Ginger Flower Fragrance Mother Bush Dancong

One of the most expensive teas we have bought this year, the Jianghua Xiang, or Ginger Flower Fragrance is a true Single Bush production from one of Wen Zitong’s ancestral Mother Bushes.  This tea is so highly sought after, that the only way we could buy it was by being on the mountain and buying the tea in its maocha form immediately after its processing.  Then we had to wait several months and pay extra for it to be properly sorted and roasted to transform it into the tea we have today.

The leaves are smaller and nearly perfectly shaped compared to other dancong oolongs.  The smell of the dry tea is delicately sweet with just the smallest amount of toast on the leaves.  Once brewed, this bouquet opens up into something umami rich and buttery with a strong fragrances of ginger candy spice.  As the session progresses, the leaves give off more and more of their spicy vegetal fragrance.

While the brews from these mother bush productions are rarely bitter and always sweet and light on the tongue (the only way we can describe the dancong laocong flavor) there is a good deal of spice remaining in the brew.  While the smell of the dry leaves hint at this tea’s namesake, it’s really in drinking the tea that one comes to understand this teas slightly spicy ginger flavors.  For all that spice, this tea is a calm and peaceful tea that lends itself to a quiet contemplative session