Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) Wuyi Rock Oolong Tea Fujian

Gah, I haven’t posted here in such a long time. Midterms and essays, followed by a visit from a good friend whom I hadn’t seen in about a year and a half, followed by getting a cold have been keeping me away from this site. :(

Anyway, I brewed up a cup of this… kind of an odd tea to brew when you’re sick, but I just had a craving for a toasty Oolong. :P

… and I’m going to head back to bed, watch sitcoms, and write. Last day of break, hopefully the worst of this cold will have passed by tomorrow!

Yay! My samples arrived today. Thank you so much Angel and Teavivre!

Colour: amber
Smell: nutty

Taste: nutty and slightly sweet with a slight floral note. The aftertaste is a little sour some how. This is a very different oolong than others I have tried.

2nd steep: 2.5 minutes, much like the second one, maybe a little less nutty

3rd steep: 3 minutes, a little more sour aftertaste.

Overall, I like this oolong, but not my favourite

I think this is one of my favorite oolongs I have tried so far.

The smell of the dry tea is not really floral, more fruity sweet and woody. The smell of the brewed tea is almost like aged hard wood. Slightly roasty.

The brewed tea is light, clean and fresh. There is a slightly roasted wood taste but it is not heavy. Slight floral taste. Natural sweetness. The liquor is thick and creamy, although it doesn’t remind me of milk or dairy.

I think next time I will consider steeping this one for a bit longer to get a stronger flavour.

I think I may have gotten a sample of this from Tigress Al, but I know I also got a sample from Teavivre – I have a few sample pack of this floating around. I think I am going to have to hoard these :)

Mmm, toasty. I really enjoyed this and got several good steeps out of it in my small glass teapot. I really need a small ceramic teapot too. Time to start looking for that again, but first this tea. It’s toasty and floral on the first hit, and smooth, so smooth. This is a tea that would be easy to drink all day and I should probably try that with my gaiwan, when I next get another sample. I also need to compare it to Canton Tea Co’s offering, which I received as part of the tea club but have not yet sat down to taste.

Thanks to Angel and Teavivre for this sample!

I’ve been holding off on reviewing this one for a while and give this tea as many tries as I could for the best opinion. It makes a nice cup, but it isn’t really anything I would show off to friends. I fear too much roasting is what did this one in. Charcoal and woody flavors overpower many of the subtler tastes the leaves offer, and tend to cause a fuzzy and drying mouthfeel and a somewhat bitter aftertaste. Thankfully, the leaves have an inherent sweetness to them, and counterbalance this enough to make the overall flavor enjoyable. I have difficulty finding any floral tones throughout steeps, but if I try hard enough I can just pick them out. I find the flavor profile to lean more towards tart fruits than florals, and this is mirrored in both the wet leaf’s aroma and the aftertaste. The first few steeps gong fu style tend to be the most interesting for me. I receive notes of apple, cocoa, and malt in addition to the aforementioned charcoal and wood tastes. Honey flavors creep in into the third or fourth steep, but besides this addition, the complexity goes a bit flat and the flavors fade out quickly for this tea type.

The dry leaves have a nice deep brown appearance and smell of hay, dried fruits, and somewhat biscuity. The wet leaves expand to reveal a very green coloration. They release dark aromas of earth, pure tea, cocoa, and tart berries. They appear in decent shape, although there are a few quite large empty stems. The leaves are, however, very dusty and leave a layer of silt at the bottom of my cup after every steep. Untwisting the the wet leaves, I dragged my thumb across the surface of a leaf and received a fair bit of black specks on the tip.

I suppose my expectations were a bit too high, as this tea just tastes common; there is nothing exciting or unexpected hiding in the leaves. I’m okay with this, though. It’ll give me something to drink when I don’t have time for other complex teas.

This is my first Da Hong Pao. It brews a nice warm brown-gold color. The taste is bold and dry and reminds me of a dry sack wine. Its mildly sweet and mineral, and the main flavors that I pick up on are apricot, clove, and slightly cooling spearmint-like note.

I don’t think I used quite enough leaf, as only the first infusion really seemed strong enough. I think I’ll be making it again with a bit more tea.

My first normal tea in a while!

The smell is smokey, sweet, kind of like chocolate. I initially get a muskiness as I drink, but it turns into something mineral and juicy, then a pleasant sweet smokiness in the back of my throat. The astringency seems to hit kind of randomly for me – I think this may actually be my first tea that has it/that I’ve tasted it in. I had no idea it was more of a physical sensation than a taste, but I looked it up just now to account for the sourness I kept feeling. It goes pretty well with the flavors in this!

On the second steep, it’s started to get the floralness to it that I saw mentioned in other reviews, and has much less bite. Definitely smoothing out by the third and fourth cups.

I had a small sample of this when I ordered from Teavivre. Oh… my… gosh… the warm inviting scent of roasted chestnuts hit me when I peeled the packaging open. It brought back memories of me in medical school really getting into teas and trying them! This one was so memorable because I remember watching the leaves become bigger, and it was the first time I saw a large leafed tea! The taste was amazing too! This is a dark oolong and smokey like chestnuts NOT like lapsang souchong.

I used my yixing teapot set for this and shared it with my husband. This teapot is surprisingly big! 16oz! The two 4oz yixing teacups could be filled twice. The leaves expanded to a medium size leaf. I wish I didn’t put them in the tea strainer as to let them expand and dance in the water. However, I thought it would have been necessary since I didn’t have another vessel to place the steeped tea. I can see this tea becoming very bitter if left unattended!

The result was a nice dark brown tea with a toasted aroma. It became sweeter as it cooled more. This reminds me of autumn and the leaves that fell from the trees and dried up. The taste was smooth but at the end of a sip was slightly astringent. There was some cocoa and roasted nuts mixed with honey. Perhaps there were some mild raisin or fruit tones mixed with very mild florals. I love the complexity of this tea. Its as if it holds a secret! There was a hint of earthiness to it, not in the same sense as pu-erh though. I love the warmth to it like a big blanket on a snowy cold day. I absolutely love this tea. It just reaffirms my love for oolong teas… and especially non-flavored teas. This is a wonderful tea. And it is so pure yet so complex.

A tasty roasty oolong sample from Meeka. Thanks!
Also my first tea from Teavivre.

I think I may have used too little leaf for my cup because the flavor isn’t as strong as I’m used to from a roasted oolong. Still good though, and with a hint of floral too.

This is the second of the two oolongs from teavivre from my recent batch. The leaves of this one are a little on the greener side, but still dark. I’m guessing this is not as oxidized as the Oriental Beauty, but more than a Tie Gwan Yin. It smells very tea like, more like a black tea, again probably because of the level of oxidation.

Brewed, this tea has a lovely golden reddish brown, lighter and clearer than most blacks, I think. Upon first (very hot) sip, I noticed it was a bit more astringent than the Oriental Beauty. It was a little tart, or sour…not necessarily in a bad way. This could just be my brewing. I did add some sugar to sweeten, though there is still that tart taste. I have not added any milk, even though this is dark enough to carry it. I’m not really getting much sweet or floral with this. It is possible that I’m just not feeling great lately, and I’m just not feeling it with the stuff I have have been having lately…my buds could be off. I will definitely be giving this another brew, and will try with and without sweetener, though I pretty much always add it once I’ve tried it plain.

Unless this is my brewing, I’m going to say that I like this, but not as much as the Oriental Beauty. Thanks again to Angel for sending this one to me. It proves that I still like dark over light oolongs, but that I like light oolongs over green.