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This is one of the last 150 g bags of oolong I got from Bok last year. I also recently ordered a bunch of 2023 oolongs, and I’m already behind in drinking them! This Dayuling was the most expensive of the 2022 oolongs, though it was a lot more affordable than DYL from other vendors. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of pineapple, cookies, honeysuckle, orchid, and citrus. The first steep has notes of orchid, sweet pea, honeysuckle, cookies, and grass. The next steep adds pineapple, butter, and minerals. Steeps three and four have lovely pineapple, orange, and sometimes even peach notes along with the buttery florals. This tea remains very soft, and it’s sometimes a challenge to pick out individual flavours. Spinach and more minerality emerge in the next couple steeps, and the tea is a little drying. Subsequent steeps are primarily floral, returning to orchid, honeysuckle, and sweet pea with some grass, minerals, and spinach.

I enjoyed this tea enough to drink it almost every day for a month, but I thought the DYL from Wang was more unique. The fruity flavours are nice, but they dissipate quickly. They also tend to pop more in clay than in porcelain and when I lengthen my steep times a bit. It probably didn’t help that this tea is more than a year old, so it might have been better if I’d gotten around to it earlier.

I had a nice Huo Shan Huang Ya from Teavivre last year, and thought it would be fun to try the same tea from another vendor for comparison. Both teas were around $18 for 50 g, meaning that the quality should be similar. Since Yunnan Craft didn’t provide brewing instructions, I used the ones from Teavivre, steeping 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot at 185F for 50, 60, 70, 90, 120, 150, 180, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted rounds.

The dry aroma is of hazelnuts, green beans, snow peas, and butter. The first steep has notes of candied hazelnuts, green beans, snow peas, grass, butter, and something fruity that’s close to melon. Asparagus appears in steep two and the tea has a starchy quality. I get corn and cornhusk in the next couple steeps, with apricot sneaking through in the aftertaste. Subsequent steeps have notes of spinach, beans, grass, apricots, and minerals.

This is a lovely yellow tea that’s perfect for spring. I think the one from Teavivre had more nutty, buttery flavours while this one is greener, though it’s hard to remember much about a tea I drank a year ago. Both are less aggressively vegetal than most green teas—a definite plus in my books!

I ordered a bunch of teas from Daxue Jiadao back in early 2022, and this is the first one I opened. I’ve been keeping it for special occasions, but sadly, I’m near the bottom of the bag and it’s now sold out. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of jammy raspberries and elderberries, forest floor, and mushrooms. The first steep has notes of strawberry, raspberry, elderberry, forest floor, hay, and mushrooms. Honey, wood, and even headier berries appear in steep two, and the woodiness of the tea makes it feel drying without any astringency. I get hints of eucalyptus and earth in the next couple steeps as the berries recede somewhat, though they’re still very apparent in the aftertaste. A little malt emerges in the next two steeps, and the woodsy notes become stronger. Subsequent rounds achieve a nice balance of soft berries with wood, malt, minerals, honey, and earth. The tea gradually diminishes in flavour over the final long steeps, but is still tasty until the end of the session. I often steep it overnight to get that last bit of jammy goodness.

This is the best purple tea I’ve had so far and is also among the best teas from Yunnan. It has all of the berry and forest notes I associate with purple teas and very little of the funkiness. As Derk mentioned, this is a meditative tea that rewards careful attention.

I bought this tea in my big spring 2022 haul from Bok, and drank it throughout most of the winter and spring. It’s wonderful, but the flavours are too well mixed and the tea too smooth to write a decent review. I wrote this when I was just finishing the bag, then lost it on my hard drive for a couple months, so here goes. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml pot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of honey, brown sugar, stewed cherries, cocoa, and wood. The first steep has notes of honey, stewed cherries, plums, cocoa, faint citrus, brown sugar, narcissus and other flowers, grass, and wood. This tea isn’t punchy like most other Taiwanese hongcha, but is soft and unassuming. A touch of astringency and some pleasant sourness pop up in steep two, along with more cherry, citrus, florals, spices (nutmeg?), and honey. The next couple steeps emphasize cocoa and rye bread notes, with the tea remaining smooth and hard to pin down. Steeps five and six are more woody, malty, drying, and grassy, though they still have a lot of fruit, honey, and florals. The next few steeps have notes of honey, malt, rye bread, wood, minerals, prunes, and grass. The tea stays sweet, smooth, and pleasant until it fades into honey water in the final long steeps.

