Testimonials

This is the best Oolong I've ever had.
The vanilla and mandarin orange flavour honestly blows me away.
It's such a rich-tasting tea, I would even say that the price is too low for what you are getting.
If you consider this tea but you are unsure because of the price, I can guarantee you that you won't regret buying it. A must-have tea.

I used 6g for 200ml water and my infusion times were:

1. 1 minute
2. 45 seconds
3. 45 seconds
4. 45 seconds
5. 1 minute
6. 1 minute
7. 1 minute and 30 seconds
8. 2 minutes
9. 3 minutes
10. 5 minutes

You can even try more infusions.

A True Delight to Taste & Smell Senses!
There are a few teas that truly delight the senses. This is one of them! The tasting notes are varied, blending on top of one another, subtle and yet distinctive.

A Blockbuster of Everest Proportions

Primrose meets peppercorn in a nostril-flaring, mood-lifting adventure. Two thumbs up and a standing ovation from the taste buds!

This quickly became my favorite Gaiwan.

The design is wonderful and reminds us to connect with nature. It is easy to decant due to the perfect shape of the lid.

The only wish I would have is for a slightly smaller version of the same design, maybe around 100ml for smaller gongfu sessions.

A bearer of of satisfaction and contentment in a cup, this BaXian is undoubtedly worthy of its namesake and high praise. Thank you for offering such an amazing tea!

What a magnificent example of Xing Ren. I compared this directly against six other Xing Ren, all from different vendors – two of which were competition grade, one of them allegedly won second place in 2022 at the Chaozhou Tea King Competition, or something like that. Living in the United States makes it difficult to confirm such things, I suppose it comes down to trusting your vendors…

Anyways, Tea Hong’s Orchid Gratus stands out as being right up there with the competition-grade and old-bush Xing Ren that I sampled, both of which are literally two and a half times more expensive per gram. This one has all of the right overlap in all of the correct places, but also carries with it some unique attributes that make this feel like an elevated expression of Xing Ren.

Honestly, I’d rather have Orchid Gratus over the two competition-grade Xing Ren. It’s clear that the active phases of the processing; such as the baking, were executed perfectly, and also the resting phase, where patience is required for the maocha to catch up to the masterful techniques applied to it. This is the real deal, whoever made this tea is exceptionally skilled.

As a result of the expert-level crafting, the flavor profile is exquisite. To me, it tastes like vanilla-bean infused plums and seared pineapple flesh, soaked in apple juice and then caramelized in a pan with herbaceous spices like star anise or fennel seed. As the flavor profile melts away, I’m left with distinct overtones of honey drenched florals that linger in the aftertaste for a long time, along with a pleasant minerality that is characteristic of high-end dancong.

There’s a lot going on, and the soft edges this tea has make for a very pleasant overlap in the flavors that accentuates the whole experience as they mingle with one another. The texture is buttery-smooth and the mouthfeel is exceptionally rich; it brings with it a kind of pungency that creates a very expansive and long-lasting aftertaste with undertones of stewed and spiced apples. The aftertaste has its own complex and unique set of characteristics which sink very deeply into the palate, and make for an unforgettable experience.

With this tea, I got other people into tea 🙂

This tea is delicious. It's fruity, peach-y, floral, complex, interesting, and has a great mouth feel. The color of the liquor...just wow. It's like peach juice, or plum juice, or something like that. It's perhaps the most attractive looking liquor of any tea I have had yet. This is a tea that I would consistently keep in my personal stash at home.

I actually have a fun story about this tea! So, here in the United States, especially where I am from (Ohio), there are not a lot of people who drink tea (let alone good quality loose leaf). I am always trying to get new people into tea when I have the opportunity. Recently, an opportunity came for me to do so - I made and served tea gongfu style at a Chinese New Year event at my university's medical center that my school's Confucius Institute held. The event included several different tables set up to show off different aspects of Chinese culture. At my table, I had my gongfu setup and brewed tea for the medical students walking through the lobby. I had a sample of the Honey Orchid Supreme that I brought with me, and I pulled it out when I started to get a lot of people around my table. I brewed it up in front of everyone, showing off the beautiful color of this tea in my glass cha hai. I only had around 3g or so left from the sample, and I was worried that it would be too light. However I adjusted the timing, and when I poured some tea into my cup and tasted it, I experienced a wonderfully fruity, aromatic, and interesting flavor, very smooth. I quickly poured out some cups for others to try. The people that first tried it told me that they were amazed that tea could taste like that, and that they had no idea tea could be so naturally fruity and delicious! These people had most likely only ever had tea bags before, so this tea really amazed them. Some people that I handed the tea to stood by the table and talked with me for more than an hour, asking me about the tea and about how they could do this at home. I was able to introduce several people to the work of good quality tea this way, and I made sure to let them know where I got the tea - Tea Hong. I hope these people got inspired to go home and start exploring the world of tea and gongfu brewing, and perhaps they will order some tea from Tea Hong and be wowed some more 😉

Anyway that's my story, I hope it wasn't too boring 😉 I was able to share the experience of tasting great quality tea with these medical students who had likely never had such tea before. I hope I can inspire more people to get into gongfu brewing like this. Great teas like this one have the ability to change people's opinions about tea in general, and inspire others to start exploring the world of tea!

