though the tea knew that it would be sipped in the summer and offered a cooling balm for the heat. Thank you Laoshan. Thank you Mr. and Mrs He. Even as I sit in Minneapolis, you have extended your hospitality, bringing me back to your home through the care you put into your tea.

The Spring 2012 harvest is finally in!
It felt like a drought here at the Verdant Tea offices to go two weeks without Laoshan Black. I hadn’t wanted to say anything in fear of jinxing this tea’s arrival, but here it is. Mr. He and Weiwei both said that it was an incredible harvest, and Weiwei does not throw around positive adjectives freely.

I could feel my heart racing in anticipation as I poured the water over these leaves and the aroma began wafting up like chocolate hibiscus. The first sip confirmed everything that Weiwei had said. This tea is creamy and luscious. It “melts” on the tongue like a homemade butter caramel, and has the floral complexities of a Big Red Robe.

Later steepings saw a movement towards the signature chocolate and barley flavor that Laoshan Black has become known for, yet the particular balance of texture, aroma and taste evoked a wonderful memory for me. The delicate sweetness of the barley, with floral vanilla bouquets reminds me of spending a week in Chapi village, Tibet to conduct interviews for a book of Tibetan folklore I was translating. The family hosting me had a traditional carved wooden house, and in the courtyard, the grandma was roasting the freshly harvested barley in giant handfuls over a fir wood fire. She smiled at me and held out a handful of barley. I took it with gratitude and started to eat it fresh. The taste is one of the flavor pinnacles of my short experience on this planet, and this tea has evoked that perfect flavor of sweet barley tempered by the right amount of fire. Beautiful!

I know that the Laoshan Black has been missed, so I am excited to be adding this tasting not and letting everyone know that it is back, while our supply from the fifteen pound harvest holds out. The extra good news is that we got much better shipping rates for this harvest and were able to bring down the price substantially, putting this tea within a feasible budget for drinking every day.

New description is up on the site: http://verdanttea.com/teas/laoshan-black/

Every language has its own great advantages. I love English- the adjectives to summon forth are some of the best I have encountered (especially for visual concepts). However, our language is a bit more limited when it comes to taste, texture and smell. This is where Chinese comes in.

I took a rainy Qingdao day (In Seattle they call it a “marine layer”, in Qingdao, they say it is misty) and sat with Wang Yanxin drinking tea. Every pu’er she pulled from her mysterious back room stacks tasted like seeing a new color for the first time. I was learning about “sticky rice” aroma, “fruit” aroma, etc in the context of pu’er all were so bracing. After drinking teas at that level, you just want to fast because it seems wrong to bulldoze the ethereal aftertastes lingering on the palate. (Usually I would give in though and stop for charcoal roasted fish and shrimp on a stick while walking home.)

When Wang Yanxin brewed up this Yiwu, I can say in earnest that tasting it felt like being reunited with an important part of myself that had gone missing. She described the flavor as “zhang.” Apparently, zhang is a flavor used to describe the cooling sensation and herbaceous complexity that a wild picked pu’er picks up when growing in a forest with cedar or fir trees. It is a certain sensation in the back of the throat and tongue that is almost electric in its tingling cooling qualities. This taste felt like being reunited with my home town, my childhood heroes, my best friends.

I love zhang. I seek it out in everything now. Fine gin, birch beer, juniper berries, some kinds of tulsi. Zhang feels like pure energy melting on the tongue. This brick of yiwu was the first tea to give me that. It is what inspired me to understand that tea is more than flavor, texture, or aroma- it is energy, memory recall, connection to the land, and a synergy of all these put together.

