“I feel awful that I preordered this tea, got it in May and never got around to drinking it till now. The tea smells very fragrant and fresh. What makes this tea session more special is this tea is...” Read full tasting note
“I don’t know why I don’t drink Tieguanyin more often. It’s not like I don’t have any, in fact I have a ton of it! There are a bunch of them left over from when I was in Verdant’s TOMC & TOMCR,...” Read full tasting note
“Coldsteeping! My very first cold steep. I started this about 4 hours ago. It is much more astringent than when made as a hot tea, but the green and floral flavors are really coming out!” Read full tasting note
“I drank this tea (#74) a few times in the last week. I had a gongfu session with it over the weekend, drank a western brew a couple of days ago, and finished it off this morning in another western...” Read full tasting note
On our spring trip to China, we were lucky enough to meet Master Zhang, a native of Anxi and lifetime Tieguanyin farmer. In mid-April, the very earliest harvests were just being finished. We sat in Master Zhang’s family home and drank this tea just three days after he finished it. The early spring Tieguanyin from Master Zhang’s 1000+ meter terraced mountain tea fields in Daping, Anxi has a fresh vibrant quality unlike any Tieguanyin we have tried before.
While most Tieguanyin is simply floral, this spring harvest tastes almost wild, with complex notes of pine, sweetgrass, mineral, and a crisp apple texture. The body of this tea is as creamy as can be, full and thick with vanilla notes. The creamy body lingers on the palate in the aftertaste like saffron.
The floral elements of this Tieguanyin are bright and sunny like daffodil and marigold. They seem to blossom on the palate, leaving behind caramel sweetness. Sipping this tea is uniquely refreshing and quenching, a masterful embodiment of this unique, early spring harvest, picked a full three weeks before the majority of the crop.
Master Zhang’s tea fields stretch across the side of a mountain that is almost always covered in mist. It is so high up that the day we visited, it was actually in a cloud. The spring water feeding the tea is pristine, crystal clear and sweet as sugar. We picked leaves right off of Mr. Zhang’s tea plants and ate them fresh, revealing the sweet, pure chlorophyl-packed nature of his tea. Master Zhang and all the farmers in his hillside in Daping are committed to fully organic farming techniques. The fresh flavor of the tea shows off their hard work.
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