Verdant Tea

This arrived in the mail yesterday. I had had an unimpressive day of tea up until that point—I steeped some peach white too long, making the taste of peach gummi rings stick in my mouth; I then tried a 2010 shu pu’erh that I haven’t figured out exactly what works best for it yet. It wasn’t bad, just unremarkable, which I’m sure is because I’m still figuring it out. So I had some of my new Yunnan White Jasmine.

It smelled heavenly right away—sweet, floral, not overly so. The first steeping was fresh and pleasantly jasminey. I may not have been in a mood for jasmine white tea yesterday—I’m not sure, but I think I was looking for something roastier and darker. I enjoyed that steeping, though, and I decided to come back to the same leaves the next day with a fresh mind.

“Fresh mind” is putting it generously. I just finished a dialogue final paper for one of my classes, and I got to bed late (for me) last night and finished it this morning before handing it in. I’m kind of dragging this morning, a little spaced out, and generally tired-feeling, so a nice hot cup of tea (without caffeine!) is very welcome at this point.

So it’s the first steeping of the day, but it’s the second steep. Sweet goodness, the second steep. I feel like I’m strolling—maybe hovering a little bit—through a garden in early June, a garden full of cascading white blooms, with my mouth hanging open. This is sweet, smooth, creamy bliss. I’m sitting here half-awake with my hands wrapped around my mug and my chin stuck down into it, absorbing as much of this delicious warmth as I can.

If you’re just not in a jasmine mood the day you try this…do what I did and save the leaves for the next day. It’s more than worth it.

What is this that’s suddenly on my tongue? I’m not making it up—it’s sweet and slightly caramely. This might be the powdered sugar sensation that Geoffrey mentioned, although I’m sure no two people will get the exact same experience out of this…(for the paper I just finished I’ve been talking about Kant, so this connects in a surprisingly analogous way.) This tea is full of surprises.

If that was just the second steep…gosh, what will the next ones be like?

Very happy to have received this in the Steepster Select box … nice to have it back in my stash. The black teas – well all the teas, really – that Verdant Tea selects for their inventory are just stellar. This one is no exception.

Rich and flavorful. Bold. Chocolate-y. It tastes a little like chocolate malt-o-meal which is something I loved as a kid, and I can never seem to find at the grocery store any more. But I think this might be even better … well, it is better, because it’s tea! It has such a lovely note of caramel, a deep roasted flavor, as if the caramel was cooked in a copper pot until it was right at that golden brown color … and then held on the heat for just a few moments longer to deepen the flavor just a bit more.

So VERY good. It is teas like this that will make me miss the Steepster Select box. Some of the teas were kind of like “meh…” especially when I’ve tried them before. But I’ve tried this one before, and I was thrilled that it was in the box … because it is really so very good.

I love this tea.

Backlog: I enjoyed the last that I had on hand of this tea a little earlier this afternoon. Here is my full-length review of this tea: http://sororiteasisters.com/2011/12/27/laoshan-northern-black-from-verdant-tea-2/

This is incredibly good. I have the Laoshan Northern, which is now sold out, but, the Autumn harvest is what is now avaiable through Verdant. I wonder how different in flavor the two harvests are. Anyway…

This is very good… at first, I am reminded very much of a Fujian black tea with the rich, full body of this tea and the chocolate-y undertones. But as I continue to sip, I notice some differences. This tea has more of a honey-like sweetness versus the caramel-y undertones I might experience with a Fujian black, and this one has more of a malty front note. Both are spectacular teas … a good tea cupboard would include teas from both regions!

Very yum, this Laoshan black!

I cold brewed this. I believe the flavors I mentioned [and everyone else] about this tea are more subtle but definitely there. It is so easy to make a nice jar of good green or a greener oolong and not worry about water temperature. Just keep an eye on it. Shake it from time to time. Smell the aroma. Usually a rule of thumb is a 24 hour steep. Pour it, strain it and enjoy it….

The dry leaf is beautiful and fresh. After maybe 2 minutes in the Gaiwan I have an irresistable aroma of a very fine green tea. I am definitely getting a slight banana aroma. This is as good as it’s spring ancestor although I feel it is a bit lighter. I am getting the bananas foster after I have swallowed the tea and not while it’s lingering in my mouth. Tea can do some pretty cool things at times. This is my second tasting. Last night I wasn’t bashful with the amount of leaf and it was very flavorful. Not that it’s not as flavorful now. It’s just showing me another complexity altogether. I’m steeping cup #2 much longer. I am far from a traditionalist in terms of preparation. I like to tweak until I find what I feel is the best. I do try to follow the guidelines that have been followed for thousands of years but sometimes one must stray to find their own tea voice. Cup #2 has a honey sweetness. I’m getting a slight chill when I drink it. I consider this a plus. My mouth is watering. This truly a very fine tea. Cup #3 is soft and subtle. Whenever a tea gives me the chills and has a fine flavor and aroma I have to recommend it highly. But for some reason my phone never allows me to rate it numerically. 96….

