Today’s tea is one I did not hesitate to purchase as the concept sounds amazing! Bitterleaf Tea’s 2022 Crème de la Crème Dancong Shou Puer is a blend of 2022 spring Yashi Xiang (duck shit oolong) and a 2020 Menghai shou puer. Body & Soul, a hong and shou blend, is one of my favorite teas for daily drinking, so I have high hopes for a dancong shou.
Leaf and Steeping Method
Appearance wise is strange. If I didn’t know what this tea is, I’d guess it is a wild sheng due to the autumn dark leaves.
The oolong aroma has taken over the dry leaf, smelling like a bruised peachy floral at first. When I get my nose really in there, I smell some earthy funk. But blindfolded, I would guess this was dancong.
Gongfu ratio wise, I went a little heavy on the leaf as I like going hard on dancongs. So around 1 gram of leaf per 13.5ml of vessel size, steeped in boiling water with very fast infusions.
After a rinse and Crème de la Crème Dancong Shou Puer smells strange. It’s a meld of funky earth and floral woody oolong. The leaves in the gaiwan look wild as the broth are dark but the leaves are green.
Tasting of Bitterleaf tea’s 2022 Crème de la Crème Dancong Shou Puer
First, Second, and Third Infusion: Crème de la Crème steeps up cloudy. It did need a rinse as the funky scent mostly went away.
First sip… WEIRD! This tea blend sips in slick, creamy, and heavy like a shou. However, it is fruity and heavy aromatic white peaches and floral, with a finish of minerals and wisps of earth. Texture wise, it is buttery and thick and the aftertaste of peachy floral and earth lingers for a long time.
Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Infusion: I feel this is bad to say, but the steeping appearance really looks like my waste bowl – a mishmash of my green oolong leaves, and dark rinses of shou and black teas.
For these middle infusions, the flavor is shifting to decomposing fuzzy peaches on the wet earth and soggy wood. Some sips are creamy but with grassy flower stems. Other sips have bitter stewed potpourri and wood.
Seventh and Eighth Infusion: Crème de la Crème Dancong Shou Puer is holding onto the floral aroma, despite going stewy and soft in flavor. It’s sipping light and I’m mostly drinking it to top off the interesting aroma and aftertaste. And extended steep until cold, say around 30 minutes, gave me a bitter potpourri and toasty wood.
Comments
Bitterleaf Tea’s Crème de la Crème Dancong Shou Puer you gotta love oolongs and aromatic tea but also have an open mind for something very different. I haven’t decided whether I like this tea or not, but it is worth tasting for experimental reasons.
I am not sure how this tea will age. Upon receipt, I did air it for a month as the shou was a bit funky, but aging oolong tends to want airtight and dry.
After my initial review here, I’ve tried this tea about four times, with different ratios, and it seemed this tea had good days of aromatic smooth or bad sessions of bitter stew for the whole session. I felt using a high or low leaf ratio worked out the best, but I will hide this tea to let it age.
