Spring 2016 harvest,
After really enjoying my last dark roasted oolong from master zhang, im quite interested to try this, also I’ve got like.. $250 worth in tea-related things in transit to me right now lol I’m losing my patience waiting for all of it
there’s kind of a dry burnt roasty .. woody earthy autumn leafy dry leaf aroma,
in my warmed gaiwan it’s a lot of the same, but there’s this.. chocolate, hazelnut thing behind, with some toothpastey mintiness .. This doesn’t seem like it’ll be as pleasant as the last one. too autumn-leafy, but hey we’ll give it a go,
I smelled the gaiwan after the first steep and it was like gross burnt tar, and like.. just like kitchen smoke, like seared food, and then it just sort of melted away to this lovely sweet brown sugar aroma.. That was a weird experience.
So I do get a lot of the autumn leaf in the taste, a very roasty kind of thing, again with the same sort of roastiness of a dan cong behind all of the dark charred flavours, with a very strong cooling sensation, there’s some sort of floralness and maybe some apricot notes, there’s a lingering astringency that leaves the front part of my tongue dry
I get a lot of honey and brown sugar in the second steep’s aroma. The autumn leaf is already starting to fade in the second steep, there’s definitely some mango as well, it kinda tastes like a mi lan xiang dancong to me right now, just.. over-roasted and burnt, and the cooling is very strong.
I’m very back and forth, there’s a lot of autumn leaves obviously, which I’m finding.. really unpleasant, but there’s some really nice feelings and a few good flavours and aromas occasionally, but sometimes it even smells like.. garbage,
It’s very slowly mellowing down, I think…. I get some sort of lemon on the fifth steep, but I think i’ve decided that I don’t like this. It’s too woody and burnt tasting and it’s all the things I always find wrong with dark roasted oolongs, there’s a bit of redemption in the mouthfeel and in the later aromas – peach, apricot, lemon, some hazelnut and chocolate, but I can’t get past the taste, and in the end that’s all that matters
I think I’m done with the session, if you’re reading this because you want to get some dark roasted oolong from verdant, go get the Qilan instead.