It’s a sipdown… after lunch treat.
I am definitely noticing the mustiness and mesquite aroma of this one today. I can’t remember how I steeped this last time but it seems stronger than I remember (today I did a few short infusions in the gaiwan). This really smells great and is taking the chill right out of my afternoon (it’s windy here). Farewell – 2005 Twin Elephants Shu…. see my previous notes for more details.

I’m still trying to find my way in and around the world of pu-erh. I just had a 21 year old wild tree pu-erh so perhaps it isn’t a good time to try something else. There is some interesting stuff happening here with this one. To me, this smells fishy but nobody else seemed to have remarked on it. For a shu it is coming up a bit on the light side in terms of color. I am trying to keep these infusions to under a minute. 3 so far. More on the fruity/berry side than others I’ve had as of late. I am not getting heavy brown sugar at all, more citrusy from the get go. It really has a nice personality which is kind of a bonus. Not thinking I will need to keep this around for the permanent collection but it would probably excel as a digestif. I will hang on to the rest of my sample and revisit it over time.

With my first sip, I say “this is a Dragon Well?” Then I read the label again, and see that it is Dragon Well Style… not Dragon Well. And yes, it does look like Dragon Well, especially the dry leaves which are flat but a bit brighter green than most Dragon Well teas that I’ve tried.

But the flavor is different to me than a typical Dragon Well. While I love a good Dragon Well, I’m REALLY loving this too. There is an intense sweetness – like sugar! – and yes, I do taste a caramelized banana flavor too (the description suggests a bananas foster taste … and I get that, sans the cinnamon).

This is my tasting note for the first two infusions, more to come!

This was one of the samples that David kindly gave to me to try. Wow. So far I have done 5 steeps and it gets more complex. I get grape jelly on the first steep and then clove. I might have to stock this in the new year.

Thanks for the sample :)

Oh wow! This is the cleanest, sweetest, crispiest, nicest Jasmine I have had to date! Most Jasmine’s I can take or leave…but this one…I will TAKE any day! Very nice! No funky floral aftertaste…smooth and fairly creamy, even! I really like this! Very VERY good!

solid.

pretty good.

I bought this tea because I wanted to use it as a mixer for a few other teas. I was going to blend it with the Laoshan Black tea and a few of the pu’ers that I purchased. Before I did that I wanted to try it by itself. I did not make a big pot of it just did a nice sample size in my tasting cup.
The dry mixture was spicy smelling with a citrus undertone in the back. After brewing it, it reminded me of the times that I was sick as a kid. My aunt would chop up some ginger root and some orange peel and let it boil on the stove for a few hours. It would make the whole house smell amazing. She would add in some lemon juice and at touch of clover honey, and tell me to drink up as got ready to go out with her college friends. Being a kid with asthma this would make my chest and throat feel better in the long run . The fennel and saffron add a nice flavor to it as well. This reminds my of Samovar’s Orange Ginger Herbal Blend, with more kick.

The dry “bud” has a nice woodsy smell. I was eager to get home to brew it. The wet bud was a little musty but had a sweet cedar aroma. I did not know how long to brew it so I did it for 3 mins. It seemed to be enough to get the flavor from the buds. I don’t know what to say about the tea…I might have to come back to it.

After drinking this again I can see how this tea can grow on you. I have steeped it 6 times. 2mins,5mins,10mins,15mins,20mins, 1 hour. The buds really do take off on the flavor. I will have to try the new silver buds.

Well I was on the fence about buying this. I have not had earl grey in a long time without the word crème following it. So I did not know if I should get the Golden Earl or the Lavender Earl Green. So here it is the Golden won. The bag smelled amazing. Orange and honey with light Bergamot scent in the back.
I am writing this note after drinking it twice. The first time was not the best experience. After brewing it and tasting it something was a little off. Sadly I can not explain what it was. The dry and wet leaf smelled great, just when I drank it it did not come together.
I decided to try it again this morning. Much better for sure. The orange and golden buds was right there in front. For the first cup I did not add anything, which I usually don’t. The second steep I wanted to add a little honey.The bergamot was there in the back. Not overpowering the tea.
I used more tea the second time I drank it…I guess that was the problem the first time.

