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I seem to be swimming against the current of popular Steepster opinion on this one, but here goes…

When I first started to “get into tea”, per se, 18 months ago, this was one of the teas that I tried that really convinced me to branch out more. Teapigs have a great product on their site where you can order 12 lots of 2x tea bags, from across their range (and you can choose the samples). I picked this one because I’d never tried an oolong and was curious. I loved it in bag form, so bough a box of loose (it’s ~50 g, I think). I brewed it Western style, a number of times, over Summer and have always really liked it.

But I never finished it off and I still probably have a good 30 g of it left. And with my recent oolong kick, I thought I’d give it a try with fresh perspective and a new method – in my Gaiwan! So, I prepped it in much the same way that I usually do with greener oolongs – water that’s no hotter than 90 degrees, covered the bottom of the Gaiwan with the dry leaf, and then rinse and leave to steam for about a minute before the first infusion.

What a difference! It’s virtually unrecognisable from the tea in my (admittedly quite murky) memories. Drinking it like this really brings out the best in it – each infusion was floral/orchid-like, with that lovely buttery note and mild vegetal flavour.

I was worried that with its age (it’s probably been open around 10 months, though I do keep it sealed with a clip and well out of sunlight), it would have lost some of its flavour. But it seemed to have been totally unfounded – the leaves lasted excellently well through around 9 short steeps (the longest I needed to get to was around 10 seconds). The ninth was milder and I had to stop drinking for boring personal reasons*, but I have nothing majorly bad to say.

I think my only critique would be that, unlike Verdant’s TGY for example, it was slightly bitter in steeps 5-7 (or maybe 4-6. Or 6-8. Who knows XD). That may, though, have been me slightly oversteeping, overleafing or using water slightly too hot (I usually just eyeball it, so it may not be too precise).

I think tomorrow I’ll do a blind test to compare this Dung Ding with the one that I was sent by the London Tea Club. It’ll also help me to score them more ‘accurately’.

*I went to the dentist to get a small, usually painless cavity filled. But they messed up and, without me even eating on it, the filling came out a few hour later. I’m in absolute agony. I’ve never had toothache before, but I swear – this experience is enough to put me off chocolate/sugary food/drinks for life. T_T