Zhu Rong Yunnan Black

Hi Steepster! It’s been a while :D Hope I haven’t been forgotten. D:
Finally trying this one for the first time.

I love the body of this tea. It’s so thick, and creamy and feels sort of silky on your tongue. I don’t really get chocolately notes so much, but more of cream, a touch of pepper, and a hint of floral at the finish.

Looking forward to drinking this many more times to fully ‘unlock’ the flavor so to speak. So far so good! :)

Oh my goodness delicious. I don’t have time to do a good review right nwo, but I just wanted to make myself a note that this is really good, plain or with milk, possibly my favorite black from Verdant so far!
I’m on steep 7 so far.

I ended up steeping this at least 15 times – I don’t usually go that high, even where it’s indicated. I iced some overnight, which brought out the sweet malty/wheat flavors

2.5g leaf, 3.5oz water, gongfu style

I’m only going to post a brief tasting note since I wanted to sit and enjoy my tea this morning. I wanted to make sure to order something that I hadn’t had an opportunity to try yet when I visited the tasting room and this tea fit the bill perfectly.

This is an excellent tea to start the morning with, I’ve always been partial to having a Yunnan for my morning cup. It is especially nice since this one started out cold and overcast, I think autumn is finally here.

The flavors of this tea were dark and malty with a hint of chocolate. I can’t really describe anything deeper than that since I was eating a chai spiced doughnut (or two) with this. I will say that this tea, like most from Verdant resteep incredibly well. I lost count of how many steeps this produced, but it was enough that I had to ask for more water, so I’m thinking 5-6.

This was an excellent way to start my morning.

The leaves are very pretty, with the light and dark, large twisty leaves. My nose is a little stuffy today but the leaves smell sweet potato-ish.
I followed Verdants western instructions- 2 teaspoons of leaf per cup of water, steeped for 1.5 minutes. The first steep has the expected sweet potato flavor but is also strangely spicy; there’s fleeting sweet honey notes and something else I can’t identify. I’m intrigued! More on this later..

2/3/14 An evening tea. 3g/100ml gaiwan/212F Washed. Raisinets. The scent of this tea in the dry leaf and the wet is a delicious chocolatey raisiny goodness that reminds me of raisinets. The cup is rich and a touch bitter – with a sugar cube in the bottom of the cup this tea is delicious. A drop of milk would send it into dessert territory. An excellent example of the sweet side of Yunnan blacks. The leaf held well through five steeps, and could probably support more.

Normally when I have a Yunnan, I think, yep, that was a yunnan. No surprises, just a straight forward, enjoyable cup.

Then I had this cup.

Woah. This is both sweet and black or cayenne peppery at the same time. And some chocolate pudding mixed in? I don’t know! This is one crazy ass yunnan! I can’t get my head around it!

The wet leaf here actually has a very similar aroma to the golden fleece, but sharper. You know this is going to be black tea, not red.

My wife just handed me a square of Theo 70% chocolate with orange and I’m trying to get that off my palate more thoroughly before I start insisting that this tea has notes of bitter cacoa and orange zest ;-)

That being said, the two pair remarkably well. This tea lacks the long, lingering sweetness of the dian hong, but it has a thick mouth feel and does linger, although not nearly as long.

This is a truly excellent black tea. Something like a fig reduction over lamb — a risk, too easily off the rails but so fantastic if the balance is just right.

I suspect this is a tea that can very easily be mis-steeped.

Today is the first day of my “diet”. I really hate that word. I’m not looking to lose weight for vanity reasons. I just am not in the market to replace my clothing and I haven’t been eating the healthiest foods recently, and I’d like to get back to eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts and fewer potato chips and soy ice cream. I mention all of this because after drinking 2 cups of this today, I felt like I had just had a double espresso. I’m not sure if it was this tea in particular or it was the caffeine combined the fact that I’d eaten very little today. Who knows.

I was surprised by the savoriness of this tea’s aroma and flavor. I expected it to be much sweeter (based on nothing because I hadn’t read anything about this one since I ordered it). I enjoyed this very much, but I drank it out of Lifefactory bottle, so I couldn’t get a lot of the aroma. Rating may be changed after I enjoy a proper cup or gong fu session with this.

This is the tea that I decided to sip on and resteep throughout the day. I only had a little packet of this, so when I fell in love with it, I decided to hoard it a bit and save it for a figurative rainy day. I think that was last winter. Anyway, I busted it back open and I think that I may have waited a little too long because it was much weaker today than I had remembered. Not only was it weak, but it also just tasted like a plain-ish black tea instead of having all the nuanced and intricate flavors that I remember and loved so much. It wasn’t bad or anything, but it just wasn’t quite as special as I remember. I still have some left, so I’m hoping that maybe I was just a terrible tea maker today, and that the rest of this tea will be back to my normal deliciously lovely tea.

I barbarically over-steeped this one (Western style in one of my Tea Forte set-ups) this morning, on my first try, but it was still fantastic! A little over-astringent but not quite bitter. Actually, it was beautifully sweet with great earthy, spicy cocoa notes. One steep only, unfortunately. I’ll have more to say when I make it back to this one.