It’s been a while since I went for a tea blend, but the recent tasting notes on this one stirred my curiosity enough to give it a go. I asked David for a sample of this when I saw him recently, and he was happy to send me home with enough for two drinking sessions. I just brewed it up in the past hour, needing to shake off my grog from the long caffeinated work day and night of dancing that preceded my very reluctant rise from the bed this morning.

I put two and a half teaspoons of this blend in my Ruci pot and proceeded with my typical gongfu brewing routine for Chinese blacks: immediate wash, then 5-second first steep, followed by +5 seconds for each infusion following. My initial reaction, the moment the liquor passed my lips on the first steep, exactly echoed the one-sip-wow! that ssajami mentioned recently. There is a beautiful sparkling bite at the front of the tongue as soon as I take each sip. I implicate the formidable alliance of Laoshan Black, Big Red Robe and Xingyang Imperial in yielding this rich sparkle through their combined command of that quality. This is true synergy! The Yunnan Golden Buds further enrich and sweeten the deal, making for a very luxurious texture and flavor profile.

If my description of the above synergy is framed in the language of organized crime, it’s because drinking this blend has made me a bit shifty-eyed, as though it were too good to be legal. I have tasted each of the teas in this blend separately, and they are all great and powerful teas, but I wasn’t expecting (really… could not imagine) the indomitable strength that would come of their conspiring together. I imagine this blend is like an exacting and perfectly organized plot to execute a jewel heist of historic proportions… and all of its culprits managed to capture their loot and escape without a hitch.

This blend is super, and upon trying it I have new respect for David’s taste… which is something I thought I already had the highest respect possible for. What an excellent surprise this was! I will definitely be buying a supply of this blend, and exploring more of the Alchemy offerings.

I got this one as part of my Black Friday/birthday tea order and after reading all of the glowing reviews decided to save it for my birthday (instead of including it in the massive tea-drinking binge that usually follows a tea order).

Oh…..wow. I was not prepared for how incredibly awesome this tea would be! It might have just snagged the spot for my favorite tea ever, and I am not usually the type to have an absolute favorite (can’t leave any tea out, you know) Flowery, sweet, nutty, yummy…and I think I might have oversteeped it but it didn’t hurt it at all.

Backlog: I prepared some of this tea to enjoy while watching TV with my hubby. Still as lovely as it was the first time I enjoyed it.

Yay for jasmine! When I saw others posting their tasting notes about this tea, I knew I had to try it. I absolutely love jasmine, and I have been so very impressed with all that I’ve tasted from Verdant thus far, I knew that this would be an amazing tea experience.

And, indeed, it is.

The jasmine is a strong flavor, but, it does not taste perfume-y in any way. For those of you who have tried bad jasmine teas in the past, this is an example of a GOOD jasmine… not just good, but GREAT jasmine. The flowery flavor is fresh, sweet, and when brought together with the creamy notes from the white tea, tastes incredibly indulgent. The White Yunnan has some of the qualities one would expect from a black Yunnan, specifically, the peppery spice tones… but of course, with a delicate white tea, they are more delicate. The warmth of the spice flavor is a pleasant contrast to the sweet jasmine.

An absolutely wonderful jasmine. Definitely one of my favorites that I’ve tried thus far.

This was my sample from my 2nd order from verdant. I get a little surprised every time with a great sample…since I leave it up to them.The last sample was the Sun Dried Jing Shan Green tea, which I purchased more of with this order.
The scent of Jasmine was just right. When I opened the box it was the first thing that I smelled, which confused me because I did not think I ordered anything with Jasmine. It was at the bottom of the box…Yunnan White Jasmine. The smell was not artificial smelling at all. This is my second white jasmine tea. The first was the Steepster Select pearls…which I traded. I did not think it had a good balance of jasmine and white.
I decided to brew this in my new tasting set from Adagio. Since my gaiwan broke this was the next best thing for this tea. The jasmine was not over powering the white at all. A nice balance. The second steep came and went quickly. I was wondering where the apricot jam flavor was going to come through. It was not until my second to last sip that it hit. Very nice! The third steep the apricot jam flavor was even more prominent in the tea. I am now on my 4th steep and the apricot is still going strong with the jasmine.
While I am not typically a white tea girl….this was a nice indulgence.

Thanks for the sample. :)

Almost through my Verdant Alchemy blend adventure. I have been eyeing this on the site for a while now. Out of the 11 teas that I purchased last order I wanted to save this towards the last of my blends run. This is very very very good. Buttery and floral are the key words that jump out when you are drinking this. The orange highlights the buttery sweetness well. I am on my 4th steep and the orange is coming out a little more then before.

