This was another free sample that was included in a recent order I made with House of Tea.

It’s a lightly oxidised strip Oolong from Wudong, Guangdong province on the Chinese mainland. This batch was from an early spring 2015 harvest.

The dried leaves had a nice bittersweet aroma that reminded me of high cacao content dark chocolate.

I got to work with the 4 gram sample using my 150 ml glass gong-fu teapot, using water just off the boil.

After a quick rinse, I started with a 5 second infusion. Each subsequent steeping was 5 seconds longer than the previous one. I managed to coax 8 rounds out of the leaves before the flavour tailed off noticeably.

The tea liquor had a clean, vegetal flavour, all asparagus and broccoli stalks.

There was a prominent floral aroma, which the notes that came with the tea suggests may be reminiscent of almond blossom, which I’m guessing is down to the “Xing Ren” ( 杏仁, “almond” ) component in the name of the tea.

As regular readers of this blog may remember, lightly oxidised, greener Oolongs aren’t usually boat-floaters for me, but this tea’s floral aroma and nod toward dark chocolate helped it stand out from the crowd, and earned it a place on my “possibles” list. Nice.