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This Qi Lan is a much gentler animal than the one I had from Tao Tea Leaf a few hours ago. I steeped around 5 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.

The first steep is surprisingly light for a Wuyi oolong. Honey and florals show up first, followed by roast and light tobacco. The second steep has a few more of those char and tobacco notes, but is still very floral and sweet. I also get roasted veggies and maybe some fruit (Lichi? Honeydew? I can’t tell.).

As Amanda Wilson said in her tasting note about this tea, it has some qualities that make it similar to a Dan Cong. Its honey character softens the roast, especially as the session progresses. Although the tea starts to get drying by the sixth or seventh steep, the honey carries it through.

As someone who likes greener oolongs, I enjoyed this Qi Lan more than its roastier counterpart from Tao Tea Leaf. It’ll be fun to see whether storing my remaining 30 g for a couple more years will mellow it out even further.

I think this is from 2015. It’s been getting colder, and this is definitely a winter tea. 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.

The first steep has notes of tobacco, caramel, roast, and dark wood. There are also hints of sandalwood, banana, and strawberry, but they’re very much in the background. I let the second steep sit a couple seconds too long, and it dialed the darker flavours up to eleven. The tobacco predominates in the early steeps, perhaps a bit too much for me.

By steep five, this oolong becomes less aggressive, but also starts losing its complexity. It has a generic Wuyi profile of roast, earth, minerality, and caramel.

Due to its earthy roast and caramel flavours, this oolong would be a perfect introductory tea for coffee drinkers. For me, it was decent, but not something I need to immediately buy more of.

This is the 2016 harvest. In the bag, it has an aroma of muscatel, florals, and grass, kind of like a first flush Darjeeling. I steeped 5 g of leaf in an 85 ml teapot at 195F for 30, 20, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

I love this tea! The first steep has notes of muscatel, raisin, green grapes, grain, orange blossom, dried flowers, caramel, honey, and wood. It’s like a cross between a really muscatel-heavy first flush and a full-bodied Taiwanese oolong. Even though I used a fair amount of leaf for the size of my vessel, there’s no bitterness; instead, there’s a lovely mouthfeel and a long aftertaste. The subsequent steeps are pretty consistent, which is more than okay in my book. As the session goes on, however, the raisin note grows more prominent, and since I’m not a big raisin fan, this is my only tiny gripe with this tea.

This fascinating bai hao was a pleasure to drink. I loved its similarity to a Darjeeling, though I might be the only one to compare such dissimilar tea types. At $35 for 50 g, it’s certainly not a daily tea for me, but it’s a wonderful occasional indulgence.

Since I’m not fond of aggressive roasting, Wuyi oolongs are always a bit of a gamble. This one from 2015 was never too roasted to begin with, and I’m sure the years have mellowed it even further. I steeped about 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, and 120 seconds.

This oolong has notes of wood, caramel, honey, minerals, undefined fruitiness, florals, and yes, even some cinnamon. The roast stays in the background, supporting and not drowning the other flavours. By the third steep, the tea has become simultaneously greener and more roasted, with some lingering charcoal. Like another reviewer stated, I find many of the nuances emerge in the aftertaste. By steep seven or so, it starts getting less interesting, fading into minerality and roast.

I did a long steep overnight and the results were surprisingly good, with wood, spice, and a lot of astringency.

Although I want more fruit and cinnamon in my Rou Gui, this is a complex oolong with a roast that doesn’t remind me of a campfire.

This is another one I found at the back of my cupboard. I bought it in 2015, so it’s technically an “aged” white tea! I steeped about 4-5 g, enough to fill a 120 ml teapot to the brim, at 185F for 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

In the pot, this tea smelled like old books, linen, and medicinal funk. It brewed up sweeter than I expected, with notes of linen, honey, soybeans, ripe bananas, and herbs. (I’ve never had an aged white before, so this is kind of a shot in the dark.) The medicinal quality came through on the aftertaste. As the session progressed, a hint of malt began to appear, along with a metallic tang in a few steeps. By the end, I was getting notes of lettuce and other veggies, though the linen and honey persisted.

This tea was a nice surprise. I’ll have to explore more aged white teas in the future—or just keep the ones I have for another few years.

I picked up some green teas from Teavivre this spring, and am only getting to them now. Maybe I’ve just been grumpy lately, but this dragonwell doesn’t seem as sweet as the one from 2016. I steeped it both gongfu per the website’s recommendations (4 g, 120 ml, 20, 30, 40, and 60 seconds at 185F) and Western style (3 g, 12 oz., 1:00, 2:30, 4:00, and 6:00 at 185F). Like last year’s, this year’s leaf is well formed and has lots of downy fuzz.

Gongfu, this was almost completely vegetal. I remember notes of broccoli, bok choy, and maybe asparagus, with some astringency in the background. It almost tasted like a sencha.

