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This Longfengxia is from spring 2023. My expectations were high after Ethan’s fantastic, coconut-infused spring 2021 LFX. I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of orchid, narcissus, osmanthus, and cream. The first steep has notes of cream corn, misty mountain air, orchid, osmanthus, grass, and faint peach. The next steep has more of a peachy quality, with soft, indistinct florals. The stonefruit comes into its own in steeps three and four, with something between peach and apricot along with the soft florals. The next couple steeps give me lettuce, cookies, white sugar, and grilled peaches. I get a nice, lingering peachy aftertaste. The final steeps feature bok choy, lettuce, grass, and faint florals.

This is a pleasant, gentle oolong with beautiful stonefruit notes and a little more grassiness than I expected. Slightly longer steeps in my clay pot made the most of the fruit and florals, but the oolong usually petered out fairly quickly and the flavours were always on the softer side. This is still a high-quality tea, but it doesn’t measure up to the spring 2021 LFX. But really, few oolongs can do that.

I’ve been holding on to this tea both because it is good and because it’s hard to pin down the flavours in a tasting note. I think it’s from 2022. Floating Leaves called this a cross between a Bai Hao and a Lishan oolong, and they’re absolutely right. I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of mango, apple, honey, raisins, florals, brown sugar, and malt. The first steep gives me lovely notes of mango, apple, and raisins, plus rose, cream, vanilla, spices, brown sugar, honey, and mild tannins. It’s like an impossibly decadent cake in tea form. I get nutmeg, rose, honey, and pine in the next steep, plus lush mango and more tannins. Steeps three and four add violets and other florals to the spice/rose/mango/honey base. By steep five, the tea takes on some muscatel and autumn leaf overtones reminiscent of a Bai Hao, while still having lots of mango, rose/orchid/violet, honey, and malt. As the steeps get longer, the tea becomes slightly more malty and tannic, though the spices, muscatel/raisins, honey, and brown sugar persist. It tastes more like a traditional black tea, though a very good one. I didn’t want to say goodbye to this tea, so I did some final, slightly disappointing steeps that had notes of malt, minerals, wood, honey, and the ghost of those beautiful florals.

Whenever I have this tea, I’m absolutely smitten with it and sad about my dwindling supply. It has lovely fruity, floral flavours, basically no bitterness, excellent longevity, and the characteristics of all the tea types I enjoy. It confirms my belief that Lishan black teas are truly special.

This tea is from winter 2023/2024. When I bought it in the middle of January, a nice Baozhong sounded wonderful. This tea is lightly roasted, but according to the vendor, it’s not noticeable in the taste. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain pot using 195F water for 15, 20, 25, 30, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps. I also used the same parameters with my 150 ml Zhuni-Hongni pot, though the steep times may have been a bit longer because the pot has a slower pour.

The dry aroma is of lilac, gardenia, orchid, and zucchini. The first steep has notes of lilac, gardenia, honeysuckle, orchid, jasmine, butter, zucchini, minerals, and grass. The heady florals are lovely! The next steep adds herbs and ripe apricot to the floral bouquet. Steeps three to six feature apricot, sap, grass, coriander, and heady florals over a mineral, herbaceous backbone. I get a little nuttiness and a touch of astringency, and the lilac and gardenia are particularly prominent in some sessions. Subsequent rounds are still quite floral, but the vegetal, herbaceous, buttery character gets stronger. The final steeps are herbaceous, mineral, nutty, and vegetal, and I can sort of suspect that the tea has been roasted, though probably only because I was told about it.

Steeping in clay doesn’t seem to affect the tea too much, though I remember detecting more minerality and less of a floral aroma.

This tea is definitely for people like me who love drinking flowers. If I’d stopped at steep six or so, I would have given this Baozhong a 94. However, the lovely florals get overwhelmed in subsequent steeps and the tea becomes quite grassy and vegetal. This is still a lush Baozhong with lots of complexity.

