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Well these dry leaves look perfect for a lapsang souchong, with a dry aroma of earth and wood, pretty basic smelling, the slightest note of like caramel and a tiny bit of smokiness. Right okay so this is one of those times where for some reason, I’ve drank like 3 or 4 sessions of this one before getting around to writing it up, and honestly I’ve found it a little plain in the past, I wasn’t getting quite as deep before, but especially when I made it western that one time, it tasted to me like .. boring plain teabags without the bitterness.
Alright in the warmed gaiwan here I get uhh it’s very distinct, seafoody kinda like scallops, and sort of dark chocolate with like.. sniffing the outside of a melon. There’s also a saltiness. Anyways let’s go!
(pics: https://www.instagram.com/p/BMM-ZStjAEo/?taken-by=mackie_tealife&hl=en)
I’m getting like a fudge cake sort of aroma after the rinse, it’s really thick smelling and very decadent, and sort of a pie-like smell, with apples. ooh the brewed first steep smells just like fudgesickle!
It does not taste as fudgesickley. It’s pretty thin-bodied, sort of berries, it’s really not that satisfying, there’s some bitterness and some underlying strawberry notes, like strawberry ice cream notes, and it’s quite earthy and leaves the mouth dry with spices lingering on the tongue.
There’s a very notable cooling in the second steep, it’s also quite a bit thicker, which I’m happy to see, I get sort of coffee beans, earth, sweetness, there’s an unpleasant sourness, but there’s also nice peach/apricot/cherry notes, but the fruitiness is dominated by orange in the aroma. The dryness and sourness is accompanied by a spiciness that hits you right away. The sourness is very reminiscent of a young sheng, which in itself I don’t mind but it is really strange in a red tea,
It has all the early sweetness and breadiness of a jinjunmei, and the chocolate and very strong wood notes,
I’m only on steep 4 (3? idk) and the dryness is taking over my mouth, it’s so distracting I find it difficult to search for notes, I was brewing at 92C, I’m dropping it down to see what I can actually get out of this
okay well it got rid of the near-painful astringency, but it suddenly tastes.. muddy and bland, very very bland, .. vaguely fruity. that’s pretty much it,
Steep 6: Malty tonic water
I was considering giving up but then I went for a seventh steep and it’s not as astringent, nice sweet and spicy, apples and creamy chocolate, how did that happen? It’s not thick and satisfying but at least it’s tasty now.
Nevermind, the ninth is bad again. I think im finished with this session,
not a very enjoyable one for me.

Spring 2016 harvest,
After really enjoying my last dark roasted oolong from master zhang, im quite interested to try this, also I’ve got like.. $250 worth in tea-related things in transit to me right now lol I’m losing my patience waiting for all of it

there’s kind of a dry burnt roasty .. woody earthy autumn leafy dry leaf aroma,
in my warmed gaiwan it’s a lot of the same, but there’s this.. chocolate, hazelnut thing behind, with some toothpastey mintiness .. This doesn’t seem like it’ll be as pleasant as the last one. too autumn-leafy, but hey we’ll give it a go,
I smelled the gaiwan after the first steep and it was like gross burnt tar, and like.. just like kitchen smoke, like seared food, and then it just sort of melted away to this lovely sweet brown sugar aroma.. That was a weird experience.
So I do get a lot of the autumn leaf in the taste, a very roasty kind of thing, again with the same sort of roastiness of a dan cong behind all of the dark charred flavours, with a very strong cooling sensation, there’s some sort of floralness and maybe some apricot notes, there’s a lingering astringency that leaves the front part of my tongue dry
I get a lot of honey and brown sugar in the second steep’s aroma. The autumn leaf is already starting to fade in the second steep, there’s definitely some mango as well, it kinda tastes like a mi lan xiang dancong to me right now, just.. over-roasted and burnt, and the cooling is very strong.
I’m very back and forth, there’s a lot of autumn leaves obviously, which I’m finding.. really unpleasant, but there’s some really nice feelings and a few good flavours and aromas occasionally, but sometimes it even smells like.. garbage,
It’s very slowly mellowing down, I think…. I get some sort of lemon on the fifth steep, but I think i’ve decided that I don’t like this. It’s too woody and burnt tasting and it’s all the things I always find wrong with dark roasted oolongs, there’s a bit of redemption in the mouthfeel and in the later aromas – peach, apricot, lemon, some hazelnut and chocolate, but I can’t get past the taste, and in the end that’s all that matters

I think I’m done with the session, if you’re reading this because you want to get some dark roasted oolong from verdant, go get the Qilan instead.

