Charcoal Roasted Gan De Village Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea of Anxi

(Spring 2023 harvest) Interesting, prominent roast character, almost a quality of tar or petrol. And more of a roast vegetal, radish than fruit or floral character. Body is smooth but misses some briskness and energy for me.

Sweet and warming, nice combination of sweet and flowery aspects with a strong charcoal roast. Nice really long aftertaste that adds a lot of substance to this tea. Most oolongs feel too watery and perfumy for me, but this seems like an oolong that can be easily enjoyed by a puer guy like me.

Am running a little tea demo course and ordered teas from YS due to a very limited budget and bc I didn’t want to gamble with Verdant again lol. Anyway, have 6 teas, which I ran through today with a friend (more beginner to tea) over the course of 4 hours, and so these are quick impressions and transcribed from notes, and are somewhat haphazardly done.

August 2021 batch, YS US.

2.2g, 60 mL gaiwan (really like it, but warning that practical volume is less), Brita filtered tap, 212f, quick rinse.

dry leaves: roasted green smell.
wet leaves: roast.

Not very strong, quite bland, some hint of sugar and roast in taste, w/ slight minty aspect. Slight bitter roasted aspect when steeped longer, along w/ dry woodiness. quite dull and unexciting. Stopped after 4 steeps. My friend thought it was bitter, but I just thought it tasted bland, so YMMV.

0.22c/g. Neither of us liked this one, for separate reasons. Pass.

I’m not sure if I got an unusual batch, or if this tea always tastes this way… I tried the Autumn 2020 harvest. The leaves smell straight-up burnt. Some of that charring comes through in the taste; the rest is classic Anxi oolong. It’s interesting, but the burnt taste doesn’t really add to the tea in my opinion; I’d rather have a standard tie guan yin. Perhaps the batch I got was just slightly too heavily roasted.