For an oolong girl this was a real treat.Great blend for sure!

There was just too much talk about Verdant here to not at least give them a try, especially their green tea and pu’er, so when they had an excellent deal recently, I took them up.

This was one of the samples I requested. I have very limited experience with pu’er… just two others; one ‘beginner-friendly’ shu from a tea store that wasn’t too bad, and a sample of Guan Zi Zai 2005 from Life in Teacup.

I don’t have any concerns about sheng; to me, aged tea is no more strange than other aged things, cheese, wine, etc. So approaching this tea was no concern. In fact, I imagine shu is to tea as cabbage is to kim chee, sauerkraut, etc. and I love certain things that have been fermented well, so I can imagine enjoying shu a lot, as well. On the other hand, I have heard a lot of horror stories about it, so I would probably approach it more carefully.

I also enjoy (to a certain extent) earthy and smokey flavors, like mate (which is almost always smoked) or houjicha, so pu’er hasn’t seemed a strange concept to me, rather very intriguing.

I followed Verdant’s instructions, and using my makeshift gaiwan, put the remainder of my sample (3-4g) in, rinsed once, and used 2-3oz water per infusion, going up to about 17.

The leaf looked like it had actually been loose pu’er rather than pressed into a cake (the leaves were not stuck together and looked like dried, unrolled, dong fang mei ren [oriental beauty]), and as their description states, it sounds like the method of stone pressing causes the leaf to be loosely packed into the cake.

Since I have so little experience with sheng, I don’t know how that influences my impression of this tea. The first steepings (esp the first) had an underlying citrus-like sweetness. It wasn’t sweet like the returning sweetness in the back of the throat, but left an almost sweet flavor somewhere in the middle.

The aroma was a smokey-woody-earthiness, similar to mate but much smoother. I could say it was almost like what you would imagine an earthy cave to smell like (“not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole”).
EDIT: I meant to add here – this was the best part about it for me and delicious!
Besides this smokey-woody flavor, which in one steeping reminded me of a nice savory/salty stew, it was a very smooth tea. I didn’t get much else from it, actually.

Late into the steepings, I experienced a very mouth-drying sensation that was almost unpleasant. I was hoping this would signal a shift in what the tea became/tasted like, but unfortunately it seemed to mean that the tea had only a couple pleasant (but not overly interesting) infusions left.

So, take my long review as you like, since while I know I am someone who could probably really enjoy pu’er, I don’t know a lot of what to expect (what makes one good or not). As far as whether I simply liked this tea- yes, I did, but it just wasn’t the same as Japanese greens.

I think I knew this before I started, but I don’t believe pu’er is something I will ever get into, at least not for this season of life. I don’t have hours to do long tea sessions and many infusions. The best I can get most days is one pot/4 infusions, but more often it is 3 infusions (for a Japanese tea, which is an easier brewing method than gaiwan, imo). I will certainly enjoy a few pots of pu’er here and there, but I simply don’t have the time to do it proper justice (via gaiwan).

Unless, someone who has a lot of experience with it can say that the western method works well? If I could do the western method and drink 3-4 infusions, instead of 15-20, that would be doable. Let me know if that really does good sheng/shu justice and what the parameters for each infusion could be (in general).

I was a little fuzzy headed this morning after a night of tossing and turning, so instead of having my morning green tea I thought I would start the day with a kick. Breakfast Tea sounded like what I needed, but my tin of Scottish Blend was empty. Hmm, good opportunity to try the Verdant Tea Imperial Breakfast for the first time.

The aroma of the dry leaves, fresh from the bag, are truly intoxicating. Mostly Laoshan Northern Black, with a touch of the big leaves of Yunnan and a bare hint of oolong. After 4 minutes of steeping, the color of the tea is not very dark, but the aroma is amazing and I can’t wait any longer.

The first taste is the wonderful fruity cocoa flavor of the Northern Black and an aftertaste of the golden Yunnan. Smooooth! The pu’erh and oolong are playing a game of tag on the back of my tongue bringing a full body and woodsy roundness. My mind is searching for some kind of jolt that usually comes with Breakfast Blends, but instead there is just the slow, steady unfolding of warm flavors. Very nice! It is like awakening from a deep slumber from the sounds of the forest or pleasant music instead of the jarring sound of an alarm clock.

I did my meditation, prepared for the day, and now am enjoying another cup of this beautiful tea. The second steeping brings forth new adventures from the blend of teas. I think this is so much more than just for breakfast… I can drink this all day long. :)