I was told that this tea was made by someone who kept winning black tea competitions in Taiwan until he eventually retired, and this seems plausible. It doesn’t hit you in the face with bold flavours like some other Taiwanese hongcha (I miss you, Assam and Ruby 18 from What-Cha!), but all the elements are mixed harmoniously and the tea is a pleasure to drink. It doesn’t get bitter, even if it’s forgotten in the pot, and it’s both comfortable and elegant. It didn’t wow me as much as the spring 2022 Baozhong, but it also never disappointed. I missed it when it was gone and I’m ordering another bag this year.

I wrote this note during one of the recent Steepster freezes, and forgot to record which tea it was for. I think this is the one!

I’m happy to see another single-cultivar sencha in this bag of samples! I steeped 5 g of leaf in 150 ml of 140F water for 1 minute, followed by several 20 second steeps.

The dry aroma is of apple, grain, sweetgrass, gentle umami, and veggies. The first steep has a nice, thick body and notes of sweetgrass, spinach, asparagus, apple, and grain. It’s surprisingly easy going for a sencha. The next few steeps give me more apple, grain, asparagus, grass, herbs, and spinach. The fruit fades near the end of the session, but the tea never gets too bitter or harsh.

Unlike many of the Japanese greens I’ve been drinking, this tea has dimensions other than veggies. It’s a nice change of pace, and I wish I’d been able to pay more attention to it during what was apparently a hectic workday.

Wang generously included a 25 g bag of this tea as a free sample in my last big order. I’d nearly ordered it on my own, so needless to say, I was happy to see it. This tea is from spring 2022. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot using boiling water for 55, 45, 55, 65, 75, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of orchid, osmanthus, honeysuckle, coconut, and grass. The first steep has notes of orchid, osmanthus, honeysuckle, freesia, butter, grass, and cream. Like the unscented Alishan, it’s woodsy with a slightly vegetal aftertaste. The second steep really opens up, with coconut, honeydew, more osmanthus, fruit tree blossoms, honeysuckle, gardenia, lemongrass, pine, petrichor, minerals, and grass. The bottom of the cup smells really sweet, a bit like floral honeydew, although the tea itself is not too sweet. I assume this is what osmanthus smells like. The next couple steeps feature coconut, lemongrass, sugar cookies, spinach, and grass, and that distinctive osmanthus flavour. Steeps five and six still have lots of heady osmanthus florals, although the vegetal nature of the Alishan is showing through. I get petrichor and mineral notes along with the spinach and grass. The end of the session is vegetal and persistently floral, with freesia and orchid being noticeable.

I usually think of scented teas as having lower-quality base material, but this one proved me wrong. I liked it even better than their excellent regular Alishan because of the addition of the osmanthus, which made the tea even more floral and fruity. The osmanthus was a wonderful complement to the somewhat vegetal Alishan and truly enhanced the drinking experience. Daylon, some of this will be in your box!

I noticed this tea on the Mountain Stream site and was intrigued, but never got around to ordering it. Thanks, Derk, for the generous sample! I steeped slightly over 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot at 205F for 30, 40, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, 150, 180, and 240 seconds, plus some uncounted steeps.

