Eight Immortals Dancong

This is one of our favorite dancong cultivars and Wen Zitong has an incredible ability to make this cultivar shine.  This is our most looked-forward to dancong of the year every year, and we are so happy with what Wen Zitong has crafted. 

When the dry leaves are placed in a warmed gaiwan, we get the iconic fragrance of buttered toast mixed with something sweeter, like vanilla bean, in the background.  The fragrance is largely overshadowed by the very recent roast, which should melt into something creamier as the roast settles into the leaves over the next few months.  As soon as the leaves are hit with hot water, they exude a berry skin fragrance mixed with something more vegetal like sweetgrass or even stinging nettle.

The brew is a rich gold, which shows that the roast isn’t so heavy, preserving more of the leaf fragrances and flavors.  Every year we find one dancong that tastes pleasantly fruity to us with sweetness like candy, often resulting in the jolly-rancher tasting note.  While there is still too much of the recent roast on this tea to tell yet, we are getting the edges of this fruity sugar candy note in this year’s Ba Xian. 

The taste on the tongue is thick and grounded, offering less sweetness than last year's Ba Xian, but much more minerality.  The most exciting part about this tea for us, is how it performs in the cup.  The fragrances take a backseat, and we are left with the physical presence of this weighty tea on the tongue, coating the mouth, and sitting warm and pleasant in our stomachs.  Toward the end of the session, the minerality gives way to a delicate sweetness, like drinking thick spring water.

This tea is a blend of a few old Baxian trees that belong to Wen Zitong's family up above the Wudong village, on the slopes of the Wudong mountain itself.  These teas from the Wudong core region leave a lingering tingling sweetness on our tongue that is surprisingly consistent, apparent, and exclusive to the Wudong dancongs.