2020 Old Bush Lapsang Souchong

I’ve wanted to try Wuyi Origin for a while, and a free shipping offer a couple weeks before Black Friday 2020 was the perfect excuse. I picked up three Dan Congs, three Lapsang Souchongs, a black Dan Cong, and two Wuyi rock teas (as I wanted to try some higher-quality versions before giving up on the style entirely). This was the most expensive Lapsang in my cart, and I remember buying it because the description mentioned it was fruity. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot in boiling water for 7, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of sweet potatoes, gooseberries, honey, wood, and malt. The first steep has notes of gooseberries, sweet potatoes, honey, maple syrup, malt, baked bread, oakwood, and florals. Although the dry aroma wasn’t that promising, I can immediately tell that I like this. The next steep adds zucchini, more wood, orchid, and pine. The third steep becomes more fruity, with lemon and strawberry accents and a vegetal and grassy backbone that lingers in the aftertaste. The fruit lasts until the fifth steep, when the tea once again becomes dominated by sweet potato, maple syrup, oak, malt, and honey. This continues well into steep ten, when earth and mineral notes emerge. The tea remains sweet until the end of the session.

I love the combination of oddball flavours in this tea, as well as its thick body, good longevity, and persistent aftertaste. I can tell this is a high-quality Lapsang Souchong. I wish the fruit had lasted longer, though. I look forward to comparing it to the other two Lapsangs I ordered from this company.

One of the top teas I was looking to from our trade!

I’ve only had Wuyi Origin a few times, and always miss out on the season of teas I like from it due to indecision with shipping and which tea to pick. Most of the Wuyi Origin Teas I’ve had were from swaps, though I have a feeling that some of the black teas I’ve had from Trident were Wuyi origin teas.

First off, the dry leaf gave me some deeply woody impressions of maple and oak treas, and deep savory qualities of freshly baked crescent rolls. Testing it out after 10ish seconds, the flavor combo was awesome. Transitions were from floral, to oak, to maple, and then some lemon rind thrown just before the finish as it returns to malty and bordering breadsy. Second steep was 4 seconds longer, close to 14 sec, and the same flavors continued but with a really nice malty quality, being mostly savory and sweet. They pegged potato, which I can taste a little off like yams or sweet potato.

It inspired me to cook some maple miso teriyaki tempeh slices. It complimented the third brew of the tea so well, with some of the malt notes matching the weird salty sweet savory white miso and the dark maple I added in the sauce. As for the steep, it’s got a interesting minty finish after the floral oak, malt, pine in that order.

I ran out of drinking water, so I lessened the serving to 2.5 oz and released after 20 sec, and have yet to exceed that amount in brew five. I could have let it steep longer, but it was still rich. The oak and pine were heavy, bordering on resin or tree sap,. This tea reminds me a lot of the Floral Lapsang I had from Trident, which of course was more floral than what I’m drinking as the malt is heavier in what I’m currently drinking.

I’m going to push out more of this tea, but I’m really digging the malt and tree combo. I get picky with woodsy notes, but this one has such a nice combo between the florals, mint, and lemon rind notes that makes it really nice. Looks like I’m going to have to get more Wuyi in the future.