I.. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to review this because I wasn’t really in the mood for writing but then I smelled the aroma in the warmed gaiwan and It’s this incredibly distinct and unique aroma, it has like this gummy blueberry aroma, but there’s also this.. shellfishy thing and it’s wonderful I’m so excited.
Anyways this isn’t on the website, it’s a taiwanese black tea, from Yuchi Township. O5 describes the flavour as “spun sugar | fruit”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMLGpufDRsa/?taken-by=mackie_tealife&hl=enThe wet leaf has a very burnt, charcoal aroma, with some raisin and dates,
Oh wow it is incredibly sugary, and like cotton candy, with lovely malt and cherry, orange, and like stawberry ice cream,
The second steep is super different, like the strawberry ice cream is still there, but it’s more cocoa, milkiness, woody,
I get like a deep raisin loaf in the third steep, maybe even acai and like lemon, a bit of cocoa, some tangerine.
Fourth is more malty, rye bread, buttery, maybe like chocolate covered raisins, it is very dry, that could be more .. me. I haven’t eaten in a while and my mouth was a bit weird before starting this, some lingering acidity in the aftertaste.
I get cooked apple and cinnamon in the 5th, honey, malt.
I get the same apple, but it’s a bit fresher, no cinnamon, it invades a bit into the aroma, not much else in that one.
It’s becoming like milky apple cider.. Why are all these teas milky all of the sudden lol I’m starting to think I might be crazy. I think this one’s creamier than the other milkies.
I also got some cerealy grains later, it’s like drinking cereal with milk :DThis was wonderful. Genuinely, super tastey, super interesting, I highly recommend. Also O5 is a really cool shop, check them out if you’re ever in Vancouver!

Daniel just kinda gave me a pretty decently sized sample of this off the shelf when I was buying a few things in the store, so thanks Daniel :)
The dry leaf is really dark and ugly which seems just about right for a 10 year old shou mei. They smell slightly fishy and not really much else.
In the warm gaiwan, there’s a very potent aroma, like dirty vegetables, like rhubarb and radish and grass and some weird florals, hay.. it is also reminiscent of a fresh shou mei. smells sweet on top of all the weird earthy smells, and maybe a bit of a shitake mushroom.. Also cinnamon/brown sugar. I had this already once and I remember it tasted like someone dumped a bunch of sugar into a fresh shou mei, which is lovely.
I get a bit of chlorine in the aroma after rinsing, but also a sort of pie crust, maybe rhubarb pie,
the first steep smells meaty like chicken, and maybe some citrus fruit,
it definitely tastes of brown sugar, cinnamon, citrus that I can’t place, root vegetables, mushrooms, radishes, creaminess with a bit of a syrup texture, a lemon meringue sort of thing. It gives me images of mud. Also orange juice. I’m only on the third steep and I’m significantly tea drunk, heady with a sort of.. restless feeling in my stomach, dates? I don’t think I’m of good mind to be able to review anymore of this.. I got 3 steeps of writing.
I like

I don’t know if any of you purchased this one for the new spring 2016 harvest when verdant was doing their preorders, but this one took a bit longer than they expected for verdant to get it, so they replaced it in my order with a black buds jjm, and then refunded my purchase of this and on top of that, they sent me this along with an extra 5g sample once they’d received it, and on top of that, they gave me $5 of tea cash! I wasn’t even really upset that the order was taking a bit longer. I really appreciate Verdant tea right now. I kinda think they lost money from that purchase of mine because I’d had $10 of teacash and .. Well anyways. They’re good people. (they also sent me 2×15g packages of this tea instead of the 25g I originally ordered.)

okay so the dry leaf is a lot of fresh cherries and earthy cocoa, a bit of wood. It looks black and twisty but they’re smaller than average twisted leaves
The wet leaf is like a laoshan black but more milk chocolatey and less of that sort of medicinality..
It has this intense creaminess, lots of chocolate, it tastes like hot chocolate on the way down, but then the aroma is a lovely, fruity, cooked apple and peach, god this is my kinda tea, the same milkiness as the zheng shan xiao zhong from li xiangxi, only with an aroma that I’m much more fond of personally, it is missing a lot of complexity, there’s maybe 2 or 3 notes that you can really find, milk, cocoa, cooked apples, I don’t know what else. Maybe a bit of a breadiness?