Why do I leave a tasting note on this tea after so long? Because I am so excited to share the fact that Wang Yanxin agreed to get me a later 2004 pressing from the same workshop, and the 12 cakes I could import have arrived. Last time we were able to secure a few bricks of Yiwu, they sold out in 1 week and a half, so I am very excited to offer these up again. I hope you enjoy this tea as much as I do: http://verdanttea.com/teas/stone-pressed-yiwu-wild-arbor-sheng/

Wang Yanxin did it- She actually acquired several more pounds of the Golden Fleece from her friends who wild-pick this tea in Yunnan. I didn’t want to breathe a word about it until the package made it to Minneapolis, I opened all the bags and tasted to be sure, but I can say that the Golden Fleece is back. It was somewhat mind-boggling to see the whole last batch sell out in one hour, so I hope that my work to convince Wang Yanxin to part with more than a pound this time will allow more people to try this tea.

Wang Yanxin is such an interesting character. Getting tea from her is not as simple as ordering it. She will allude to a tea that you never knew that she had, dangling it out like a test. If I ask to buy the tea, it is suddenly gone, ‘sold out.’ Only through a discussion of flavor texture and aftertaste will Wang Yanxin decide whether or not to part with teas like this. She wants to know that it is going to be appreciated and cared for. She wants to see the tea leaves advancing the tea culture. On the occasions that I can convey appreciation appropriately, we end up with tea like the Golden Fleece, Artisan Revival Sheng and Yiwu.

She is not trying to be temperamental. Indeed, her desire is to inspire people all over the world to fall in love with tea, and through it gain a respect for the leaf and a humility towards others. She wants small farmers to gain recognition for their tea without the pomp and glitter of brand name pu’er workshops. She is an idealist, but a fierce and practical one. The Golden Fleece is an incredible tea in that the majority of its complexity lies in texture and aftertaste, two elements of the tea experience that are underrated. In the west we tend to prize flavor above all else. Yet flavor is only a fraction of what tea has to offer. Golden Fleece gives so much in flavor, but so much more in texture, and sensation. Wang Yanxin is sometimes concerned about whether the merits of a tea like this will be noticed.

Thanks to support from so many friends on Steepster, so many intelligent and thoughtful tasting notes, and such a positive and humble attitude towards tea, I have material to translate and share with Wang Yanxin, making her more and more comfortable releasing teas like this.

The Golden Fleece will be available on our website Friday May 18th at 12 noon CST, along with an entirely new black tea offering, the Zhu Rong Yunnan Black, named after a dagger-wielding warrior queen of Yunnan. I hope that both teas are enjoyed thoroughly.
Many Thanks,
David

When spring comes, my family is thinking about flip-flops, patio furniture, fresh produce, and walks around the lake. I am thinking of Laoshan, of Mr. and Mrs. He and the wafting aroma of piles of fresh spring buds drying and being curled. I am thinking of the cool morning mist that requires you to wear a jacket in the village, and of the crystal clear spring where the kids play on the weekends.

I asked Weiwei, who maintains our relationship with the farmers while I am away, to bring gifts to the He family and see how the new harvest was going. The news I got was a bit nerve-wracking. This year was an extremely cold spring, which delayed the harvest significantly. I was told that very little tea was being picked early on. Weiwei suggested that we offer the He family far more than usual for the crop since they got so little in the first weeks of spring. Of course, we were happy to do so.

The drawback of the cold spring meant a pricier green, along with a tiny shipment of only eight pounds of this precious leaf until later in the month. However, the benefit became clear as soon as I cut open the first vacuum-sealed bag. The fragrance was thick, heady and overwhelmingly fresh. It truly smelled like being on the farm in Laoshan village.

Steeped up, this Laoshan early spring harvest is unlike ones I have tasted before. I expected an exquisitely sweet flavor, but I couldn’t have anticipated the thick creamy body, or the nuance of the sugar snap pea flavor. It actually makes perfect sense when you think about it. Colder spring and slower harvest means smaller leaf that has spent less energy growing. Less energy to put out big leaves early on means more sugar and nutrients stored in the leaf contributing to the rich flavor.

