Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Tea Description:
This Five Year Aged Tieguanyin is an exciting and unique offering in that it manages to preserve the entire spring flower and fresh grass essence of the original leaf, all while tempering the flavor with darker, more grounded notes. Most aged Tieguanyin is pan fired again and again to bring out dark caramel notes. This is not a dark roasted tea in any sense.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
An aged Oolong? I’ve had a few aged Oolongs in the past, but, I am still very interested to try an aged Oolong when it comes into my radar, as was the case the last time I ordered from Verdant Tea and I noticed this Five Year Aged Tieguanyin Oolong Tea … so I had to put a sample of this in my cart to try!
And I’m really glad I did. This is really lovely!
This has much of the flavor that I’d expect from a fresher, green Tieguanyin, and some of the rich, earthy notes of a roasted Tieguanyin. This tea is beautifully complex.
My first cup (the combination of infusions 1 and 2 following a quick 15 second rinse) has a sweet note and an exotic floral quality to it. There is a slight grassy taste to it as well, and this grassy note falls somewhere between a vegetative note of a green Tieguanyin and the hay-like note I’d notice in a white tea. The texture is soft and lighter than the creaminess I might ordinarily notice from a Tieguanyin. This is not buttery … it is light and refreshing!
The second cup (infusions 3 and 4) had a similar mouthfeel … light and smooth. Here, I noticed the floral note becoming more distinct. The tasting notes on the Verdant website suggest a lotus-like flavor and I notice the lotus notes more with this cup than I did with the first cup (which was more of a non-specific floral note). A similar sweetness here, but less of the vegetative quality that I noticed with the first cup. Now, I notice a slight … fruity quality to the cup, and a bit more astringency to this cup (I noticed no astringency with the first cup).
With the third cup (infusions 5 and 6) I notice a slightly creamier texture than I experienced with either the first or the second cups. Still not quite what I’d call “buttery” … this cup is closer to that than either of the two previous cups. I suspect this is the “malt” notes that are suggested on the website, because yes, this tastes more like a creamy malt-like flavor than a buttery tone. The floral notes are less obvious with this cup, I find that the flavors seem to have “melded” in a uniform kind of way … becoming more of a singular flavor that consists of several characteristics rather than several clarified notes.
Of the three cups that I enjoyed of this tea, I would say that cup #3 was my favorite (although the first two were quite delightful also!) so this tea is definitely one you want to take on a long journey so you might enjoy many delicious infusions from it.
Another top-notch tea from Verdant Tea … I’d expect nothing less from them, and they always seem to exceed my high expectations!
