Peony Tea S.

A couple months ago, the Peony Tea S. very kindly sent me three teas of theirs, in exchange for answering a few of their questions regarding shipping times and conditions. All teas arrived promptly and in excellent condition and were all of such obvious quality I have been reserving first sip of them for occasions I could give brewing this their due attention! And reviewing them is slightly intimidating as well, my vocabulary feels stretched.

A warning first: I think I used not enough tea on this first brew. I went by teaspoon count and should have gotten out the digital scales, I think going by what I have left I did not use the 2 grams per 100 ml recommended, I was too careful of not breaking the tea and spoons counted were not filled enough. So my judgement of this today is not optimal. But I am sure I will forget this advice if I don´t write it down so here goes, the first preliminary tasting. Don´t skimp on the recommended weight. I used my favorite mineral water, it´s light on minerals.

The dry tea is absolutely beautiful, long vivid green little pods of leaves curled upon other little leave buds. The scent is absolutely fantastic, a wonderful green tea (duh. duh. I said I was challenged by trying to review this) scent which reminded me of spring in some cliffs right by the Atlantic in Portugal (Arrábida mountains, if you really want to know) – a scent very clean and free, maybe with hints of thyme or this type of rosemary or cypress.

1st steep – brewed up, while the scent notes change a lot and the thyme-rosemary notes go away, I get a sea note. It was slightly astringent and slightly sweet and very lovely. It brewed up very pale gold. Ethereal, the adjective used by the seller´s description, is a totally perfect description of this. This was my favorite steep (is this a sign I screwed up the next steeps?

2st steep – this brewed up quite a bit richer. Color deeper, with a slightly green tinge, and at the same time more astringent and sweeter and the sea note even more pronounced. Theoretically it should have been superior in everything to the 1st steep, but I still loved the best the first steep without being quite able to explain why (I warned you writing these taste notes was challenging!). That is something I will try to analyze next time I make this tea.

3rd steep – By this time I had figured out I had used too little tea, so only half a cup. Very very pale, very very delicate, astringency seems to have gone and amazingly even sweeter.

Drinking tea this pure and fresh is a fascinating lesson, so much easier to understand the reaction of tea to time and temperature, to see clearly in the size and shape of leaves the tea bush annual cycle. It might also be addictive. A lovely tea.

Jeez, one single piddly note for this tea, and it’s gone? (I do have it on a list somewhere to write about, which I guessing I’m skipping ahead to now). So yes, sipdown! Also, this tea is really incredibly delicious, and I wish it wasn’t all gone :( I believe when I finished it, I checked the website for it, but I no longer remember whether it was still available…

Thanks to Derek at Peony Tea S. for a free sample of this tea during their shipping times test!

Although the instructions indicated 4g of tea for 100mL of water, I went with 5g of tea for ~200mL water (though I kind of regret it now, so will probably try the recommended infusion method later). I also left the tea in for twice the recommended infusion time, as after 45 seconds, I didn’t think the tea would have much flavour. And sipped it, and burnt my tongue :( Anyways…

The aroma from the tea is of a light sweet oolong, but I have to note that I also took a sniff of the wet leaves, and got this crazy sweet seaweed aroma! Absolutely delicious! Kind of like those sweet, seaweed-wrapped crunchy snacks. Delish. I wish the tea smelled/tasted like that, but I suspect it won’t.

Sure enough, the tea doesn’t taste quite like that, but there is an absolutely delicious, mouth-enveloping sweetness. I want to call it rock sugar, but it’s much more complex than that. It’s a familiar flavour; I assume I’ve tasted it before with other oolongs. It’s one I could sip for days, though (until it got to be too sweet). The sip finishes with a nice oolong aftertaste, which is absolutely divine. There’s a bit of a vegetal flavour interspersed in here, but it’s not prominent, as the sweetness really takes over. I suspect subsequent infusions to become more vegetal and less sweet, however.

This tea is definitely a winner! I think I was quite pleased with all the selections I was sent as part of this testing process, so hopefully I will have the funds to make a purchase from Peony Tea S. sometime in the near future!

ETA: Second infusion (2 min/90C) still smells rather sweet and delicious. The cup’s a bit stronger this time, perhaps a touch oversteeped (it’s a little metallic), but other than that, is still quite sweet and pleasant, and not as vegetal as I was expecting.

Oh! This tea is lovely! So very lovely!

The astringency is quite unlike any other I’ve experienced. It affects the mouthfeel in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced before. At the very start of the sip, I notice a silky softness, and almost immediately afterward, I start to notice the slight twinge of astringency touch the tongue, reaching out toward the inner cheeks and toward the back of the throat. As the astringency dissipates, I notice sweetness. A beautiful, delicious sweetness that is oh so delicate, reminiscent of the delicate taste of spun sugar.

