The colder season has made black tea even more tasty than usual for me. I recently purchased a bunch of blacks from Verdant Tea. One of them I felt I was taking a bit of a risk on, Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black Tea, as I’m not huge on heavy smoked teas, I simply purchased for the recommendation that roasted oolong lovers would enjoy it. Let’s review it!
Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea is crafted in the Wuyi Mountains from the Li Family. This is the Autumn 2014 batch. Pictured is the sample size, though I also have 1oz of it.
Dry Leaf
Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea has a lightly smokey BBQ scent. The tea looks like dark twists of wide ribbons of tea.
Steeping Instructions
Verdant Tea always has great steeping instructions for both western brewing and gong fu style. I followed the gong fu instructions, which were obviously made from tea experience of the tea seller. I used boiling water and did two rinses. I did 2 second infusions to start, slowly increasing the steep time as I went on.
Tasting of Verdant Tea’s Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea
Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea steeps up similar to the scent of the dry leaf – smokey charcoal sticky BBQ. The smoked tea has a light brown, reddish amber colour going on.
First, Second and Third Infusion: Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea sips in sweet and very smooth. The tea has a light cedar wood flavor but with an additional level of sweetness of tree sap. As the sip goes on the tea gets more smokey. First, the smokiness starts like a wisp of sandalwood incense then builds to charcoal burnt pine. However, the smokey flavor is quite smooth as if the smoke isn’t disrupting the clear blue skies. The smokey level is moderate, 4/10 on the Smoke Meter. Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea has no bitter or dryness.
With each steeping the flavor of Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea gets a touch stronger in intensity that is like the smoke is heating up the sky.
Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Infusion: The flavor intensity peaked to a smokey dark chocolate flavor. Each sip of Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea is creamy with swirls of rich dark chocolate and smoke. The tea has gotten more sweet, however the smoke is getting more wispy light and delicate with each infusion.
Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Infusion: I moved to 30 second infusions here and turned out this batch was the best infusions! Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea tastes like milk chocolate. The tea sips light then the flavor builds to chocolate. There is more going on than chocolate – the texture is very smooth, sweet and clean with a light floral tickling the background. There is very little smoke, if any. With each infusion, the tea is getting sweeter too. It is like the fire was put out, the smores have melted and I’m licking the molten chocolate off my fingers.
Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Infusion: 1 minute infusions. Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea is stabilizing as light chocolate and sugar flavor with a creamy marshmallows taste. As expected, with each infusion the flavor drops.
Thirteenth Infusion: The lucky last hurrah 8 minute infusion! Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea is nicely sweet with background of chocolate. I can probably get another long steeping or two but I’ll stop here for now.
By the way, this cup is also from Verdant Tea – so pretty!
Comments
Verdant Tea‘s Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea is a comfort food, campy snuggle tea. Early steepings felt uplifting with the forest pine and incense notes. The mid steepings were of campfire smore roasting to later infusions of clear night sky while snacking on chocolate. I love a tea that takes you on a journey!
As a lapsang souchong I loved it – the smoke was low moderate and added to the experience. It was complex in flavor and not like liquid smoke. I heard from others that they prefer a lapsang souchong that tastes like the tea was burnt over tire fire, so Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea is probably not for them. I agree with Verdant Tea that a dark oolong drinker and a chocolate notes black tea lover would enjoy Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong Smoked Wuyi Black tea. This is tea is also friendly to a tea drinker getting their taste wet for smokey teas.