I am so honored that the He family is willing to part with this crop and trusts us to represent it well. Mr. and Mrs. He pass on their thanks for all the support and kind words that I translate from comments left here on Steepster. Indeed, the enthusiasm here is one part of what drives their commitment to innovating, improving their Laoshan green and Laoshan Black every season.

May everyone enjoy this tea. I hope the fresh smell, the tender leaf, and rich flavor evoke for others even a small part of this village that I miss so dearly.

To set the scene, yesterday in Minneapolis was perfectly sunny, just hot enough to make you move a bit more slowly than usual. Humidity was hanging in the air, and the smell of grass and new flowers was wafting in the windows. The fan was on low with a soothing hum in the background. That is when the last box of our spring shipment arrived at the door, and we cut it open to see those vacuum sealed shining gold bags of Tieguanyin.

We had ordered enough Spring Tieguanyin to last a few months, or so we thought when our last batch came in. It sold out in two weeks and we had to rush ship the freshest picking of Tieguanyin in this week. The sensible side of me thought, “this batch will surely taste like the last one,” but the trained taster knew that a few weeks difference in picking time can make a huge difference in flavor. Luckily Weiwei never lets us down with Tieguanyin, so we were not nervous at all to cut open the first bag.

The aroma of creme brulee, saffron, lilac, and flaky pastry burst forth from the bag. Oh, yes, this was something different entirely. The first steeping was juicy, and had the fruity tones of goji berry. There was a tingling spearmint sweetness on the tongue. This was an exciting tea!

That is where it took a sharp turn towards rich and creamy. It really tasted like a saffron and almond laced rice pudding reduced on the stovetop for hours. It was silky and completely enveloping. If the last batch was the essence of a sunny spring day, then this is a later spring day in the afternoon right after a heavy downpour of rain with steam rising off the grass and flowers.

As soon as the orchid flavors, the sweet parsley green notes, the mango juiciness and the vanilla came in, we were in real trouble. It was the first time since college that I had an overwhelming desire to play hooky, ditch work for the day and go pick flowers along the Mississippi River. Seriously- be careful with this one. I was so close to skipping off with a bag of this tea in hand, pulling my wife from work for a “family emergency” and taking off. The tea just does that to you.

Luckily, I came back to my senses despite my strong desire not to. Why, you ask? Because I wanted to get this tea, and the new spring greens up on the site so that I can share the experience around. It wouldn’t be fair to hoard this tea ll to myself, as much as I might want to. I would rather see other people connect with the tea instead.

All the support for our Tieguanyin here on Steepster has really shaped the way that Weiwei sources it. I pass on all the compliments, and she feels more honor-bound to follow up with an even more stunning tea each season. I am not always sure why the farmers part with tea like this, but I am more than pleased to share the tasting experience.

When we got in our spring harvest last year, it quickly became legendary. I was so happy to see it enjoyed by so many people, but also nervous about whether the next harvest could live up to its reputation. After sharing all the kind words said here on Steepster with the farmers through our friend and Tieguanyin devotee Weiwei, our friends in Anxi decided to send us an even more exquisite autumn harvest.

Now, spring has returned. I expected to have to wait another three weeks or so to get any of the spring Tieguanyin, but Weiwei, whose father has devoted his retirement to finding the best Tieguanyin in the world, was able to secure this early harvest. Usually Weiwei will describe a fine Tieguanyin as ‘passable’ and a mind-blowing one as ‘pretty good.’ I have been waiting to try this Tieguanyin which she called ‘amazing.’ I thought that she would just send a sample for me to approve, but she just made the call and sent a full batch of this tea. We got a large portion of the farmer’s harvest. Since they are a family operation and hand-pick everything, only 15 pounds were available when we shipped. I already asked Weiwei to have them reserve whatever is left.