Western brewing produced a sweeter chestnut profile that was more in line with the dragonwells I’ve had in the past. The vegetal elements were still present, but they were more balanced. The tea never got bitter.

I found this dragonwell to be a much tougher customer than its 2016 counterpart. I’ll try steeping it at lower temperatures and using fewer leaves to bring out the sweetness.

This is a nice, toasty dong ding for fall. I loved the batch I bought last year, and decided to get the spring 2017 version as part of a Taiwanese oolong sampler. This is what I’m reviewing here.

I steeped 6 g of leaf at 195F in a 120 ml teapot for 30, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry leaf smells like cereal, char, and a hint of pineapple, all of which carry over to the first steep. This dong ding is almost too sweet, and the aroma at the bottom of the cup is fruitier than the tea itself. The second steep brings more pineapple and even some berries as the Camellia Sinensis website promises, but I don’t like the level of roast. It kind of tastes like charred corn, which is a weird juxtaposition with the fruity flavours. The liquor is also very drying.

The third steep, which I brewed at a slightly lower temperature, is more integrated, with less pronounced char and more grilled pineapple. The tea, however, still smells better than it tastes, and there’s already some grassiness creeping in. The next few steeps follow this pattern, both the good and not-so-good elements fading concurrently.

While this dong ding had some decent moments when steeped gongfu, I think it does better Western style, or perhaps this batch is just not as good as the spring 2016. This is too bad, as it smells like it has a lot of potential.

I can’t be alone in wanting to keep the teas I love indefinitely, even when it means drinking them rarely and possibly having them deteriorate. This is one of those teas. Despite not caring for honey, fruitcake, or Christmas all that much individually, this oolong is like honey-covered Christmas cake and it’s fantastic.

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, plus one more long soak to get all the remaining flavour.

In the warmed teapot, this smells like spiced honey with floral undertones. The first steep has notes of honey, dried fruit, baked bread, roses and other flowers, spices, and something I’ll call bug-bitten sourness. The aftertaste is mostly honey and it lasts for a while. In the second steep, the bready, honey, and fruit notes get stronger, resolving into dried dates, prunes, currants, and other fruitcake-y ingredients. There’s also a touch of bitterness and dryness, but this tea is so good that it doesn’t bother me.

The honey, spicy, and baked bread notes get even stronger in the third steep, and the rose is pronounced at the end of the sip. This tea has also gotten darker, both in terms of the liquor and in taste, with walnut shell and more grain notes showing up. This profile holds steady through the fourth, fifth, and sixth steeps. Although it gradually becomes less complex as the session progresses, that overpowering honey sweetness never leaves.

This is a ridiculously good oolong that justifies how much I’ve spent on staying in the Eco-Cha tea club for over a year. I’ll hang on to it as long as I can!

For some reason, Steepster deleted the review I was writing, so this is just a recap.

Though I was underwhelmed by the two previous jade Dong Dings I’ve had from other vendors, the fact that this one was bug bitten and inexpensive persuaded me to buy it. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 190F for 30 and 25 seconds, then at 195F for 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The first two cooler steeps were lackluster, with a strong vegetal presence. There was some Dong Ding creaminess and sweetness, but not much fruit or bug-bitten character.

However, increasing the temperature to 195F made all the difference. In the third steep, I got blackberry, citrus, peach, and nectarine, along with florals, honey, and a vegetal note that was still stronger than I’d like. The mouthfeel was heavy and buttery, though there wasn’t much of an aftertaste. By steep five, the fruit started backing down and the tea began to develop a Taiwanese jade oolong profile, which I can only describe as buttery, mineral, and floral, though the fruit and honey never entirely went away. This tea was strong until about the sixth steep, and only faded gradually after that.

With the addition of only five degrees, this oolong went from something I regretted buying to something I truly enjoyed. I was even more impressed by this dramatic improvement than by the complexity of this tea!

As my user name suggests, I love bug-bitten teas, and the roast on this one intrigued me enough to buy it. I steeped 5 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 190F for 30, 25, 30, 40, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The first steep is pretty mild. The sweetness jumps out at me immediately, along with roasted sesame seeds and grilled tropical fruits. The mouthfeel is heavy and fuzzy, and there’s just a hint of astringency. By the second steep, I can tell this is definitely a “mi xiang” oolong, as the tea has the honey, florals, and kind of sour finish I associate with bug-bitten teas. The roast seems to be more prominent at the beginning of the sip, and the bug-bitten character at the end.

In the next few steeps, the roast is very well incorporated, really letting the fruit and honey shine through. I still can’t pick out individual fruit flavours, though grilled pear, pineapple, and other tropical fruits all make an appearance. If there’s one downside, it’s that this tea becomes drying easily, though that might be due to my brewing.

By the seventh steep, the fruit and honey begin to dissipate and the roast starts to take over. The tea gradually diminishes from here.

This is an interesting and complex oolong, and like most of the offerings from Taiwan Sourcing that I’ve tried, I thoroughly enjoy it!