Dear Tea Lovers,

Well it has been a busy week, and the hours seemed to slip by especially fast since college classes have started back up. Exhaustive lectures on DNA and Microbes have worn me down and sucked up the entire week. Naturally, the only solution was a nice relaxing spot of tea to calm the nerves and invigorate the senses. As luck would have it, I recently recieved this months tea of the month club from Verdant Teas, full of happiness in the form of new Dancong Wulongs from their newest partner and Dancong tea master Huang Rui Guang and his family. For details on his experience with tea and working in the tea industry, feel free to have a look at the link below, which contains Verdant Tea's blog post all about him and his family.

I adore Dancong Wulong tea, specifically Mi Lan Xiang. I love the sweet honey taste, the peachy flavors, and the heady incense aroma that seems to simply fill the room when brewing it up. This particular box luckily had a sample of master Huang Rui Guang's variety of Mi Lan Xiang, which I eagerly cracked into. I did 3-5 second steepings, adding 3 seconds per steep, with seven grams of leaf in a 100mL Yixing teapot, dedicated to dancong wulong. I noticed the tea leaf was a bit smaller than I usually find in dancong wulongs, but this might be due to it being a smaller packet of tea (15 grams in the box) and so the leaf may be smaller for my particular box.

The first steeping flooded the room with that classic Mi Lan Xiang smell, incense and fresh ripe peaches. The taste was an explosion of rich peach juice mixed with a tangy flavor which I could only associate with pineapple. These two fruits blended together in a wonderful way flavor profile-wise. The acidic taste of the pineapple managed to highlight the mineral taste present as well. The finish was smooth rich honey with a sort of warm perfume of incense. Lastly, there was a bit of a woodsy note and some spice which was sort of similar to cardamom. The tea was very strong, I think due to the smaller size of leaf, but the sweetness of the peach and honey notes mellowed out any bitterness.

The second steeping was even more fruity and tart. The pineapple and peach became even fresher in flavor. The spice notes started to fade a bit, and the incense seemed to linger on the tip of the tongue with that rocky mineral taste. The honey taste moved down the back of the throat and left a pleasant aftertaste, somewhat floral in nature, like honeysuckles.

For the third infusion, the tea has adopted a more floral note. The original spice notes are now completely gone, and the woodsy flavors are also gone. A mineral rocky taste remains mingled with the peach and pineapple notes. The honey has developed more into a sort of honeysuckle flower note.

The fourth infusion, (and the last I have recorded in my tea tasting journal), seemed to mellow out the mineral a bit and more focus on the sweet peachy plum flavors and the acidic pineapple. The honey sweet floral taste is lighter this steeping. The incense is far lighter as well. Fruitiness seems to be the star of the show now, and that continues through another six infusions before I decided to call it quits for this tea. Overall, this tea was a very good Mi Lan Xiang. I very much enjoyed the fruity taste, and the pineapple was a pleasant if unexpected surprise to be able to experience. I would definitely recommend it if you tend to like the more fruity tasting teas. Hopefully Verdant Tea will be selling some of Huang Rui Guang's tea soon! Cheers all! Happy sipping!

The Tea Connoisseur Matt

PS: The link below contains more ingo on Huang Rui Guang, if you are interested.

http://verdanttea.com/meet-huang-rui-guang/