I tried to describe the tea when I made a product page this morning, but it is so hard not to resort to ridiculous metaphors. This tea is the essence of spring. It is like all the young flowers, the delicate buds, the vibrantly green grass have all been crystallized into this drinking experience. It is supremely humbling. Thank you Weiwei, for the confidence to bring us this tea so soon after it was picked.

I really look forward to sending this out to all my friends here on Steepster and hope that everyone has an equally incredible experience with it. Happy Spring!

I can’t believe that Wang Yanxin was able to convince the Banzhang Ancient Forest Workshop to part with seven more bricks of this beauty. It is everything I love about sheng pu’er, thick and nutty like Farmer’s Cooperative, yet sparkling with hints of orange and melon. Banzhang Mountain is a magical place.

I have been checking in on the region using google satellite images, and it is still just as remote. The old village has only six houses! The new village has a whopping eleven. You can see the winding footpaths where the villagers walk to wild-harvest this tea.

I will admit it, I bought the last brick of this from Verdant Tea when it was running out, and have felt guilty for not letting it go with so much interest, but how could I? I recently tasted some 15-year tea from the area and it blew my mind. This is already getting there. Luckily I don’t have to feel so guilty anymore with a few more bricks back in stock.

I wanted to meditate today on the idea of blending teas. You can probably tell from the Verdant website that we love straight up tea with a passion. So what’s with the blends? I see a lot of back and forth about blending in general on the forums here and elsewhere. Some people find it to be fun and interesting to try blends, looking forward to the additional flavor dimensions, while others feel that it distracts from the subtlety of the base tea.

For me, a blend is a commentary, a literary criticism, an essay, on the tea I am using as a base. The tea is the theme of the essay, the main thesis statement. The spices, herbs and flowers are all supporting paragraphs. A good essay will hash out all the possibilities of the thesis in several paragraphs before returning to the theme with a new understanding. For me, a good blend will use things like elderberry or galangal to help clarify the taste of the tea.

When I drink Xingyang Nuggets, I taste the dark sweetness of elderberry and the slight floral spice of galangal already. They are there in the tea. By adding the spices, I am giving those hazy feelings a place to “crystallize” and make themselves known. A blend for me is always going to be exploring and pushing the basic flavors of a straight up tea with the goal of helping the taster come to a new understanding of what the base tea has to offer.

For that reason, it is sometimes especially fun to try a tea by itself, and then try one of the blends and see how the flavors relate. This also means that every time I drink a base tea on its own and taste a new flavor it gives me new ideas for blending.

Hopefully this makes sense. There are a lot of reasons to drink straight up tea and a lot of reasons to drink blended tea. This is just one perspective that I have been thinking about a lot recently that has been guiding my “play” with new blending.

Best Wishes!

Sorry to be absent for a while on Steepster. We have been busy putting the finishing touches on our new website. With that done, I hope to contribute more to the conversations here, and answer whatever questions I am able to.

I thought that with the season, yabao would be a good tea to meditate on. Here in Minnesota, all the trees are just bursting with little “yabao” buds. They are those hard buds ready to unfold into a clump of leaves. I can only imagine the little buds in Yunnan right now and the Xingchen workshop busy picking.

I stumbled upon Yabao as a complete accident. I drank tea with the same vendor every day for a month or so, and each day they would pull out something new and crazy to challenge me, asking me questions about what I tasted. Finally, they ran out of new things to show me, until he remembered yabao.

The vendor looked sort of shifty-eyed around him before pulling a pressed brick of the buds out from under his desk. He wouldn’t say a word about it before I tried it. When I was at a loss for words, tasting something I had never before experienced, a look of triumph appeared on his face. “I bet you have never had THIS one before, huh?”

He was right! I didn’t even know what those strange little buds could be. He explained that they are picked in late winter and that only a few of them can be taken from each tree so as not to stunt the tree’s growth. I unfolded a bud for me and showed how many layers they have. We counted over a dozen.