While the aroma of the dry leaf is really quite vegetative, the flavor is not quite as vegetative as this aroma would lead one to believe. There are notes … subtle notes … there, sort of like sweet, buttered lima beans. Very mild.

A really incredible tea, One of the most memorable that I’ve tried from Peony Tea S. yet.

PS: Quite tasty when enjoyed with a Honeycrisp apple.

Short review : this is wonderful. Really really wonderful.

Long version and all about me:
I can´t quite believe I had this waiting for months till i tried it. But did. I am really a bad-weather tea lover. When it gets really really hot, it seems like I only really cold water will do for me. People have tried to educate me better about how refreshing tea can be when it´s hot. But it just does not work for me.

So all this to say that when PeonyTS very kindly offered some teas to test mail services, I did jump at the opportunity (testing receiving tea! I can do that!) but the poor teas languished waiting for a couple months (no fear, sealed, and the white and green are in the fridge). But finally the weather has turned autumnal enough, I really missed brewing carefully a cup and having it.

The tea itself is just wonderful. Seller describes it has having a hint of dates, which is not exactly what came to my mind. But it´s a wonderfully rich, complex taste. And so smooth, such a generous tea. I really loved it. I think I might have skimped on tea for the water I used and might have gone past the 90 seconds because i got distrated, but it still produced something sublime. I am now very curious about what the next steeps will produce.

Ah, about the details, the packaging is foil hermetically sealed ziploc, packaged just right in order to not crush. The tea itself looks wonderful, long long leaves. A really great tea.

I was unable to log this one yesterday…not sure why…but Ricky fixed it for me!!!! Thanks Ricky

I drank this yesterday but jotted down some tasting notes to backlog it today!

It reminds me of MEAD and Flowers! The Mead being thick and like raw honey (with no sugar added and not commericalized or produced or processed!)It’s Brothy and “Filling”.

I found this one really fantastic!

Today is apparently the day of the Golden Teas. Well, at least this one and the last one that I had … but it wasn’t really intentional. I just grabbed tea from my seemingly endless supply of samples that I have yet to taste and this is what I came up with.

And I’m glad that I did, because this is awesome. It’s a bit different from a typical ‘green’ Oolong in that it has more focus to it … the floral tones are sharper. This is not a soft, delicate Oolong, the flavors here are well defined and really pleasant. Honey-esque tones bring sweetness to the cup. It is remarkably smooth from start to finish, and the astringency works together with the floral notes to provide a sort of tangy, tingly sensation at the finish. The aftertaste is sweet and flowery.

A very nice Oolong, I like it when I get a nice surprise like this from an Oolong!

Can’t believe I have not logged this before. It is light, refreshing and very delicate. There is a hint of almonds in the flavour and a sweetness in the aftertaste that I did not notice while drinking the tea.

This was a free sample sent as part of the test posting by Peony Teas. Thank you, Peony Tea.

I opened this by mistake, would you believe! It was early and I was still half asleep. I had intended picking up Peony’s Fengqing but this jumped into my hands and I am pleased it did.

Little nuggets of gold and green in my teapot. The liquor is golden and the aroma is orchids and honeysuckle. Tasting it, it is creamy with a light honeysuckle flavour. I used to love sucking the nectar out of honeysuckle as a kid. This tea is perfect for a Sunday morning as it revives me gently with its delicate sweetness. Now to get on with my work.

I needed a break from all the flavours happening in my mouth with the tea craziness today so I opted for this one. This was just what I needed. Nothing to add beyond what’s already been said about this tea, but I will say that it’s just the break I needed from my flavored teas. :)

Thank you LiberTeas for this sample. I hate to admit that I was busy choosing Beatles songs, wow what a list they have, and I oversteeped…twice. This note is then suspect by default.

The color-a nice pale golden green, lead me to believe I was OK since it hadn’t darkened. There was a little bitterness that may or may not have been there under normal circumstances. The wet leaves were crowded in my little infuser pot and had I read K S’ note first I woulda used my press as well. The smell was more grassy than nutty/woody.

The first sip threw me when I tasted that same grassy flavor. There was less wood and more vegetive flavor-like dry grass I think. This gave way to nuttiness that then gained a malty coppery edge. All of this happened within the first two steeps, I lost track of which steep I was on in the descriptive notes I was jotting down. Don’t let me forget the overall but slightly muted honey sweetness. The second steep (I believe) added a tiny bit of charcoal too.