This is a clonal first flush that I included in my 2023 order because of its name. (Giving pretty names to Darjeelings seems to be common, and “Floral” is fairly restrained as things go.) I steeped about 4 g of leaf in 150 ml of 180F water for 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10 minutes.

The dry aroma is of honey, citrus, florals, spices, and herbs. The first steep has notes of honey, spring flowers, lemon, orange, pepper, herbs, and green veggies. There’s some crispness and astringency, though it doesn’t detract too much from the citrusy florals. The next steep is also herbaceous, lemony, and floral, with a nice sweetness balanced by green veggies and a bit of astringency. The third steep has a pronounced honey note, less florality and citrus, and a harder hit of astringency and veggies. I also get some nuttiness and green beans, though I may be detecting that flavour because I’ve been drinking a lot of green tea. The final two steeps are predictably astringent, but with enough honey and florals to be drinkable.

This is a nice Darjeeling, but it doesn’t reach the heights of some of the other Thunderbolt first flushes in my opinion. Using less leaf cuts down on the astringency but also on the flavour, and it’s hard to find a balance. Still, this is a smooth, sweet, floral, citrusy FF that I enjoyed finishing.

I just finished another 50 g pouch of this ethereal Tie Guan Yin. It became a little softer with age, but the gardenia, orchid, and violet florals were still lovely, as were the hints of apricot, pineapple, peach, green apple, and cream corn. The longevity was still good, though the later steeps were grassy as expected.

Kudos to Sipscollection for finding a beautiful Taiwanese green Tie Guan Yin! This tea may be getting too old to buy another bag, but I’m thinking about it.

After enjoying a gongfu session with Wuyi Origin’s Meizhan Jin Jun Mei a few days ago, I thought I’d do an impromptu comparison with another JJM I had lying around. Following the vendor’s instructions, I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140, 160, 200, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

True to the description, this tea has lots of fuzzy, silvery little buds mixed with the dark leaf. The dry aroma is of rye bread, cocoa, honey, florals, and malt. The first steep has notes of rye bread, honey, butter, orchid, lemon cake, herbs, malt, and sweet potato. Steep two adds a hint of cocoa, more sweet potato, rose, and some dryness in the mouth. The next couple steeps feature more malt and sweet potato, plus lavender, florals, lemon, minerals, and light tannins. Steeps five and six are very similar, with a little more bread and honey but with plenty of florals. The final few steeps have notes of malt, bread, honey, florals, earth, minerals, hay, and wood, with a nice honey aftertaste.

As someone who is fond of floral teas, I’m not surprised that I enjoyed this Jin Jun Mei. The long steep times were a bit unusual for me, but they produced strong, complex flavours and surprisingly little bitterness. I’m not sure I could detect that it was made from Huang Guan Yin material without having been told, though the florality does seem similar in my limited experience. I liked this more than the Meizhan JJM from Wuyi Origin, but the rose and other florals had a lot to do with that. I think these are both high-quality teas.

This is the other new unsmoked lapsang I bought from Wuyi Origin in my Black Friday order. The name intrigued me, though I honestly couldn’t tell you what a bamboo forest should smell like. I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of honey, sweet potato, wood, florals, and something I’ll call bamboo. The first steep has notes of honey, malt, wood, sweet potato, bamboo, and lemon. The tea is a bit drying. The next steep has more sweet potato, lemon, orange, orchid, honey, bamboo, and tannins, with a squashy citrus feeling and some dryness. Steeps three and four give me ethereal orchid, lilac, and bamboo, plus honey, citrus, sweet potato, and tannins. There’s a lovely honey, floral aftertaste. The next few rounds are floral, a bit lemony, and full of honey, tannins, bamboo, and wood. The final steeps feature honey, malt, earth, minerals, grass, wood, and tannins, though they’re still pleasant enough to drink.