I resolved to get some of this tea. I went back every day asking him about the yabao, but he didn’t want to part with any. He only had nine bricks. Finally, right before I left, he gave me one of his bricks. Last time I was in China, he was pleased to hear that I was going to brew it at my wedding for the guests.

The woman in Kunming who represents Xingchen workshop was so surprised when I walked into her shop and immediately identified a bag of yabao. She practically jumped out of her seat. “Don’t you want jasmine or something? How do you know about yabao?” I explained to her trying it before, and she invited me to sit for the full afternoon drinking some pretty crazy teas.

I was able to get back in touch with her workshop when I started Verdant Tea. In fact, yabao was one of the teas I was most excited to share when I was just getting started. It is a subtle experience to be sure, but one whose depth is rewarding under the right circumstances. I enjoy yabao the most in the evenings when it is dark and quiet, as it reminds me of mulling spice, of cedar wood chests, and the like. It is fun to see others discovering yabao as well. Happy tasting!

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

This Silver Needle Jasmine truly came about as a sort of conspiracy between Wang Yanxin, our scout for Yunnan teas, especially fine pu’ers, and Weiwei, Verdant’s employee in China who works with farmers mostly in Laoshan and Anxi.

Both Weiwei and Wang Yanxin have some of the most formidable and discriminating palates in the world. The conspiracy here is that neither of them have any inclination towards jasmine tea at all. When Weiwei and I are drinking tea together with a workshop or farmer, she always asks for a glass of water to discreetly wash the taste out of her mouth when jasmine is served. I would just shake my head. Come on Weiwei, you can find some of the most heady and floral Tieguanyin, but take that profile a bit further towards Jasmine and you wash your mouth out with water?

Wang Yanxin always had a bit of jasmine on hand, and was known for supplying Qingdao with the best jasmine of anyone. One day I asked her if I could buy a bit of her jasmine to take home for family member less inclined towards pu’er than myself. She flat out said no. She said that normal jasmine is not good to drink, and pulled out a variety that cost several hundred dollars a pound. “This is the only one you can have.” Wang Yanxin has a strong will, so I didn’t argue. I tried to pay, but she gave it to me for free. She said that she didn’t want my family drinking anything less.

Keeping this in mind, I imagined a pretty cold reception when I started making inquiries on a jasmine for Verdant Tea. To my surprise, Weiwei said that her and Wang Yanxin had been talking, and they thought they found something that was good. I asked Weiwei if she liked it. She seemed slightly embarrassed to say yes, but admitted that she did. Wang Yanxin pulled her connections to get us a jasmine from Yunnan, made with a silky silver needle white tea. Weiwei approved the scenting.

When I got the first box, and cut open one of the heat-sealed bags, I knew that Wang Yanxin and Weiwei had found something special. Most of the tea-lovers here in Minneapolis that come by Verdant HQ when new shipments get in are pu’er or oolong people. This jasmine seduced pretty much everyone.

The update from Wang Yanxin and Weiwei is that they are now actively scouting more jasmines. In my last shipment, there were over 40 new samples to try. This silver needle variety actually got them excited to drink jasmine. I get jasmine pearls, little blooming teas, twists of scented Huangshan Maofeng, and a large variety of possibilities. While none have yet approached this one for staying power, it is good to know that my friends in China have broadened their horizons.

The first time I encountered Dancong Style Oolongs was at the most posh tea house in Qingdao, China. This was the kind of place that you go to be seen- When you go in the massive double doors carved from solid walnut, you are greeted by an entire limestone stalactite formation meticulously transported from a cave in Yunnan to be the waterfall feature here. On the left is a Ming Dynasty fishing boat turned into a tea pavilion on the indoor pond.

Even though I was there on grant money to do research on tea culture, from the humble farms of Laoshan to the high-brow teahouses like this, I felt humbled and asked for a table in the least fancy-looking part of the building. When the menu came, it was a rolled string of bamboo strips with the tea names carved in wood. Starting my research in a city obsessed with Laoshan green tea, and Tieguanyin, I had never before come across Dancong. I saw it on the menu and ordered.

