Dong Ding Oolong

I like oolong. I prefer more green oolongs, but this is a roasty oolong I can get behind.

It’s got just the right amount of roast to be nice and nutty. It still has floral notes and buttery notes and creamy notes.

I quite like this one.

Though roasted, this tea is still light. The aroma is of roasted corn, nuts, and leaves—perfect for the first crisp day of Autumn. Sipping on the tea after brewing, I get a strong taste of barley, but it isn’t strong enough to be off-putting. This would be great brewed as an iced tea with some honey, or brewed extra strong since the flavor was a bit watery for me.

Ooh! This roasted Dong Ding starts out with this wonderful mild roasted nutty flavor like a Houjicha, but then it opens up to the dried fruit and honey like qualities of Dong Ding, with so much lingering sweetness. For a roasted tea, this one tastes very clean and leaves a nice clean feeling in the mouth and a tingly minty kind of freshness.

On the second steeping the roasted flavor has died off quite a bit revealing more of the sweet, nectar-like qualities of the tea. The more steepings in you go, the more creamy and mellow it gets, and the more it gives way to subtle floral, fruit and honey notes. This is a wonderful oolong for enjoying gongfu style to see how the many infusions change.

This Spring 2013 oolong hails from Dong Ding Mountain. It is not high altitude (1000ft), but the terrain is steep and often covered with fog. The soil is incredibly rich. In addition, this region is home to the most concentrated population of the most skilled oolong tea artisans in Taiwan.
The tea is hand-picked in small batches.
The dry leaf looks amazing – tiny coils that resemble snails – and the scent is wood and spring shrub or vegetative, plus some smokiness.
The taste is mellow, sweet syrupy, chestnut notes with slight raisin and smoked notes. There is a definite English floral note that lingers. It could be hyacinth (green, sweet, floral). There is minimal astringency, no dryness.
The second infusion delivered a sweeter flavor – time for those raisin notes to shine.
Overall, it delivers a complex taste – as well as many cups (up to four infusions last count).

I got this tea a little while ago when Eco-Cha had some good discounts on their older teas. This one was harvested in Spring 2013 so it is roughly a year old.

The age, I think, doesn’t matter, because this oolong is heavenly. Extremely fragrant (as much as I love fragrant teas, I don’t think I could drink this one when having a headache!), smelling like the purest, freshest, off-the-comb honey that was gathered from orchids and fruit blossoms. It tastes very sweet with a tiny amount of roastiness that balances the sweet notes out. The second resteep was even bolder in roasty notes (but they were still really mild) and also brought some vegetal notes.

This has everything I look for in an oolong. Because of its age, and because I have relatively a lot of it, I am going to make this one my evening staple… And I don’t know, but if it’s even better when it’s fresher, perhaps I am glad I got the older one :D So I don’t get too excited over it :D

This tea smells so good, roasted and warm little rolled tea leaves.
Brewed, the liquor is a dark amber jewel color and smells like roasted nuts and baked cookies.
Whoooaaaa!! The flavor is very delicious!!!! Creamy roasted goodness. I love Da Hong Pao and this one is rivaling that as my favorite roasty tea!!!!
I am glad I chose to take this down to 195 F. I am getting to where I don’t want to brew any tea at 212 F,,,it is too hot for the leaves for me. I love my tea kettle where I can set the temp that I want and 195 still gets the leaves to open and keeps them from being burned.
The wet leaves are all opened and a dark green color, as if they roasted them first and then rolled them (but I know nothing of how they create these wonderful teas).
It has that burnt sugar color and flavor in crème brûlee that I love. This is definitely a very yummy, complex, and worth getting more kind of tea!!!

2/23/14 Afternoon tea. 5g/12oz/212F/4min 2 steeps. A very enjoyable dark oolong. I wanted a good strong tea for the afternoon, and this fit the bill perfectly. Strong roasty honey/coconut aromas in a lovely deep gold tea. It reminds me strongly of the roasted chestnuts I would buy from street vendors the winter I lived in Chicago. The second steep finished with a light astringency that was really nice.

