Tea: Single Bush Orchid Fragrance
Type: Zhilan Xiang Danzhu Dancong Oolong (芝兰香单株单丛乌龙)
Style: Classic Dancong
Roast: Qingxiang (Light Roast)
Harvest: Spring 2024
Region: Zhu Liu Village, Phoenix Mountains, Chaozhou
Producers: Master Wei
Tasting Notes: Melted Butter, Gardenia, Wild Orchid, Honey, Petrichor
We are more than excited to release the very first single-bush production we have carried from Master Wei. We have worked with Master Wei longer than any other dancong oolong maker, having first met him in Autumn of 2017. He is a reticent, soft spoken maker with a keen eye for details. His most expensive teas are often very lightly processed, allowing the leaves to show their true nature. This single-bush Orchid Fragrance was sent to us as a gift for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and it was so good, we had to buy up the last of his stock and include it in this dancong release.
Single Bush, or Danzhu, means that all these leaves come from a single tea tree. Wei told us that this Zhilan Xiang tree can make about 3.5 kilograms of tea per year. As we were a little late in the season to buy it, he only had 1 kilogram left to sell us, so this tea is extremely limited.
The tea itself is on the lighter side of the roast scale, which suits this cultivar very nicely. When the dry leaves are placed in a warm gaiwan, they exude a sweet buttery fragrance. This quickly changes to a potpurrie of dried flowers with a hint of cooking spices when infused with hot water. But by and far, the most interesting part about this tea is the tea soup and the brew itself.
The brew itself is a light pale gold that looks ordinary enough except for its clarity and purity of color. Even after drinking the rinse (yes, we drink the rinse for these danzhu and mother bush teas), while waiting for the kettle to heat up for the second infusion, our tongue is already coated with tea oils and beginning to tingle as we salivate. These kinds of inexpressible physical sensations are part of how we identify old bush flavors, a kind of mouth watering sensation that happens after we begin drinking these ancient and deeply-rooted tea trees.
A few infusions in, the taste of the tea is light and clean, but without a rollercoaster of fragrances and nuances. This again is on-par for our experiences of Danzhu and Gushu teas, the really remarkable reason these teas are so prized is less about their flavors and more about the bodily sensations one notices as they attentively drink. (If you're looking for a tea that is much more iconically Orchid Fragrance Dancong, we suggest checking out Wen Zitong's Orchid Fragrance Old Bush). The brews are very thick in the mouth and oily on the tongue while providing a lovely mineral depth. As the session continues, the brews become sweeter and sweeter, and can easily brew a liter of tea, necessitating us to refill out kettle toward the end of the session. The sweet tingling sensation on the tongue lasts hours after each session for us.