It was prepared for me in traditional Southern China gongfu ceremony with gaiwan. The taste kept me sitting for hours getting the tea re-steeped. They were probably wondering when I would head out or order a different tea, but the taste was so intriguing.

I found Dancong to be elusive, a shapeshifter just slightly out of reach. My tea vocabulary was smaller then, but the apple notes and the texture were wonderful. After that, I asked all around the tea markets about Dancong, but nobody had any.

Only recently was I reminded of this experience by Steepster friends logging Dancong tasting notes. I asked a friend in QIngdao to have her tea friend in Guangzhou send some Dancong samples for me to try again. She ended up sending about a dozen, all of which were mind-blowing.

In the first round of tasting, I actually picked out a Mi Lan Dancong over this, because it had more of a “smack in the face” intensity that you couldn’t ignore. Then I came back to the Huang Zhi Xiang. It was a more quiet tea. I realized that if you are willing to listen, willing to taste, this tea had much more to give then any of the other samples. It is about two dozen teas in one. It recaptures that “shapeshifter” experience I had with my first Dancong.

I have found myself brewing Dancong every day without fail since the last shipment came in, and I still love it. I love it so much that I am actually re-assigning one of my favorite Yixing pots from Big Red Robe to Dancong. That should be an interesting flavor experiment v. gaiwan steeping. What I love about this tea is that it always has something new to offer. It is the essence of a multi-dimensional tea. It is a challenge to rise to. It holds my attention like an aged sheng pu’er might.

I hope that other tea lovers will fall head over heels for this like I have. I know that I will be requesting another 50+ samples to try to pick out another type of Dancong to expand the line- that is, if I can find one to live up to this Huang Zhi Xiang.

I have been drinking this tea non-stop since it came in. This is a find of my friend Wang Yanxin, who first introduced me to all the small cooperatives in Yunnan. I want to do a full description of its flavor in a tasting note, but that will take more care and re-tasting. It is one of the best sheng pu’ers I have tried, period.

My love affair with this tea, along with some prodding from Steepster friends has convinced me to do a Yunnan-themed Cyber Monday. Pu’er bricks, and our white, black and green teas from Yunnan, will be between 30-50% off. Check it out and invest in a brick of this for yourself if you can.

http://verdanttea.com/black-friday-weekend-sale/

With the arrival of the 2004 Peacock Village Shu, I feel that some sort of cycle has turned upon itself, and brought me back to the starting point of my love affair with pu’ers. When I first moved to China as literature and philosophy teacher at Qingdao University, and as a tea researcher, I knew almost nothing about the vast world of pu’er. For tea lovers, pu’er is truly the last frontier. When you have explored all the other teas out there, pu’er is waiting patiently to reveal its mysteries.

Qingdao has a tea district where all those most devoted to the culture would congregate. I used to go visit Wang Huiming to train in proper Fujianese tea ceremony. Every day I would pass a small shop filled to the ceilings with pu’er bricks, and a young tea-scout named Wang Yanxin. Finally I put aside an afternoon to visit Wang Yanxin and listen to her stories.

She got into the tea business when she was 20 years old, and started spending summers in Yunnan working with small growers, learning the pu’er trade, and tasting some of the finest bricks in the world. She is now 28 years old, and has quickly risen to become one of the most respected palates out there, and certainly the most formidable source for pu’er from small growers in the whole region. Most shops offer some decent quality brocks from Mengku, Haiwan or Xiaguan, but these big companies make it easy, grading their teas, printing catalogs, sending samples, etc. Wang Yanxin was determined to be different, and work with the small growers to bring something to market beyond what most in China had ever experienced. Despite having to go down to Yunnan every month or so to try new pressings, advise growers, etc, Wang continues to succeed.

