Huang Zhi Xiang Phoenix Mountain Dancong Oolong

What a fascinating tea! Thanks to both Geoffrey and David for the insightful information about this tea’s extraordinary and rare history. I really enjoyed reading everyone’s saga of complexity with their tasting notes. Here’s what I experienced, cup by cup:

8 steeps, 8-40 seconds.
The first thing that hit me when I opened the bag was a smell that reminded me of the tea at the Chinese restaurant my parents always brought me to when I was a kid. I take this to be a very good sign. Now on to the taste.

1. Grassy white tea with floral notes.
2. A bitter smokiness emerges.
3. Dark & smoky, but a nutty vegetal flavor emerges, like green beans.
4. A citrus smell is now standing out, with a flavor like zubrowka – vanilla, buffalo grass.
5. A faint lilac begins to pop out.
6. More vanilla, macadamia.
7. Caramel & rock candy.
8. The aroma of fennel and just a hint of sarsaparilla.
The scent of the leaves after steeping: Grapefruit, fennel, earth.

What an elaborate network of flavors! Great by itself or as an accompaniment to a spicy meal. Both captivating and calming all at once.

Mmmm I need to revisit this again, but today I feel the ick, so I shall backlog. This though, this was a beautiful balance of soft buttery mellow oolong with a nice punch of roasted Dan Cong. In fact this was right in between Teavana’s Emerald Dan Cong (which I love the buttery mouth feel of but lacks flavor) and their Phoenix Mountain Dan Cong (which is too roasty for me) and was by far my favorite of the three at the oolong tasting I hosted a month ago. This is definitely the Dan Cong I would return to and I shall, just not today.

I tried this one once with 3 grams.
Absoutely delightfull, strong, sweet&sour passionfruit-apricot scent radiating from the gaiwan after the rinse.
highly infuseable.
will post more once I experience this one a few more times.

So I’m a bit of a cheat, I actually spent yesterday working out with kettlebells instead of boiling the kettle.
I did however drink up some remainders of the bag of Dancong oolong in some quick pour over. I keep thinking it’ll taste as good as the first time, when I said to myself that’s my favorite tea. The first time I drank this one, it had such a nice mellow and smooth mouthfeel. I sipped it out of my eggshell tea cup and was smelling it the whole time, a sort of sweet autumn leaf pile smell.
You might have guessed that I steeped it multiple times, and that’s just what happened. It’s going from full bodied to just a whisper in a matter of minutes. The journey it’s taking me on is wonderful.
I soo very much liked this tea sample from Verdant and no doubt will continue my search for other Phoenix teas from China in my travels.
Lately though I’ve not left the city, working so hard to finish learning sufficiently for my PCAT exam in two months.
Maybe when I’ve got into med school I’ll get a hold of some more Phoenix. Until then, Aut Viam, Aut inveniam faciam!!

I was actually pretty excited to try this one. I must admit, it’s lighter than I expected. Still, quite complex. There’s a little honey suckle. Some definate floral, fruity, tangyness. Sandlewood. The finish is actually a little bitter. I recommend a second wash. Maybe a slightly cooler water temp, as well. 2nd & 3rd steeps: Less wood, more floral, finish is still a bit bitter. I’m not sure about this one. The woodsy and floral notes are pronounced, and that’s great. But, it could stand to be a bit sweeter, by my standards. Also, it’s a little drying. Perhaps, I’m just not in a oolong mood, today?

Wow, holy wow this tea is something else.
My mind is a little too blown to pick out little flavors and describe it in fancy terminology but I will say that I set up my tea-table and brewed this up as something to sip on while doing some housecleaning and ended up just sitting down and savoring it. It was so good it required my full attention.

The first three or four infusions, I will say, wow’d me the most. Later on the flavors became a bit more muted, until I went and reboiled the water for hotter, longer steepings. The flavors started popping again then, but it tasted like a completely different tea!

I have enough of this tea left for one or two more sessions— I’ll have to make sure to take better notes then.

when i smell the leaves dry, they smell like roasted oolong.

when i smell the leaves wet, the smell is intensified.

when i smell the brewed tea, it smells like roasted oolong and sweet.

when i taste the brewed tea, it tastes very sweet.

many thanks to toad thomas for this wonderful tea :D

Nice :)
I have quite a good bit of this one , I even have some that is still unopened somehow (Hell Yeah!) and tho I’ve had it for a while but it is still quite nice.
Woodsy, vegetal, slightly sweet and even floral at times with juicy fruity notes like a peach or apricot and a pleasant astringency with citrus notes on the end.
Many steps from this one also, very good tea :)

I ordered three teas from them this past week, after being a HUGE fan of their Laoshan Black and Qilan Wuyi, and was pretty disappointed. I’m not getting much of anything from the aroma other than an unpleasant smoky smell. I also got a bag of the Laoshan Black 1st picking which smelled very similar to the later harvest version, but with a noticeable vegetal aroma… the problem is that it was so sour I couldn’t even drink it. I’m not sure if this was from improper storage that allowed bacteria to grow, often attributed to really sour tasting tea, or if this is how it was supposed to taste. Really disappointed with this most recent order from them. I will not be ordering from them again.

Drank up the last of this sample, alas…

This tea is, for me, fine to drink even in the evening; it’s mellow and soothing, and not over-energizing at all. The flavor is still richly complex and difficult to describe, and entrancing in that I don’t feel like having anything else for a while after I’ve drank it. By the way, I shared some of the sample with my dad (he of the innumerable teapots) when he was in town, and it has been family-approved as “something really special”.