Did a third steep and saved a little face with myself,though I know I missed out on some stuff in first two go arounds. Sweeter note more pronounced. More floral notes to the smell. And finally, it’s now less like dry grass and getting up into lighter wood flavor. You win some you lose some, right? I hold nothing against this tea and rather fault myself. We shall meet again I may have to force myself to listen to top 40 pop during tasting so that I have absolutely no fear of getting distracted.

tunes-as I said The Beatles(said in Ed Sullivan voice with the gesturing of hand)=Norwegian Wood/Ob La Di,Ob La DA/I Saw Her Standing There(where I started to get got)/I Want You-She’s So Heavy(where I finished getting got)/Rocky Racoon

A little old, but still decently tasty.

Yum. A tasty green, again despite its age. I’m sure that something has been lost in the… unmentionable amount of time I’ve had this tea, but it’s still pretty tasty, with a lovely brown sugary sweet aftertaste. Similar to Laoshan Green, but not quite so green beany. I did overstep a bit, but thankfully not too, too much.

Drank some of this on Saturday, but sadly only one cup. It was very delicious! Sweet and vegetal. Same parameters as last time, so I don’t know what was different; no bitterness this time. Delicious!

Ahhhh! I wasn’t intending to try any of these samples today, but opened them to sniff, and this one just smelled delicious! I love green teas with this super vegetal aroma/flavour! Thanks Peony Tea and Derek Chew for these wonderful samples!

I carefully measured out what I thought was 5g of tea, and used 250mL of water at 80C.

The result is deliciously sweet and vegetal (exactly to my liking!), but unfortunately also rather bitter/strong. I probably should have known better; this happens to me too much! I will try with my standard 1.5 tsp next time, and will likely end up with something amazing. I did add another ~150mL of cold water to the tea (temperature isn’t important for me) and it’s much more drinkable watered down, but I think 2 min was also a bit too long. This tea reminds me quite a bit of Treasuregreen’s Emerald (Silver), both in the sweetness and the intense vegetal flavour. I have no idea as to the type/origin of that tea, so this gives me a bit of a clue as to what it could be. With that tea, I think I use 1 tbsp and steep for 30 seconds, resulting in a honey-sweet first infusion, and a more vegetal second infusion, so I feel like I can get the same out of this tea. Looking forward to it!!

I’m realizing that my nose isn’t my most discerning of parts (although physically one of the more prominent). Smelling the dry leaves stumped me so I cheated = I peaked at other notes. I have to use TeaEqualBliss’ description of licorice,just a hint. There’s a kinda hot cinnamon thing there too.
There are pieces and stems to the leaves, but that makes sense since they are so long and curled slightly. It makes for a fluffy sack of tea that crushes easily. I don’t have much to say about the unfurling. The liquor a light gold.
Really alot going on in this cuppa. A hint of that licorice, with a sweet heavier than grass flavor. I geuss I will agree with both LiberTEAS and K S in the use of hay in my description (see what I get for cheating,not an original thought one). The aftertaste is where I see the very sweet licorice tone the most. It’s astringency is low, but it’s flavor kinda bold, even after several infusions.
That’s it,…I like it!
tunes=William Elliott Whitmore-Old Devils/Digging My Grave/Dry/Red Buds
Folky with an edge.Throaty gravely voice.

So this is in the small pot for just one mug-full. While I was making it, it suddenly occured to me that perhaps I ought to have done the short-steeping before the Western style. When I do it the other way around I often find the short-steep a bit thin in comparison. Oh well.

At the first sip this seems like I’m due for the same wacky experience as last time. It’s giving me an initial association to seafood with lemon, but wait! There is a solid sweetness hovering just underneath. It’s the caramel note, I think. In the large pot that didn’t show up at all at this point, but only came to completely replace the seafood-y lemon once the cup had cooled off some.

It’s as though with a smaller quantity, the flavours are getting compressed together rather than spreading out in neat little categories.

girly scream! OH MY GOD, I JUST NOTICED MY MOST FAVOURITEST AND BELOVED ROY KIRKHAM BONE CHINA POT HAS A FREAKING HUGE CRACK IN IT! I… need to go cry in private for a bit… O.O It’s not just the glaze. It’s cracked all the way through and it’s ten centimeters long. That’s a dead pot. And it was the most favourite one I’ve ever owned. Cute design and little to no drippage at all when pouring. Oh wail! Oh woe!

I shall clean it out and keep it on display before it actually breaks completely. Shall need new RK pot now. Clearly. (Do you think I might be able to persuade Husband that 8 mugs are totally not enough while I’m at it…?)

Gosh, what a dramatic little interlude there. Well, that also puts an end to any potential re-steep of these leaves now. Now that I’ve seen the crack, I can’t ignore it. I really, really, really don’t want it to break completely. While I was in a state of mournful shock, the tea has cooled off a bit further, and is now sort of on the brink between the caramel stage and burnt toast stage. Still following the road map the larger pot laid out, I see. Just, as mentioned, it seems squished a little closer together, making for a more ‘complete’ tasting cup. So the first experience wasn’t just completely bizarre, then. It really is that complicated a flavour profile!

