Qianjiazhai 2014 Loose Gong Ting Shu

Slight aroma of ocean air and an expensive crab dinner – this is in aroma only, not taste. Very creamy with a coffee roastiness with a slight chalk/mineral note.

Sample 15/19!

As soon as I smelled this I realized this is exactly the tea I am in the mood for. It did immediately smell like fish, but, like, a good fish.. It reminded me of a good salt & pepper seasoned salmon filet with crispy skin. I only steeped this for like 10-20 seconds and it is medium reddish-brown in color. It smells so good. There’s something other than fish there, I just don’t know the word of it. The taste is very smooth on the first steeping, no new flavors to note though. Will continue drinking and potentially update later :)

Aroma: Fish, vanilla
Color: Deep Grapefruit
First steep: Barley
Second steep: My tongue was too hot to be receptive
Third steep: color so dark red it’s almost purple, mushroom

Tea drunk alert. I was not expecting or waiting for that, I noticed as I was drinking I started to furiously make a list copying down all of Steepster’s suggested flavors in the drop-down menu, the tea gave me a real buzz, and suddenly I found myself laughing for no apparent reason, giddy, and I think it should be called “tea high” instead of “drunk.” This happened into the third steep, so with 5 grams I had consumed 225 ml in less than 10 minutes, and after that third steep I had to wait almost a half an hour before doing round four.

The aroma of the leaves after two rinses was wonderful: yes, pastry dough or biscuit, an earthiness and accents of vanilla, cocoa, maybe sweet almond, some kind of spice. Taste: my first impression was wow lovely creamy texture with a sweetness and also a burnt edge—in a dark roast kind of way, not unpleasant, like swirling ocean contained by a rocky cliff. As I continued to steep, the creaminess and biscuit aroma persisted as a main trait, the dark roast edge eventually rounded off into the eighth cup, maybe some caramel appeared early on, and graham cracker?? in second steep. Overall, very savory, lovely creamy, 5 grams went past 10 steeps, and got me tea drunk. This is my first tea from Verdant, I bought two samples, and Verdant sent me a free sample as well, thank you!

Update: A second session, that burnt dark roast edge again very present, and because this is loose tea, I can’t steep this fast enough. The first few steeps are flashes—as soon as I pour the water on I am scrambling to pour it off because it steeps so quickly. I think next session I will try steeping with a lower water temp, maybe 200 degrees and see if that takes of that very dark roast almost burnt edge. No tea drunkeness this time, but a nice warming buzz with no jitters.

By the way, Verdant’s Qianjiazhai shu “nuggets” (in another review of mine) does not have that harsh edge even at the start, and I suspect that is due to the nuggets having less surface area and taking several steeps to really open up. Love that tea.

At first I thought that the language was a little flowery for this shou’s writeup, but the more steeps I get through, the more I notice that it does taste a bit like pastry and barley.

It starts out dark and woody, with hints of chocolate. As it steeps out, it has a nice, savory breadiness to it. It’s very cozy and warming.

I never did get the vanilla and other things they described in their writeup, but regardless, this tea was a nice way to start the morning.

I cannot argue with the write-up, this is a sweet shu. It is also, at least in the early steepings, very subtle and soft. It is early morning and so my mouth may not be 100% awake yet, but I don’t think that’s out and out blunting anything that is going on here.

The steeps are rich and dark, the mouth feel is thick and actually a bit drying/astringent which is very unusual for a sweet shu (in my experience).

Some very interesting herbal and spice notes are coming out in the fourth steep.