Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: The Tao of Tea
Tea Description:
The Phoenix Mountains (Fenghuang Shan) in Guangdong, China are home to famous varietals in oolong teas. In our last visit to this area, we studied at least seven different varietals. Notable and popular amongst them is the Mi Lan (Honey Orchid) varietal. Our name for it is Royal Phoenix.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I spent my evening enjoying this Royal Phoenix Oolong Tea from The Tao of Tea. It’s splendid, and what a wonderful tea with which to just sit back and relax. Beautifully fragrant and so flavorful.
I enjoyed four fabulous cups of this tea (I combine two infusions in each cup, resulting in eight infusions total). I think my third cup was my favorite, because it was in this cup that the flavors became very seamless and it was a harmonious experience in flavor.
My first cup offered me a soft, honeyed flavor with notes of sweet fruit with just a hint of sour, reminding me very much of a fresh plum. There were notes of wood and a sort of rustic, earthy note, as well as hints of fragrant flower. The first cup was the softest of the four cups I enjoyed, but, it was still very flavorful.
The second cup was more honey-ish than the first, with the sweeter notes of the fruit starting to emerge over the tart notes. The flavors were still very focused in this cup, and it wasn’t until the third cup where the flavors seemed to mellow a little bit and meld into one another and become very smooth and beautifully mellifluous.
The fourth cup, the flavors continue to soften and meld. However, I noticed that the honey notes were subdued and that is what made the biggest difference for me between cups three and four and why cup three was my favorite, and why I decided to stop at four cups. The honey notes are just so luscious!
A really enjoyable Oolong.
Mi Lan Dan Cong Tea from Canton Tea Co.
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Canton Tea Co.
Product Description:
Dan Cong is the champagne of oolongs: ripe with intense fruit and sweetness. This high grade example comes from a plantation on the lower slopes of Wu Dong Mountain, Chao Zhou. The leaves are thoroughly fermented and baked to produce a rich liquor with unique flowery and honeyed notes that can be enjoyed through multiple infusions.
Our Buyer’s notes:
“This tea is more heavily baked than the Song Zhong Dan Cong to allow the tea to produce its unique honey and lychee flavours.”
Taster’s Review:
Ooooooh-Long! This tea definitely puts the Oooooh into Oolong. It is truly wonderful.
The aroma of the brewed liquor is delightful. It has this amazing sort of “outdoorsy” kind of scent, like the fragrance you might experience if you were walking through the woods on a quiet spring morning. It is smells of earth and damp wood, as well as newly blossoming flowers and hints of fruit, and even a clean, crisp air-like scent. This is a tea that you need to inhale deeply – taking in this extraordinary aroma – before taking a sip, to truly experience it in its entirety.
And then, of course, there is the flavor. And … put simply, this has a flavor that keeps you sipping. That is to say, my cup is now empty and I need to infuse the leaves again in order to compose the right words to describe this tea. It is so good that I finished the cup before I could start writing about it.
Now as I sip my second cup (the result of my third and fourth infusions combined), I can tell you a little more about this tea. The flavor is intense. It has a honey-esque tone to it … not just the sweetness of honey, but also the unique floral taste of honey. It is sweet with the subtlest tone of sharpness in the background, such an enchanting, piquant kind of taste.
And as the description from Canton Tea Co. suggests, there is a lychee kind of flavor to this too. It is so very similar to the unique flavor of lychee, in fact, that I had to double check on this tea to make sure it wasn’t a lychee flavored or scented tea. But no: these interesting flavors are achieved naturally through the baking process of the tea leaves, and not through a flavoring process.
I was able to infuse this tea a total of six times with no loss of flavor, making this not only a delicious tea, but also a good value for your money too. This is the kind of Oolong I would recommend to a tea enthusiast who finds some Oolong teas to be too delicate for their taste. The flavor of this is so intense, they’re sure to change their mind about Oolong!