The Sweetest Dew

Got this free sample a long time ago with my Sweetest Dew order. I was assuming it was Rou Gui with artificial flavoring like cinnamon covered apple bits. I opened it up and tried it tonight, and it in fact doesn’t have any artificial flavoring that I can tell.

It’s pretty enjoyable! I wouldn’t say it is a phenomenal Rou Gui, but it is solid and definitely does taste like apple. Seems to be a medium roast with fairly small leaves. Very enjoyable and sweet flavor, though not super complex with a basic mouthfeel. Decent aftertaste. Lasts 6-8 infusions.

I ordered a mystery box from The Sweetest Dew, and this was one of the teas I got. This is a wok fried Mao Feng from Qimen, which is apparently saltier and more edamame forward than regular Mao Feng. Following some instructions on TeaForum, I steeped 3 g of leaf in 120 ml of nearly boiling water for 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 seconds, plus 2, 3, 5, and 10 minutes.

The aroma of the dry leaves is of smoke, grass, and salted edamame. The first couple steeps are smokey, salty, sweet, and slightly drying, with vegetal notes similar to lettuce and edamame. Though I usually find smoke to be off-putting, this tastes like slightly charred barbecued veggies with lots of salt and is actually kind of fun. Steeps three and four are still smokey and saline while becoming more vegetal, with kale and asparagus added to the beans. By the next couple steeps, the smoke is mostly gone and the tea is increasingly vegetal, though still somewhat sweet. The final steeps have a light, vegetal flavour with some minerality.

It’s hard to give this tea a rating because it’s so far from what I’m used to drinking. However, I think it’s high quality and well worth trying if you know what to expect. The wok frying really comes forward in those first few steeps.

So I was looking for a place that sold decent quality Qimen given I had not tried this tea in any loose leaf form before. I am pleased with their Qimen. I stumbled across The Sweetest Dew as a result of my search, and decided to buy from them, partially because this white tea was also intriguing to me. I had seen this vendor in the past, but did not have an excuse to purchase from them until now.

Anyways, the term Gong Mei here is not used to denote a “third grade” tea, but rather an “heirloom cultivar” of tea. I was enticed by this description, so I got some and I am glad I did! It is certainly a different flavor compared to most other white teas I’ve tried, though in a way that is hard to describe. The tea also comes as long stems with multiple leaves per stem, which is the most unusual presentation of tea leaves I have seen.

I was unsure whether to trust this vendor on the story of the change in meaning of Gong Mei, but on further research his claim is valid. See below from Rivers & Lakes regarding one of their Gong Mei cakes:

“This tea is a true Gong Mei, which now has less to do with the plucking grade bud-to-leaf ratio and is defined by its propagation. Gong Mei can now be thought of as an heirloom varietal synonymous with the preexisting names 土茶 Tu Cha “landrace tea”, 群体种茶 Qunti Zhong Cha “thicket grown tea”, or 菜茶 Cai Cha “vegetable tea”. In short, any tea plant that has escaped cultivation and propagates itself through cross-pollination and natural seed dispersal (as opposed to asexual clonal cutting propagation) can now be recognized by as a Gong Mei. Especially in more matured garden ecologies, it is common for the garden to become feral, with new generations of mixed-cultivar plants escaping into the surrounding habitat. In this new age of reclaiming abandoned tea gardens and selling their tea as 荒野 huang ye Wild, this new categorization aims to simplify the semantics as well as make room for the plucking grade defined expressions of Bai Mu Dan and Shou Mei to be built out further.”

So I wanted to try some legit Qimen, as the only time I’ve had some is in bagged form. This was about as expected, but much better than the bagged stuff (obvy). I figured The Sweetest Dew’s option would be good and it had a good QPR.

I see what he means by “forest fragrance.” Very lightly woody with a sort of fresh note to it and some crisp air. Mild sweetness, mild astringency, and no bitterness. Lasts about 8-10 steeps.