So what does this have to do with the Peacock Village 2004? That first day I visited Wang Yanxin, I told her that I wanted to fall in love with pu’er. She told me that she would help if I was willing to visit twice a week until I understood. I readily agreed, and we started down the path of shu and sheng pu’er. She was patient, starting with the simplest bricks, teaching me to taste the major flavor profiles commonly found in pu’er. She showed me how pu’er steeps out in time, how it grows with age after being pressed.

Finally, I was beginning to understand. That was when she pulled out the first “Graduate Level” tea for me to try, the Peacock Village 2004 from Tian Di Ren Workshop. I fell in love instantly. Everything suddenly made sense. The lower quality bricks we started with all had a heaviness to them, a certain lingering feeling that was unpleasant. This brick was crisp, light and perfect. I was so excited to taste all the different flavors, and Wang was pleased to hear me describe them.

I may have had a lot of pu’er since the Peacock Village, but it has remained a favorite, representing one of the ideals that a shu pu’er can reach for. I made the call a few months ago to discontinue the Fuhai brick, feeling like it was almost what I was looking for, but falling just slightly short. I debated for weeks about what to replace it with that would be a step closer to my ideal, and finally remembered my beloved Peacock Village Shu.

Wang Yanxin actually tracked down 25 bricks for me! I am grateful to her for everything, and grateful to everyone for the chance to share this.

I thought I would share my first experiences with this tea that I am pleased to see so many others enjoying as much as I do. I first came into contact with it through Wang Shilin, a middle-aged man with the coolest black 1950’s glasses. (Though I am not sure that they were meant to be hip particularly). Wang Shilin represented Xingyang Workshops offerings in the city of Qingdao, near Laoshan Mountain where I source my green teas and the Laoshan black.

I first came across him on a search for a brick of old Yabao tea to give to my wife for Christmas. He was the only guy in Qingdao who even know what Yabao was, as it isn’t normally seen outside of Yunnan. We drank tea together all day, starting with a white tea brick from Xingyang workshop, and moving into pu’er. He didn’t realize until later in the day how interested in pu’er I was. He was so excited to see a younger person drinking pu’er. He was lamenting over how so many young people in China drink cola or coffee with milk.

It wasn’t until we had become friends and I was on my way out that he looked sort of shiftily around and pulled out a little paper bag of pu’er leaves. He asked me to try it at home and come back next week to talk again. You could tell that this tea was one of his secrets. I knew that he was extremely proud of it.

Of course, I went right home and tried the tea- I won’t even try to describe it. It was hard enough to write a description for the website without going on tangents about memory, childhood, spiritual experience, etc. This is just one of those teas. You can’t help but be moved by it. Every time I brew it at a tasting, everyone starts talking about Grandma’s attic, or that time when they went to Maine, or the library of their old school.

I waited three days (that is the rule for second dates, right?) before rushing back to Wang Shilin’s shop and telling him all about the tea. He had the expression on his face of knowing exactly what I was going to say, and feeling satisfied to hear it out loud. He brewed it up for me again, explaining how different Xingyang is. The tea liquor was perfectly crystalline, he pointed out. Many old pu’er may get more complex, but they can also get murkier over time. Xingyang’s does not.

Honestly, having two, dwindling tins of this tea on my shelf at home was a big impetus in going into business. Now that I am back in touch with my tea friends, I am assured access to my beloved Xingyang 1998.

I must say though, I was only able to get 30 tins, or six pounds of this total in my last shipment and it was pretty hard to convence Xingyang to part with it. This tea may soon be a memory itself…

Well, the Spring 2011 harvest is officially sold out. It will live in my memories for years to come. However, the Autumn 2011 harvest just arrived in a big crate a few hours ago. I opened one of the vacuum sealed bags apprehensively. I could feel my heart beating faster. The smell put me at ease again. I knew that the autumn harvest would live up to its legendary ancestor. I cannot wait to formally write out a tasting note, perhaps this evening or tomorrow, but I can say that this will not disappoint. It does not follow in the Spring tea’s footsteps. Instead it strikes out on its own path, decidedly autumnal, mouth-watering, and thrillingly different through each steeping.

