Welcome to the 2022 Dancong Spring Collection! We have chosen 4 of the most diverse and interesting Dancong oolongs we have encountered to highlight in this spring-exclusive box. These teas provide a nice range of flavors, but are all fresh and provide a lovely toasted flavor from being baked in a wood burning oven after their initial processing and sorting. While some of these teas will go on to be traditional charcoal roasted over the summer, a few of them have reached their final form, and will not revive any charcoal roasting.
In our opinion, these teas are much softer on the stomach and great to drink fresh, when compared to a freshly charcoal roasted Dancong Oolong. The charcoal roast flavor may take several months to a year to fully dissipate and meld with the leaves, the Wood-fire Baked Dancong Oolongs, on the other hand are much more suitable to instant drinking than their charcoal roasted counterparts.
We hope that through this box, we can share a little bit about what Dancong oolongs taste like at this early spring stage (before charcoal roasting), and help others expand their Dancong oolong tasting palate, furthering their understanding of the flavors possible, and the styles of Dancong oolongs they prefer.
In the set:
- 14g Thunderstruck (seared wood, cocao nibs, pine sap, butterscotch)
- 14g Hidden Cave (buttered potatoes, elder berries, rich mineral umami)
- 14g Eight Immortals (buttered toast, sage, roasted meats, rock candy)
- 14g Heavenly Fragrance (unbuttered popcorn, raspberry jam, ground cinnamon)
All the teas were harvested and processed in April of 2022 and sampled and curated in May of 2022.
This year we will be releasing a Spring and Autumn Dancong Sampler Set, as traditional Dancong Oolongs receive three roasts, and are rested for up to 20 days between roasts, thus won't be avaialbe until late July or August at the earliest. Thus, this box serves to highlight what a modern styles of Dancong Oolong taste like in comparison with the fully roasted Dancong Oolongs that wont be available until this Autumn!
The tea is packaged in 14g heat-sealed bags. Recommended brewing is 6-7 grams of tea in a 3-4 ounce gaiwan; thus, this sample set offers two chances to taste each tea and compare with the others.
We are very excited to share this tea tasting opportunity, as it is one of the few ways to really understand the complexities of certain types of teas.