Okay this is an increadible hot-chocolate tasting lovely desserty tea, but it’s not keeping me interested too much, it’s not shifting between steeps, and the flavours are a bit muddied, and hard to distinguish, I get some barley later into the session, and a rocky astringency that’s quite nice and pretty consistent.
This is something I would keep around all of the time cause like.. damn but it’s kinda like a muddy version of my Ming Jian. It’s a decently affordable daily desserty tea.

The famous Zhu Rong! I’m excited to add my say to this much loved tea,
Dry leaf aroma of.. lots of spices, flowers and fruit but they’re so jumbled I don’t know where to begin.. Although it does definitely remind me of vitamins that had when I was a kid.
I’ve kinda been only drinking red teas for the past few weeks, it’s all I ever seem to want.

Dry leaf is beautiful, twisty, big whole leaf mixture of maybe 70/30 black/gold leaves:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BME3hdxD8QH/

In the warmed gaiwan, I get a very distinctly s’mores aroma, with caramel and vanilla and it’s just like every dessert ever, with some very nice subtle florals.

From the rinse, I get a very burnt chocolate aroma, maybe some toast or graham crackers, some vanilla.

It’s a very strange tasting tea. Definitely graham crackers, and whipped cream, a sort of blueberry or strawberry tartness, dark chocolate, it has a crackery texture. It has a bit of a purple tea taste to it, that thick blueberry-ness. The aroma is much darker and more burnt than the taste.
It’s more strawberry in the second steep, it’s very thick and coats the roof of the mouth, tongue and throat. leaves a syrupy feeling in the throat,
Sour peach entering in the third, even thicker and more syrupy, a salty lime flavour, still with the strawberry and blueberries, but much less, if any, of the chocolate and graham cracker, that was a dramatic change over 2 steeps, it lost somr of the berries and gained a more floral prominence, even some grassiness and a bit of cream, there’s really fruits that I can’t place in this.
The fifth is more grassy, thinner, berries, its got a sour patch kids thing going on, but it’s darkened, like a dark roast oolong, with a thick astringency and a bitterness of a low quality pu’erh.
6: even more of that dark, roasty .. darkness, maybe some raspberry, sourness, loses most of its complexity after that, I normally don’t write about every individual steep but it kept shifting so much, (which I love that it does), it fades to a bitter, dry, woody black hinting at berries and florals and chocolate, but it’s grown thin and it’s not very satisfying past steep 8 or 9. This is really tasty, really quite unique, I really really like this. I think this is the Spring 2016 harvest

Okay I admit I didn’t actually know that this was smoked tea when I purchased it, I wouldn’t have done so if i had known. I mean I should’ve known but anyway, it’s fine I actually really enjoyed this.
The dry leaf smells like .. (drumroll please) pine smoke. maybe with a slight.. vanilla

After the rinse I get an aroma that’s more complex, pine smoke that’s sort of beneath more savoury notes, sort of a salty dark chocolate, and cinnamon, and almonds, there’s notions of greens and florals behind it all but nothing that’s identifiable

Most of the smokiness is contained in the aroma, the taste is much more of a salty milk chocolate, cherries, a sort of dusty feeling, there’s a distinct creaminess, but the moment I breathe out after the sip, everything is replaced with a sweet pine smokey aroma, it’s so thick, and it actually tastes milky.
The second steep yields a much more diluted aroma, far less smoke and I get a varied aroma, quite similar to the taste of the first steep, and the taste has more vanilla, and some earthiness and honey-sweetness. It really tastes and feels like warm milk.. I’ve never experienced tea with such a true milkiness.
Also, the tea brews up a beautiful vibrant orange-yellow, pics:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BL_stSsD2QF/?taken-by=mackie_tealife&hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/p/BL_uMFmDLTY/?taken-by=mackie_tealife&hl=en

More chocolate in the third, the strong smokiness mostly (never completely) goes away pretty quickly and then it’s like drinking some weak hot chocolate with some really lovely pine wood and smoke. Not too complex anymore but it is gooooooood. seriously I have never enjoyed a smoke lapsang souchong before but man, Li Xiangxi knows what’s up.
Oh I forgot to mention, the dryness it leaves is specifically on the tongue which is the exact same thing warm milk does to me, which is a large part of the reason for the warm milk effect. I had this in the morning last time, and that was a mistake, this is definitely a late night sort of tea.
I guess I have to try .. all of Li Xiangxi’s teas now. These people have me thoroughly enjoying a smoked black tea, who knows what else is possible!

Okay twice now I’ve deleted my review of this part way through. This is why I started handwriting back when.