The aroma of the loosely rolled dry leaves is of mango, guava, honeysuckle, gardenia, other florals, and spices. The first steep has notes of lilac, honeysuckle, gardenia, cream, mango, guava, orange, marzipan, spinach, grass, and chili. I’ve never had jackfruit, so can’t comment on whether it’s in the tea. I taste what might be camphor near the bottom of the cup. The second steep gives me mouth-watering notes of mango, orange, and tropical fruit, plus clove, chili, honeysuckle, lilac, other florals, camphor, and grass. The tea is a bit perfumey, but in a good way. The next couple steeps are more floral, with cream, camphor, grass, and some astringency. The mango and tropical fruit come out in the aftertaste. Steeps five and six are more grassy, though the mango, marzipan, and florals are still there. The grass, spinach, and kale become more prominent as the session ends, though the creamy mango and tropical fruit make me want to keep going.

I love fruity oolongs, so it’s no surprise that this one is a winner for me. The combination of lush tropical fruit and heady florals is wonderful, even though the tea became more astringent near the end of the session. The spices are something I rarely notice in Taiwanese oolong. It may have some rough edges, but it put a smile on my face while I was drinking it.

After my “interesting” experience with matcha, I’m happy to have picked a more standard green tea from Nio’s generous pile of samples. I steeped 5 g of leaf in a 150 ml porcelain pot using 140F water for 1 minute, plus several 20 second steeps.

The dry aroma is of cantaloupe, nuts, sweet grass, spinach, and umami. The first steep has notes of wheatgrass, spinach, cantaloupe, cream, green beans, and umami. This tea doesn’t punch me in the face like some other green teas, and is more grassy than vegetal. The veggies become more pronounced in the second steep, with more kale and spinach, while the third and fourth steeps return to being buttery, beany, and pleasant with some cantaloupe and floral overtones. Later steeps give me a peachy, grassy aftertaste. The final few steeps are generic veggies and grass, though the bitterness never gets out of hand.

This is a pleasant sencha that I wouldn’t mind revisiting. However, most of these Japanese green teas are kind of vegetal for me.

This is my first time trying matcha! I’m surprised it’s taken me so long, but I’ve never really explored Japanese green tea and I don’t have the right tools. In line with that, I steeped my 2 g sample in a 180 ml mason jar using 160F water.

After extensive shaking, I get a jar full of very green matcha that even has some foam on the top. Taking my first sip is like having a bunch of veggies hit me in the face. I get kale, spinach, asparagus, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and grass. Cameron is right that there’s no sweetness whatever, though I don’t get any hay or mustiness either. The body is thick and creamy, and did I mention very vegetal? There were some clumps at the bottom of the jar, so I must not have shaken it as well as I thought.

I think matcha might be an acquired taste for me.

I received four Dancongs from One River Tea, all of which are on the roasty side for me. I’ve always wanted to try Osmanthus Fragrance, though it seems that most of them, like this one, are heavily roasted. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot using 195F water for 7, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of osmanthus, chrysanthemum, buttered popcorn, peach, and sour roast. The first steep has nice floral, buttery aromas and top notes of orchid and osmanthus, with roast, wood, minerality, and sourness in the background that might get out of hand later. I get a pleasant peachy aftertaste a few minutes after drinking the tea. The next steep also has nice aromas and flavours of butter, osmanthus, peach, grass, honey, zucchini, apricot, and other florals, backed by a prominent roast. The third steep is similarly aromatic, with a lovely stonefruit and floral aftertaste. However, keeping it in the mouth for any longer than necessary is a mistake, as the tea is sour and astringent and reminds me of pencil shavings (more kindly described as woody?). By steep five, the florality is integrating more into the body of the tea, but the roast, wood, and minerality are becoming even stronger. The slightly sour, floral/grassy/buttery aftertaste is still pleasant. The next few steeps still have buttery floral elements, but the roast, minerality, wood, and sourness are taking over and the aftertaste is not as prominent. The tea remains floral to the end, although the bitterness is very pronounced.

This tea is kind of a Jekyll and Hyde. I love the floral, fruity aroma and aftertaste, but the roast overwhelms these flavours in the mouth. I’d say that this tea might become more integrated with time, but it’s from 2021 and I’m not sure how much longer it might take.