Tea: Mother Bush Bamboo Leaf Fragrance
Type: Zhuye Xiang Mushu Dancong Oolong (竹叶香母树单丛乌龙)
Style: Classic Dancong
Roast: Qingxiang (Light Roast)
Harvest: Spring 2024
Region: Wudong Village, Phoenix Mountains, Chaozhou
Producers: Wen Zitong
Tasting Notes: Fresh Baked Bread, Butter, Gardenia, Bamboo, Orchid
This tea is extremely limited in quantity, we were only able to acquire 500 grams, and since we would prefer to sell these primarily in the sample boxes, there are only 20 of the 12 gram pouches available on this listing. Read more about why this tea is so difficult to source and why it is so expensive below the tasting notes.
The smell of the dry leaves in a warmed gaiwan is that of baking bread, melted butter, and something fruity besides. This is precisely the fragrance we have come to expect from Wen Zitong's Bamboo Leaf Fragrance Dancong. For the Mother Bush version of this tea however, as soon as the leaves are exposed to hot water, we get a crisp clean vegetal note, precisely as the name implies, redolent of green bamboo in spring, like hiking through a bamboo blanketed mountain peppered here and there with the floral notes of gardenia and wild orchid.
The brew is a clean gentle gold, and significantly sweeter than its old bush counterpart. Being a single tree, mother tree production, what we are seeking in this tea is the mineral mouthfeel, the tingling sensation on our tongues, and the rich warm energy that these ancient trees provide. Drinking the rinse, this tea already delivers on all these aspects, but from experience, we know we will need to push this tea well past a dozen steeps to truly understand just why Mushu is different from Lao Cong.
As the session progresses, this tea does the remarkable thing where almost all its fragrances end up in the brews themselves. Very quickly, the wet leaves in the gaiwan cease being greatly interesting to our olfactory senses, and this tea becomes a symphony for the tongue and body. The brews themselves are light and incredibly sweet, causing us to salivate between infusions as the flavors linger and sensations take hold.
The mother bush teas from Wen Zitong are teas not commonly available. Only though strong connections as well as deep relationships with the growers and makers can we source these teas. We are honored that Wen Zitong agreed to reserve a pound of this tea for us from the very limited amount of leaves picked this spring (each year there are only a few kilograms of final tea from this tree). This is Danzhu, Single Tree, Mother Bush, true Dan Cong, aka Single Bush. Teas like this are a rare treat and indeed the nuances tend to be subtle and profound for those learned in the leaf.
While these teas usually don't have the rollercoaster of flavors and aromas, their true magic comes in their incredible vitality, the sweetness in the later infusions, and of course the Cha Qi.