Okay so the dry leaves are whiter than any green tea i’ve ever seen before. I started an instagram for tea so you can see them for yourselves:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BL7win9DE6W/?taken-by=mackie_tealife&hl=en

the dry leaf aroma is reminiscent of a lovely, subtle jasmine, some sweet grassiness, slight earth, and a wet-rock sort of a smell. It smells much better already than other jasmine teas I’ve had.

in the warmed gaiwan, I get a very similar aroma, just significantly sweeter

In the early steeps, there’s a creaminess, with strong jasmine notes, with a lot of dandelion tastes, and a good amount of sweetness, In the third steep, astringency and bitterness start to creep in, and it makes me feel as though the tea’s very.. genuine. I think the bitterness really helps to give the impression that you’re biting into a flower petal, the dryness in the mouth only adds to this effect. If I were someone who drank flavoured teas with any sort of regularity, and I was also someone who really liked florals, then this would be just what I’d been looking for in a tea. Of the few jasmine teas I have had, this is vastly superior. I got a peach-like note entering mid-late into the session. The jasmine flavour on this one was really well-done, no doubt numerous successive flower batches. The flavour never fades.

If you’re a jasmine tea person I think you’ll appreciate this

the dry leaves of this TGY looks and smells very nice, a lovely floral buttery aroma, the leaves are nicely balled and vibrant in colour.

The package says 100C for temperature, which I’m a bit uncomfortable with (is this typical for tie guan yins? I honestly don’t know, I’d never think to do them this high though). Well whatever, I’ll try and brew it there.

I think I’m a really atypical example, I have a lot of experience with green oolongs, mostly from taiwan, but very little experience with tie guan yin, this is my second or third ever, and it’s been a looong time since the last one, this should be interesting.

I get a nice buttery creamy grassy, spinachy aroma from after the rinse, the aroma’s very powerful, I can smell it from like a foot away,

The taste is very smooth, with a cooling sensation, there’s a very grassy taste to it, but it’s sweet like peas, like very freshly cooked peas, it’s incredibly aromatic, lovely fruity orange notes, sweet like candy my goodness this is delicious, I get candied lemon-lime notes, a nice thick body, some grape notes, there’s something so satisfying right when I swallow, it’s so thick and creamy in texture, it just coats the mouth, and the sweetness is just perfect, it’s like drinking cream right from the .. cream thing. It tastes like it should be really unhealthy. It’s just such a dessert-like tea.

I get further notes of green beans and cabbage entering in steep 3, there’s this teeny bit of that acidity that really bothered me in verdant’s mao xie, there’s also a tiny bit of astringency that enters here, but it’s so pure, there’s absolutely no bitterness with it that makes it really pleasant.

It loses a bit of complexity, and just becomes this fruity vegetal sweet soup, which actually happened on steep 4, increasingly on steep 5, also by this point the leaves had unrolled entirely, which seems a bit fast, but this could be the 100c brewing temp or maybe the leaves are just loosely balled, either way, this brewing style for this tea gave me a really concentrated sweetness and fruitiness in the first few steeps and then it sort of faded, creaminess and thickness are still there though.
There’s sort of a spiciness that comes forth, raddish notes,
I got maybe 6 or 7 steeps in until the sweetness faded and it wasn’t really enjoyable for me after that, I think this would be appropriate for quick dessert sessions, also this one might do really well western because it lacks some of that longevity, but damn that was tasty for those 3 steeps. It had me thinking it might’ve been the best green oolong I’d ever had, and if it lasted a bit more it would’ve been replacing the dayulin in my hall of fame.

Oh dear this is incredibly darkly roasted. I’ve not yet enjoyed a once-green oolong that’s anywhere near this darkly roasted
Alright it’s not that bad, it’s chocolatey and roasty and uh slightly reminiscent of dancong actually, a familiar kinda of fruitiness, like lychee, there’s a minty cooling feeling as well, along with some plum, and apricot
Why am I loving this?
This is so weird because like 2 months ago, around the time I made this verdant pre-order, (This was included as the free sample) I was really into green oolong, which I ordered some of, but I only seem to like darker teas now. That was a really sudden change.. I should’ve drank my dayulin more often.
There’s some blueberry notes.. I think. It’s sort of a hard to place berry note, this has such a nice cooling sensation, and some very nice astringency. Oh there’s some lemoniness .. lemony… lemon notes. It sorta weakened like 4 steeps in and I can’t get the strength back, it’s growing more earthy and minty and delicate.

That was suprisingly enjoyable. Who am I?