Dayulin

This is my one hundredth tasting note on Steepster! To celebrate, I’m reviewing a tea that I bought in 2016, but that I only opened a few weeks ago. It was ridiculously inexpensive for a Da Yu Ling, and I’m sad that the business appears to be closed. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

This tea is very sweet for a Da Yu Ling, and has notes of cream, honey, florals, spinach, vanilla, cucumber, and Granny Smith apple in the first steep. It also has a heavy, viscous body and no astringency. Some citrus and slightly herbaceous notes appear in the second steep. A previous reviewer noted that the sweetness is like agave, and this is an apt description; I’d swear there was some form of sugar in this.

The florals all but disappear by the fifth steep, leaving a combination of sweet, vegetal, and creamy. Though the vegetal notes increase in subsequent rounds, with lettuce and spinach predominating, it still retains its sweetness until the end of the session.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable tea, though its sweetness reminds me more of a green Dong Ding than of other Da Yu Lings I’ve had. I enjoyed my sample of IdesTea’s Li Shan a bit more, but this bag will be easy to finish.

So, I think IDEStea’s gone out of business, the website is gone. Its too bad, I was definitely going to repurchase, once I ran out of these oolongs. I might just email the IDEStea guy, see if he has stock lying around.

Anyways, so I have this on my ‘hall of fame’ already. I haven’t gotten around to reviewing it.

So yeah, at first, it’s super sweet, almost sugary, with notes of cooked spinach, and crispy sweet carrots, with a decent amount of creaminess, it’s almost too sweet, like syrupy with vanilla, and a hint of cinnamon, creamy orange, light and suppressed flowers. It has a very pleasant astringency, and a very nice, dense thickness. Cucumber, hints of basil, sweet peas.

There’s a bit of a soapy/perfumey taste that comes through in the middle, alongside the cream, vanilla and spinachy-cucumbery vegetals, it’s thick, heavy, sweet, even with a bit of a honey-like quality, or ooh! Like agave. Also lemon-lime, lychee.

You know, I really love this tea. It has nothing I dislike, which almost never happens in an oolong, they either fall into roastiness or deep into florals, and this is neither! which keeps me coming back. This is what I look for.

This is my first Da Yu Ling oolong. I thought it was pretty good, but I’m glad I got it at the rather affordable price it was offered by Ides Tea. I might have to try one of the hella expensive ones at some point too just for comparison’s sake. Unlike many green oolongs I’ve tried, this one was best by a good margin with boiled water.

Pretty thick and creamy texture with a decently intense floral flavor in most steeps. If I increased the steep time too quickly it got a little cloying and unpleasant – this one seems to do best with flash steeps for the first five steeps or so, then can be slowly increased after that. I also noticed some other sweet flavors, kind of like honey, underneath the floral, mostly in the mid-steeps. This was good, but I think my favorite from Ides so far is still the Alishan.