I feel more confident about the rating now, and while I liked it for the most part, the initial seafood and lemon weirdness, I’m sorry, has to knock off a few points. Had it only not had the seafood association, I would have enjoyed a surprise lemon note much more.

This is the last of the three teas PTS gave me for free as part of the shipping experiment. I don’t think I’ve had this type of oolong before, but I’m not certain. I’ve only got a human brain’s worth of memory to work with and as we all know that can be a rather dodgy piece of equipment sometimes. But to the best of my knowledge, this would be my Sacred Lily debut.

The dry leaf had a rather strong, toasty aroma. It reminded me a little of coal, with some wooden sorts of side-notes. If you take a couple of leaves out in your hand and breathe on them before smelling them, the aroma really comes out in spades.

After steeping it was less intense, though. I found it more like baked goods and a bit of cocoa in the background. But yeah, it did seem a bit more thin, like I heard to search through the steam to find the aroma.

Flavourwise, I’m afraid I felt a little let down. The first note I got out of it was a strong mineral one. Almost like I was actually sucking on a pebble dipped in tea. Along with that there was a strange, slightly tart note which initially made me think of seafood and lemon.

Yes. Seafood and lemon.

How’s that for an O.o experience?

Thankfully, after the tea had cooled off a bit to a more drinkable temperature, this went away, and I got a fairly strong note of caramel for a while. Caramel and cake.

So I thought it was all rescued and all I had to do was let it cool down a bit and then enjoy a cup of caramel-y cake-y oolong.

No. Because as I drank and it cooled off even further, it went away again! It’s like the chameleon of tea, this stuff, constantly changing flavour and confusing me. Once the caramel note had disappeared, the mineral flavour came out again, along with the exact same notes I had found in the dry leaf aroma. Woodenness and a bit of burnt toast.

It seems that to have this tea at it’s very best, one has to let it cool off slightly until it hits that caramel-y cake-y phase and then drink quickly!

That can’t be right. I’ve never had an oolong behave like this before, so there must be some way of ensuring better success. Auggy once worked out that some teas change character when they are brewed in larger or smaller quantities even if the leaf to water ratio is exctly the same. I made this as a large pot to share between the two of us, and I think it might benefit from being made in a smaller quantity.

The husband didn’t seem to really recognise my experience of it, so it may also have been a question of me having simply come across something that were different to my expectations and failed to adjust myself accordingly.

I don’t think I can give it a rating right now. With all this flavour-changing action, it’s really so all over the place that I don’t even know where to begin. It will just have to come later, because I refuse to believe it’s really actually supposed to always behave in this peculiar fashion.

Colour me confused.

Ok, ok. Silver Needles may be the Prom Queen this year, but next year she will graduate and little sister will wear the crown! Wonderfully delicate and lighty floral. Luckily not much of the licorice is coming through. This one should be a staple for everone.

This is easily one of the best Dong Ding Oolong teas I’ve tasted. Sweet – caramel-y sweet! The fruity tones are almost like dried fruit, like sugary sweet dried plums and raisins that have been reconstituted and then cooked down into a caramelized syrup. YUM.

The floral tones are not quite as pronounced throughout the sip, but, I notice them in the aftertaste, which is gently floral and sweet.

Very, very good. I think this may be my favorite from Peony Tea S thus far!

I have never had a tea like this before! A huge thanks to Derek from PTS for sending this my way!

The leaves in my clear gong fu pot are gorgeous. They are bright green and they dance ! I have never tried a leaf that looks like this before – the leaves are like tiny snap peas in the shell. They seem to stand on end as they steep – I am mesmerized by them in the same way I am entertained by flowering teas.

The smell is like a creamy, fresh spring oolong, but the taste is totally different. It is very much a green tea. The tip of the tongue gets hit with an astringency that slides to the sides of the tongue and leaves a sweetness in its wake. I get some butter in the smell, but not in the taste, although the texture is smooth and almost creamy.

“feel the recurring sweetness well up and linger in your throat.” This really does happen! It’s the same quality as licorice root – so I can see this being a very soothing tea for a sore throat.

As an every day tea, this one is a bit too astringent for my liking – but it is very high quality and a nice treat when I need a break from my pu-erhs! Thank you Derek :)

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.

So I agree with TeaEqualsBliss that the personality description is clever and hilarious. My thanks to Peony Tea S for the free samples, the sample bags they send me were huge! :)

Anyway, white tea isn’t among my favourites, and I haven’t had many, but I do indeed like Bai Mu Dan every once in a while. Its light, almost like drinking feathers in comparison to books that are black tea. I also found this tea to be incredibly smooth and definitely floral. The leaves are huge and fuzzy which throws me everytime, but definitely an enjoyable cup!