Like all of Wuyi Origin’s lapsangs, this is a high-quality tea that I enjoy. I like the citrus, florals, and that elusive taste of bamboo, though I’m not such a fan of the tannins. It won’t replace their Wild Lapsang in my heart, but that’s a high bar to jump over.

I received this tea as a sample with my 2023 Thunderbolt order. It was actually listed on the site a while after I made my purchase and I was sad I didn’t get to add it, so I was extra excited to see it in my box. I steeped my remaining 4 g of leaf in 150 ml of 190F water for 2, 3.5, 4.5, 6, and 10 minutes.

The dry aroma of these large, silver-bud-decorated leaves is of apple, muscatel, nuts, honey, and florals. The first steep has strong notes of almond, milk chocolate, apple, muscatel, butter, honey, herbs, pineapple, spring flowers, malt, and tannins. The tea is a little drying, though that’s my fault for using so much leaf. It has a lush, thick texture and a fruity and nutty aftertaste. The next steep is a little more tanic, with nuts, wood, malt, apple, muscatel, butter, herbs, and caramel. The third steep smells like caramel apples, and has florals, bread, malt, wood, and tannins along with the persistent fruitiness. The final steeps are fairly tannic, though they’re still good enough to finish.

This is a complex, fruity second flush that was a pleasure to drink. My tasting notes were all over the place because the tea was hard to pin down. My only small complaint is the amount of tannins, both in this heavier session and in a lighter one I did a couple weeks ago. Still, this tea is well worth buying while it’s available.

I apparently bought this tea in 2021 when I was exploring Jin Jun Mei. Since then, I’ve decided that unsmoked lapsang is usually fruitier, not to mention a better value, although it’s nice to revisit JJM occasionally. I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma of this fuzzy Jin Jun Mei is of honey, honeysuckle, sweet potato, malt, and cocoa. The first steep has notes of butter, honeysuckle, sweet potato, honey, and faint malt. The tea is fairly thick and has a sweet, lingering aftertaste. Steep two adds more florality, honey, and starchy sweet potato, with some hints of bread and cocoa. The next couple steeps are very floral, with honeysuckle and something I’ll call violet. There’s lots of sweet potato and honey, though the cocoa has disappeared. The next few steeps offer consistent honey, caramel, bread, sweet potato, malt, and honeysuckle/violet florals, with no bitterness and a very sweet profile. By steep nine or so, the tea fades into something that’s primarily sweet potato, caramel, and faint malt, still without any bitterness or tannins. A few tannins appear near the very end of the session, when the tea is generically bready, malty, and squashy.

This Jin Jun Mei isn’t particularly complex, but the flavours that are present are nice. I particularly like the heady florality and lack of bitterness. As Daylon mentioned, this tea is all about the sweet potato, although I wish there’d been a bit more cocoa as well. This isn’t my favourite tea from Wuyi Origin, but it is representative of the high quality of the hongcha this vendor offers.

Matcha is a taste that I haven’t yet acquired, but I’m trying again this morning. Thanks to Nio for the free sample. I cold brewed my entire 2 g in about 150 ml of water in a mason jar. I didn’t fill it to the top of the jar as I did last time, so maybe I’ll get some foam.

The dry aroma is nutty and grassy. I did get some foam when I shook the matcha! I taste notes of cream, nuts, grass, snow peas, asparagus, kale, and mild umami, with a creamy consistency and not too much dust. The matcha is sweet and has a grassy, vegetal aftertaste.

I found this tea to be lighter and sweeter than the matcha I tried last winter, although it’s still pretty intense. I think cold brewing also helps dial down the feeling that you’re drinking a spinach salad. .

For an unspecified amount of time, get a free chawan, whisk, and spoon with orders over $129. You can also get up to 69% off matcha. Take an additional 10% off with the code LEAFHOPPER10OFF (I get a small commission when you use this code). I’m not sure when any of these sales expire, so check the site to see if they’re still valid.