Baking Frenzy! Yeah, I finally amassed enough ingredients to bake some healthy gluten free snacks and yummies. I wanted to have a stock of food in the freezer that I could just warm things up as I need them. I still have a bunch more cooking to do, but today’s batch mostly turned out delicious. As someone who notoriously botches food, this was a pleasant experience. Only the cheesy millet cakes turned out meh, not sure if it is fault of me or it just not being something I like.

Speaking of things I like, today’s tea! Eco-Cha Artisan Tea surprised me with a few of their spring and summer harvest teas and I am starting off with the first one I cracked into: Dong Ding Oolong Tea (Spring 2014) I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s Dong Ding, and am excited to see how this one compares and to see how my palate has evolved. The aroma of this roasted oolong is yum! Really that is what the first word in my tasting journal says about the tea’s aroma, it says a lot more, but I always consider that a good beginning. It is a blend of roasted notes and floral notes, retaining the original honeysuckle and orchid notes of the pre-roasted tea. The roasted notes start out with sweet caramelized sugar, cashew butter, roasted sesame, and a hint of acorn squash. It is quite sweet and the mild hint of smoke at the finish adds a level of complexity and is a really great finish.

Unsurprisingly, this tea went into my gaiwan, and after a brief steeping the aroma of the tea filled my tea area. Tao, my fat fluffball of a cat actually woke up and had to come give it a sniff. Taking a cue from my cat and sniffing the wet leaves, I notice that it is a touch smokier now and also not as sweet. There is a strong cooked acorn squash (possibly grilled with that touch of smoke) along with toasted sesame and pine nuts. The liquid is where most the sweetness went, there are notes of honey, roasted sesame and cashew butter. At the end there is a distant whiff of honeysuckle nectar.

Before I get into the taste of the first steep, let me tell you a little about my relationship with roasted Dong Ding Oolongs. I always have to have some on hand, even if it is a low quality (though I of course prefer the good stuff) it is the tea I drink when I feel bad, it is the tea I drink when I am homesick, I reach for this tea on cold winter mornings and chilly autumn evenings, I sip it during summer when I am longing for autumn, this is my feel good tea…but enough of that! The taste of the first steep is sweet with a smooth mouthfeel, there are notes of roasted corn, acorn squash, and cashew butter. The initial sweet almost grain like quality at the beginning transitions to roasted nuts and a finish of spicebush* that lingers.

I should warn you all, I steeped this tea a lot, so strap in as we move onto steep two. The aroma of the liquid is a blend of sweet spicebush and cashew butter with a hint of smoke at the finish. The taste is smokier and sharper, it has a slight dryness at the finish that has a lip smacking quality. It starts out with smoke and then moves to roasted nuts, acorn squash and cashew butter, the spicebush is there at the finish again. This steep was a bit richer than the first steep.

Time for a third steeping, and the aroma of the liquid this time around is quite sweet, more so than the previous steeps. There are notes of spicebush, burnt sugar, and cashew butter, there is also just a tiny hint of smoke at the finish, but it is very faint. The taste starts out smoky, though not as strong as the previous steep, there is hint of tobacco and a finish of burnt sugar and roasted sesame. The mouthfeel starts out smooth and finishes with a slight dryness.

For the fourth steep the aroma is gentle, with subtle notes of burnt sugar and spicebush, there is a whiff of smoke at the finish. This steep is by far the mildest, it is gentle, like drifting off to sleep, the taste of smoke at the finish is faint, it fades to burnt sugar and cashew butter sweetness that lingers into the aftertaste. Recently on Twitter I was asked which roasted Dong Ding is my favorite, I listed Eco-Cha’s as part of my top three based on last year’s harvest, tasting this year’s I might have to change it to my favorite.

*A brief note on spicebush, since I have had a few people wondering what that is. I am reffering to the plant Calycanthus occidentalis which has extremely fragrant red flowers whose fragrance (at least to me) is a mixture of allspice, exotic flowers, musk, and a rich heaviness like spiced red wine. In one of the houses I lived in back in Georgia, there was a hedgerow of spicebushes between my yard and a forest, when they would bloom the aroma was intense!

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/08/eco-cha-artisan-teas-dong-ding-oolong.html