Tea: Orchid Fragrance
Type: Zhi Lan Xiang Dancong Oolong (芝兰香单丛乌龙)
Style: Qingxiang Dancong
Roast: Light
Harvest: Spring 2024
Region: Wudong Village, Phoenix Mountains, Chaozhou
Producers: Wen Zitong
Tasting Notes: Stone Fruit, Buttered Toast, Pinon, Rock Salt, Wild Orchid
The Zhilan Xiang, or Orchid Fragrance is an archetypal floral fragrance cultivar when it comes to the world of Dancong Oolong. It is the head cultivar in a family of cultivars all similar to it, including the Baxian (Eight Immortals) Xiongdi (Brothers) and the Zhuye (Bamboo Leaf Fragrance). As a result, we have had many Orchid fragrances over these past eight years but this one stands out in such a magnificent way, we had to carry it in the 2024 dancong lineup.
Possibly our favorite Qingxiang (light roast) dancong oolong this year, the flavors and fragrances are so clean and clearly expressed that when we first tasted it, we has to call Wen Zitong midway through the session to congratulate him.
When placed in a warmed gaiwan, we get stonefruit fragrances like peach and buttered toast. There is something both savory and sweet already exuding from the dry leaves with a spicy hint of cinnamon in the background. While most dancongs lose their sweet fruit fragrance when hit with hot water, the Orchid fragrance retains it, with an almost fruit candy sweetness mixed with intensified notes of cinnamon spice.
This sweetness is transferred directly into the brew, making this tea one of the unique teas that hold its flavors in the tea soup itself. Very light for a dancong the brew is a pale gold, but the texture is thick and buttery on the tongue. There is plenty of mineral notes to this tea, but there is the ever-intensifying sweetness we taste in every sip.
As this tea was made by some of the older bushes in Wen Zitong's Wudong Garden (it is the mother cultivar to a lot of younger cultivars) the trees are all over 100 years old, only pickable with the use of ladders, and their branches are blanketed in moss year-round. This causes the energy of this tea to be profound, immediate, and long lasting, a quiet wave that swells in the chest through the session grounding us to our seat.
This tea is incredibly thirst quenching, tasting like mineral-rich spring water toward the end of the session. There is a pleasant tingling on the tongue as we pause to sink into the feeling of this tea. It is very soothing on the stomach, warming, and digestive in an unblocking and pleasant way.
