Daxue Jiadao

4.5g, 70 mL thin gaiwan

leaves in gaiwan smell super fruity, almost passionfruit like

wet leaf has a bit of smoke and a plasticky floral. standard DC territory. aroma from gongdaobei is tomato sweet like some light oolongs exhibit

1. green vine, floral. fruity notes linger on tongue

2. really nice aftertaste, with shifting florals in throat.

Did not take notes after but taste here was a bit light and did not linger as extensively as I expected from reading other notes and I felt like it was not fully extracted. I cold brewed the mostly spent leaves overnight and that was still a nice cup. Maybe both a water and ratio/size issue. My tap is decent enough, and I really don’t want to generate more plastic waste when I don’t need. Also am too lazy to customize water all the time. As for ratio/size, DXJD mentions 6-8g/100 mL as their suggestion, and have also personally had better luck with high ratios and flash steeps in a slightly bigger gaiwan (90 mL) for the last few DCs. i think 70 just does not hit critical mass for whatever reason, or maybe not fitting to my preference

2017 wild LCSX
6g, 90 mL gaiwan

Wet leaf: sweet, baking spices, graham cracker, smoke. Gaiwan lid once cooled is a dark inky sweet smell

1. Having finished these cups, something in the lingering aftertaste is a dead ringer for not-sweet bland purple dragon fruit. Sometimes those are duds with a particular taste that is also here
Octagon cup: Medicinal, smoke, sour, sweet quickly after. Slight cooling and green taste in finish
Cup F: more woody sour. Not as rich, but maybe just from having cooled more?
Kangiiten tall cup: also more sour woody. Maybe taste buds just saturated now

2. slight bitter, medicinal. Drank quicker and i think previous differences are due to temp. Oops. Sugary aftertaste lingers a bit and somewhat extends to throat

3 and 4. Woody

Ended w half cup of steep one that brought back all the highlights: inky florals, minty, sweet, wood. Nice way to finish

thermos’d the leaves and ended with a nice mug. nice tea, though not quite berry forward as the notes I saw online. maybe those are fading? it is approaching year 8 after all…

4.1g, 135 mL zini

smells a bit musty and minty

1. medicinal, menthol. that and TeaDB’s leather shoes a la Payless comment is 100% fitting

2. woody, same payless leather shoe undertone and a bit chocolate-y

3. payless chocolate milk. brown sugary aftertaste. cozy.

had to stop since i was pretty sick and felt awful. short changed myself here and need to stop being tempted by my best teas when I’m sick.

I prepared this tea gongfu, 5g / 125 ml, 90 °C water, several uncounted steeps.

I did my best trying to focus on this tea after work, but somehow it just didn’t click to me? It was tasty enough, but nothing supreme to me, light and clean taste, but somehow watery; just hard to get any flavour to be honest… I got some flavour after long steeps only.

Yes, the aroma of the wet leaves was nice indeed. Maybe it’s the berry notes that Leafhopper noticed. I will keep it without rating. Because it seems it can be a wonderful tea, but probably something went wrong today. What it is, I dunno. Sad panda grateful to derk.

5g, 90mL, boiling.

wet leaf: rose, grain (like those asian breakfast packets you mix with water)
1st: sweet, grassy
2nd: dark floral, but not quite hongcha malty floral. Bit warming
3rd: a bit of astringency aside florals, green tea like
No notes after, but more or less consistent all the way through. Not sure if i was sick or something today, but this was quite warming. I guess yinzhens in general are not very punchy or dramatic, but enjoyable, supposing price is not factored in haha.

old set notes:
The 2023 was very enjoyable, and reminded me of a less sharp floral TShop one that was more comfortable to drink.

Here were my notes from an individual session of that: “5/90/212. wet leaf has strong sugar snap peas and later reveals rose-like florals (if you’ve ever walked through a rose garden, they can smell wildly different, not what the rose/lychee edged note of perfumes would have one believe), before ending as general steeped green sweet-edged notes. taste has sweet honeyed notes, and a green quality (not mint, but something fresh) and lingers somewhat”

I didn’t take notes for the wuyi and the 2020 since that was with a friend. The wuyi was sharper and flatter, and the 2020 is a more honeyed and rounded, gently sweet version of the 2023 from what I remember. If I had the money, I’d purchase the 2023 or 2020, but skip the Wuyi.

5g/90mL/boiling. Water mix

dry: fruit, apricot
wet: green tea, sweet pea, hint of smoke

rinse was a little too long, and was nervous about the remaining flash steeps, but tea handled it very well for something so young

1st: full mouthfeel, grapefruit like floral and numbing on tongue. apricot and gummy candy aftertaste, and a brief floaty feel in head. A little slowing. minty and sharp taste at edge of tea
2nd: sharper taste, with tongue cooling. Lingers in throat and breath
3rd: similar, vanilla note on end

Did not note the remaining 3 steeps, but stopped then bc the stewed veggie taste started to show. Still interesting aspects and it could’ve gone for a little longer.

