Tea and Zen

This is part of my Sample Demolition: Verdant Tea series.

This is the last of my samples from Verdant Tea. The remaining teas are all in 25g quantities and haunting my nightmares... that is a lot of one tea to get through considering all the other teas I have hanging around now. Despite that, I have a game plan for how I'm going to get through them. You guys will see that soon enough.


I used 5g/120ml, 100C water, washed once, first brewing 5 seconds + 3-5 seconds per each additional brewing.

Brewings

This tea has the scent of chocolate, the classical WuYi minerality, cream, and a very subtle hint of honey and brûlée. It's a nice smell but all of it isn't very strong. I was very, very underwhelmed by their Special Grade Shui Jin Gui so I am really hoping that will not be the case here, it wasn't a cheap tea ($25.50/25g). This tea is also very expensive at $28.25/25g. That comes out to be a little over $1/g. 

Once I heated the gaiwan and lightly shook the leaves three times, the chocolate, cream, and brûlée were heavily embedded in the aroma. 

The aroma in the first cup was heavily of chocolate, brûlée, and jasmine. The liquor was smooth but somewhat flat. You could clearly taste the minerality in the liquor. In the aftertaste there was jasmine and honeysuckle. 

There wasn't much aroma to the second cup. Bad sign! The liquor was mostly the same except now you could taste cedar and honey. Jasmine was the main flavor in the aftertaste just as before. The liquor was very flat now as well. Pretty disappointing. 

Some aroma had come back for the third. There was jasmine, a hint of hay and earth. The liquor was a little rounder than the previous cups, but still fairly flat. There was an earthy flavor mingled in with the usual WuYi minerality. As it's something I couldn't quite put my fingers on perhaps it is the "wet granite" flavor that Verdant has on the profile. Seems like such an odd flavor but whatever. Peat and cedar with a tiny hint of jasmine lingered in the aftertaste. 

I sipped on a little water after the third to see if it would bring anything out as it usually does with a WuYi.
It didn't.

The fourth smelt almost exactly the same as the third. The liquor also tasted more or less the same except there was more cedar present. If it didn't change much in the next cup I was going to stop at the fifth. No point in trying to make a stagnant tea change when it clearly won't. This tea wasn't even remotely old! 

You'll be shocked: it didn't change at all. Well, it did, but it became weak and almost flavorless. I'm very sad that this met my expectations since they were very low. When I ordered this sample and the Special Grade Shui Jin Gui I was expecting something very special considering the price and flavor profile. It's really everything but.

Rating

This tea get a four. For something so expensive you would think that the liquor would be more complex. I've had much cheaper WuYi's that are much better. C'mon Verdant, this is two of your most expensive teas that are really not anything fantastic. That's a shame! 



In general I have come to notice that a WuYi oolong is either very average (or less than average) or it blows your mind away with how fantastic and complex it is. There doesn't seem to really be a middle ground.

If you are interested you can purchase this tea here.