This is yet another tea that made its way to my tea table by virtue of it being included as a free 3 gram sample in a recent purchase at House of Tea.

Seeing as I’m feeling somewhat lazy this morning, I’ll let Babelcarp do the heavy lifting when it comes to the task of unpacking this delightful Oolong’s name, – “Feng Huang – Milan – Dancong“…

These leaves were harvested in the spring of 2018 on Wudong mountain, Guangdong province, more specifically they were plucked Pre-Qing Ming.

The first thing I noticed here was the effect of the roast on both the taste and the aroma of the tea. During the pouring of the first infusion from pot to gong dao bei I picked up what I can best describe as the darker parts of the crust of a good handmade load of bread.

The name of this tea promised honey and orchids, and I ain’t going to argue with that, which is as good an example of “does exactly what it says on the tin” when applied to tea as you’re ever likely to find.

The brewing tips talked about the fact that despite its darker appearance this really is a relatively lightly oxidised tea, and that consequently I should expect a relatively light liquor, but what I actually experienced was something with a medium to light-heavyweight mouthfeel and a nice orangey/gold hue.

As always when it comes to samples the killer question is “would you actually fork out for a larger cargo..?“, and here I can most certainly answer in the affirmative. It would be interesting to see how well a bit of gaiwan action would suit, say, 7 or 8 grams of these leaves, test if we could ramp up that flowery sweetness, and just how many good steepings a bowl and lid would find hidden beneath those dragonettes.

This is a tea that definitely going on the “Future Purchases” list. Good stuff.