Really tasty, although not cheap. Very soft in taste and feel for a young tea, so probably a more modern processing style meant to drink now

5.4/90/boiling

wet leaf: smoke, floral, honey, berries, carrot
quick rinse.

1. good texture, sour, fruity (grape?), malt
2. deeper honeyed taste, some strawberry-like tartness, faint aftertaste that builds in the throat
3. similar. refreshing cooling quality to finish. had this w a friend before that compared it to something green tea adjacent. maybe goji berry and some bubble gum too.
4. light. something continues to linger in aftertaste, but it’s delicate and maybe citrus like.

I stopped steeping and taking notes bc I was tired but this was interesting. I don’t know if this is normal for dianhong, but the shifting qualities remind me of the XZH Diangu, except not bitter. Someone said Diangu is cursed puer, and if that’s the case, dianhong can be described as cursed hongcha. In any case, trying to grasp at it feels like the over-the-top Ratatouille imagery when Remy eats something.

Anyway, the first time I had this was w a friend right after trying the Lincang bainian ‘22, and I think that made it hard to pick out notes for this after (sensory overload/deadening). The bainian is enjoyable, but not subtle. This tea was harder to pin down, and really benefits from attention and focus. Since I mostly lack that energy lately, when ordering Explorer 3 from the recent DXJD release, I wasn’t inclined to pick up more of this.

6/90/212, truth serum water

1. woody, slight bitter, cinnamon and spices. faint caramel candy-like taste that dissipates
2. good texture, woody again w/ bitter under. chocolate, and some minerality with slight throat presence
3. wood, pleasant and mineral. some throat but more subtle and not as gripping as steep 2.
4. vegetal, cinnamon spice and some sweetness. faded.

cold cup: so good. goji, woody, some bitterness, but full.
i think thermos was good, but can’t remember fully since this was a while ago and I didn’t take notes on that. Yanchas are generally one-offs for me bc of the price (at least for good ones), but this is sold out anyway.

Learned from my mistakes brewing the OWT DHP yesterday. Again, used the TWL 70 ml thin gaiwan since it cools almost immediately and this one isn’t roasted enough to do well with a ton of heat.

5.7g, boiling. quick steeps, mostly 5-10s. Got 5 decent steeps before it faded and i moved it to a mug. Some floral notes, cocoa powder, not as vegetal with the decreased heat. Probably the best session with this tea for me so far, but I guess that’s not saying much.

6/90/212.

did not rinse. first try yesterday, so not a fully formed opinion, but wasn’t particularly wowed like I was with the DXJD white tea set last weekend. This is comfortable and at standard entry level oolong pricing, this felt par for the course for the price (vs. some of the entry OWT and TSR options iirc). and I didn’t take notes, but all I remember is a light goji berry scent on the lid at the end. Otherwise, my impression was that I should’ve just bought an extra cup from them instead of 50g of this.

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.

As stated in a previous note, this a meditative tea.

I’m back from China. Rather than give a complete synopsis in one go, blurbs will find their way into future notes should a tea elicit the desire to write of my experiences. Here I will start with the end of my trip, as with all endings come beginnings.

On the first leg home, the China Southern flight attendant placed some floppy “old man brown” slippers on my first-class feet in Wuhan. As my ankles swelled by the hour, I figured why put my shoes back on. Those ugly, oversized slippers whisked with me through perfumed boutique shops in the Hong Kong airport, swept the (clean) floors of Taipei Taoyuan, shuffled me through U.S. customs in San Francisco and tripped me up as I boarded the bus that brought me back home. Sunday night around midnight I finally made it through the front door in a state of time-travel delirium and searched for my old girl Sophia.

I found Sophia after settling down for a bit, only to lose her less than 24 hours later. Monday was the end of our 22-year companionship. She waited for me to come home from my journey and passed in the comfort of my arms in her favorite chair and blanket. Now she rests under the lemon tree with the other kids, to feed the fruits that bring us happiness. I will be able to see her live on through my bedroom’s back door while I sit with tea. And these stupid China Southern slippers will be worn until they fall apart – little reminders of over half my life, arguably the most formative of my years, spent with a little warm body that made biscuits on my chest, sea foam eyes that softly spoke “You are mine and I am yours” and a vocabulary that always let me know what was on her mind. My little nugget, my little shoulder cat. So many feelings.

So yes, with all endings come beginnings. The end of Sophia’s life – full of patience, tenacity, wisdom and love – will be mirrored in my slippered steps as I stumble forward into this dream of farming tea.

Love you, baby.

I splurged for the last available bag of this after trying a lovely sample from Leafhopper. Brought some with me camping. This note is mostly to say this needs to be brewed with lots of leaf in a little pot that retains heat and not in a bowl. It’s a refined tea that deserves attention and works better as a much-needed meditation after work. I think the stately natural environment I was in while sipping overrode this tea’s quiet character.

Beautiful tea and energy. Feels like a silky sun-dappled forest with the scent of mushrooms pushing up from the ground. Is this what hawthorn fruits taste like? Each cup that comes to my lips mixes with the scent of patchouli on my wrist. It’s a grounding combination. Makes me feel very present.

Thank you Leafhopper <3