Thank you Autumn, for bringing this tea to me. I am excited to share it with all of you…

The Autumn harvest is finally up for sale with tasting notes and a picture. Check it out here: http://verdanttea.com/shop/oolong-teas/hand-picked-autumn-2011-tieguanyin/

This is a nostalgic green tea for me. All of Verdant’s other greens are from the far-off village of Laoshan in Shandong Province. This one alone falls within the Southern Chinese growing region, hailing from Yunnan.

The first time I tried this was a dark rainy night in Hangzhou. I had wrapped up a day of interviews with tea vendors, mostly selling Dragonwell, and found myself out in torrential rain walking along the shoreline of the city’s famous lake. My goal was to find either a taxi or a teahouse to get out of the rain. I walked and walked with no luck at either. After about an hour of wandering and thorough pounding from the rain, I saw an old wooden structure down a side street. The whole sign was not visible, but I saw the character for tea, and made a dash for it. As I rounded the corner, I saw that the sign read “Jingshan Teahouse.” I had never heard of Jingshan before, but didn’t particularly care. I entered the old wooden building and asked for a table.

The teahouse was completely empty, and the woman behind the counter scurried upstairs to find a table and some hot water. She handed me a big, wooden-bound menu proudly and I opened it to find just three teas. Jingshan Tea, Jingshan Budset Tea, and Jingshan Early Spring Tea. I almost laughed at the oddity of three menu items, but ordered the Early Spring Tea, and waited. Instead of the usual Gaiwan, the woman brought a short glass, poured hot water and sprinkled the tea leaves on top, telling me to wait for the tea to start dancing around.

This was clearly no ordinary tea waitress. I struck up a conversation while waiting for the leaves to open and found out that her family was a farmer family in Yunnan, and they saved money to open a shop in Hangzhou to spread the tea of their village that they were so proud of. I sipped the tea and experienced a crisp, sparkling and determined sweetness that impressed me. The woman was very happy I liked it and immediately began pulling out books and picture albums of the mountain Jingshan. I convinced her to sell me a little bag of tea to drink at home, and left much happier, and with much more taxi-finding skill.

It took me three years to track her down again, and with some help from good friends in China, I was able to bring the Jingshan green that she shared with me to America. I have been drinking it hot and iced, and notice that its original effect of clearing the mind and having an overall cleansing feeling remains true. When I am not in the mood for the bean-like heartiness of Laoshan, I turn to the lighter Jingshan, and watch the buds uncurl in a glass tumbler.

My hope is that some Americans will get as much joy out of discovering tea from an obscure little-known village as I have. While neither Jingshan or Laoshan are famous, the farmers are honest, devoted and honorable.

Time to go steep up another tumbler-full!

As summer really sets in in Minnesota, I do as my tea friends do and drink hot green tea to cool down. This is usually my first choice. I add the leaves to a glass tumbler, and pour in under-boiling water. When the leaves sink, the tea is ready to drink. This one has never gone bitter for me. The first time He Qinqing, the farmer that provides this tea, served it to me in a glass and I watched it sit for 5 minutes, I was worried about it oversteeping. What are you supposed to do? Tell the tea farmer how to steep tea?

Of course, she was right. I find this to be the best way to drink Laoshan teas, followed by pouring back and forth between glass pitchers, which is pretty cool as well since the leaves start dancing around.

This is a green tea for people who don’t get excited about green tea. It steeps uprich and creamy, with way more body than you might expect, but never edges towards dry or astringent. If anybody else has tried different steeping methods, I love to hear how people brew it up. My suggestion for July: Cold-Steep in the refrigerator with leaves and cold water for 8-10 hours for a full bodied iced tea.