Bok

Sipdown this morning, backlog from last night. I slop fu’d it, using the rest of the leaves to plow through it. I rinsed it for 30, and it was super floral and buttery. Second steep, I got stuck using the batroom, and it ended tasting like buttered and steamed green beans, spinach, and flowers. Good, but too dense. I flash steeped it the rest of the time at least eight more times, and had more variety of flavor. Orchid, pineapple, butter, jasmine, lettuce, hints of fruit, and more greenness. Very good in the middle. I’m really glad I got to try this one. It’s mid to higher tier compared to other Dayuling’s I’ve had.

Tumbler styled the actual 2022 version, and it’s not as complex as the fresher 2023 crop, but it’s got more fruitiness than I expected. Pineapple popped in and out for sure with the usual fresh spinach feeling you get from most high mountain oolongs-AKA green tea for snobs, but I got more florals I like too. I almost hit my finger on plumeria, but not quite. Jasmine and orchid did appear in rebrew number 2 and 3 of this quasi-grandpa western style. I just let the 4 grams sit in my thermo with 190 F hot water and refilled it with hot water.

I will see I got more citrus than pineapple personally. It swung between orange and lemon for me. It’s not the top Dayuling I’ve had, but it’s one I’d easily rank higher compared to some of the oolongs I’ve had as of late. The flavors did change along as it cooled and brewed, so there’s more to it that I got to enjoy despite lazy styling it. I think I’ve got a little bit left of it for maybe one or two gong fu sessions.

Thank you Leafhopper! I got the box, and I’m stoked at everything. This will stave me off other tea impulse buys for a while. I tried the 2023 and not the 2022 yet. I did it western, but really liked it. Had a grassy pineapple poundcake feel to it. Later steeps had heavy magnolia and then some lychee in steep 3 as it cool down. Loved it. I will do note for it on its own, but I will do it here so I can come back to it. Cheers!

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 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.

After enjoying a nice spring 2021 Lishan earlier this year, I purchased a whopping 825 g of Taiwanese tea from the same supplier. I’m swapping 75 g with another Steepster member, but the rest is all mine! If the other four teas I bought are as good as this Baozhong, I made the right decision. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 150 ml clay teapot at 195F for 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus many uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of lilac, orchid, honeydew melon, apricot, cookies, and egg custard. The first steep has saline, mineral, grassy, and egg custard notes, with lilac, orchid, butter, and honeydew melon. Where the tea really shines is in the lingering aftertaste, which features perfectly ripe apricot, pear, and dewy melon notes. The next steep introduces coriander, herbs, cookies, and something similar to menthol, plus more spring flowers and that same lovely aftertaste. Steep three adds even more florals like sweet pea and gardenia, plus honeydew, peach, apricot, and pear. The smell in the empty cup is wonderful! As the session goes on, salt, minerals, grass, butter, and florals continue to appear at the front of the sip, while the fruit blooms in the aroma and aftertaste, which can last for minutes. The fact that the fruit doesn’t show up as much in the tea itself is a little annoying, but that aftertaste makes up for it. The tea continues to be floral, saline, and sweet until the end of the session, with the honeydew, stonefruit, and pear in the aftertaste. I can also leave it overnight for one final steep without tasting any bitterness.

I’ve steeped this Baozhong in both clay and porcelain using temperatures from boiling to around 185F and various infusion times. Lower temperatures brought out more of the fruity notes, though boiling water never made the tea bitter. Clay seemed to produce slightly better results, though maybe that was due to the longer pouring time of my pot.

This is a fantastic Baozhong! I’ve rarely encountered such dewy, pronounced fruity notes in a tea, combined with such longevity and lack of bitterness. I wish more of these notes had shown up in the body of the sip instead of the aftertaste, but this is a minor quibble. This is one of my favourite teas of 2022 and I’m sad to say goodbye.

From Leafhopper, purchased from Tea Forum member Bok – thank you!

The dry leaf has the most natural creamy and sugary sweet aroma I’ve ever smelled in a high mountain oolong. It reminds me of a touch of pineapple blended with coconut cream. The floral aroma mixes very well displaying fleshy notes of tuberose and magnolia and a more airy orchid.

Warming the leaf brings out more of a sweet vegetal, nutty character with spinach, creamed corn and macadamia with a good dose of nutmeg and a hint of kale.

Both the taste and aroma are delicate yet entirely intoxicating. Instant calm. Grass, tuberose, pineapple, palm sugar (those Vietnamese pucks), coconut, macadamia, ginger lily, nutmeg, cream, an overall slight umami quality. Very smooth with both balanced acidity and astringency that leave the mouth watering. The tea goes down with ease, finishing minty cool and buttery clean. Soul-warming.

The leaf has good longevity and with my hand, seems to express itself with numerous peaks and valleys. It’s not a very forward tea and needs some coaxing to maintain an even display of character. Even though the warm fruity, nutty and spicy tropical aromas and tastes would appeal to many, this is a leaf that might be best appreciated by tea enthusiasts with perceptive palates. I would love to see what others think of it, though!

I bought this oolong from a member of TeaForum who also sold me my 150 ml Hongni-Zhuni teapot from the 1990s. I’ve been drinking it for over a month now and have almost finished my 150 g bag. I’ve found that it does better with slightly longer steeps in the Hongni-Zhuni pot, but I’m reviewing it in porcelain because that’s what most people have access to. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot at 195F for 35, 30, 35, 40, 40, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of pineapple, orchids, and grass. The first steep has notes of pineapple, orchid, sweet pea, other florals, butter, coriander, spinach, and grass. The next steep adds kale and umami, but also mandarin orange and peach. The third steep reaches peak fruitiness, with pineapple, stonefruit, citrus, white sugar, cream corn, orchid, lilac, spinach, grass, and umami. This tea is greener than perhaps I’d like, though some of that is smoothed out when I steep it in my clay pot. In the fourth to sixth steeps, the pineapple and florals are pronounced and the tea is creamy and sweet. The tea becomes more green and floral as the session winds down, until it peters out around the twelfth steep.

There’s a lot to like about this oolong. I enjoy the pineapple, stonefruit, and florals, and the aroma of the leaves is wonderful. It loses a few points due to its greenness and relative lack of longevity. Longer (around one-minute) steeps in my clay pot bring out a savoury, umami quality that one TeaForum member compared to buttery lobster, and while I thought this was fun, I prefer to emphasize the fruitiness with shorter steeps. I’ve made this tea almost every day and still look forward to my remaining few sessions.