Excellent tea

果如所言，2014的宋種，確較往上幾年好飲、且更耐沖泡，沖至六七泡，後勁淩厲，餘香猶在。

Ask Yourself

When seeking evenness of mind and a better disposition, ask yourself which tea might help you face the day with strength and calm. No tea may be more suited to the task than Alishan Guanyin.

Nine grams of this beaded beauty produce a liquor the color of an orange-amber sunrise. The vessel lid offers the smell of warm vanilla and a refined perfume of iris, oak moss and cedar wood – a scent worthy of dabbing onto the skin.

This tea whispers balance; its gentle steam patiently waiting to be inhaled. Ask, and Alishan will deliver perfectly even doses of quiet insight to both nostrils. A fresh morning breeze wafts over with subtle, smoldering hints of a distant bonfire.

Next is a fleeting mouthful of sweet summer peaches dissolving into a slightly smoky, spicy-clean aftertaste balanced on the tip of the tongue, mid-palate and throat.

Notice the transformation of the tiny, toasty tadpoles as they make a magical metamorphosis in your mug. They swell into wild, squiggly creatures of dark slate green. Balance gives way to spontaneity as these friendly, appealing leaf-beings inspire your free spirit. If you don’t believe me, ask them yourself.

This tea is an enigma. It’s a Pandora’s Box of flavors and sensations that shows a different side of itself every time you brew it up. Like a chameleon, it is very colorful and dynamic, and constantly shifting around as the soup cools, or as the leaves are being warmed back up as more water is poured into the brewing vessel.

It’s also a very sophisticated and elegant experience. The complex nature of Ya Shi Xiang as a cultivar is perfectly captured in Tea Hong’s Orchid Literati – it would be difficult to find a deeper, rounder, and more wholesome expression than this, despite Ya Shi being a popular cultivar.

It's not just the additional layers of flavor that make Orchid Literati stand out as one of the very best Ya Shi you could ever hope to find, it’s the additional dimensions. Much like watching an old movie on a flat-screen, in black-and-white, then watching that same film re-mastered in 3-D with ultra-high definition colors, so too does this Orchid Literati re-master and upgrade my experience with a cultivar that I know and love.

Besides the sheer breadth and depth of the flavor profile, one thing that really stands out to me about Orchid Literati is how clearly the terroir comes across – I can taste the soil and feel the minerals which fed these trees, and that alone is deeply quenching for my dancong-drinking soul.

It’s not difficult to find a “good enough” example of Ya Shi because it’s an easily-approachable cultivar and there are a lot of really good examples out there… but quality of this caliber is exceptionally rare, and for the price point this sits at, it’s a no-brainer to pick up a bag (or two) and experience the magic for yourself.

Elegant, complex fragrance

The first time I had this tea I used the standard infusion parameters. It came across like the Snow Orchid, unsurprising as they are both categorized as bouquet Phoenix oolongs. But from smelling the infused leaves, I can tell that this Orchid Gratus is gravitating towards the traditional Phoenix style. The infused leaves also shows more oxidation than Snow Orchid.
Then I tried it with 4g/100ml in 40 seconds. Wow, it reminds me of the Big White but without the faint sweet potato/peach aroma, yet somehow more complex. Smelling the tea is like smelling a good perfume, it is almost like there are many different fragrance combined together in a cup of tea. I'd say the aftertaste is not long, therefore I would twirl the tea in my mouth a little bit longer before swallowing it to enjoy the beautiful fragrance.

This tea became one of my favorite floral Dan Congs. Most of the mostly floral Dan Congs from other vendors that I've tried have the tendency to taste quite one-dimensional. So after a few infusions their taste becomes less complex and less interesting. This tea is quite different because its taste becomes more complex in the later infusions. It starts with a very strong floral aroma and in the second or third infusion some slightly fruity and honey-like undertones add more interesting dimensions to the taste that still don't distract from its elegant and calming floral aroma. The aroma is very clear with lots of high notes that give it a quite noble taste.

I prefer to brew it in Chaozhou clay to preserve the high aromatic notes while giving the tea a thicker more honey-like texture in the mouth feel.

It is a great tea to relax and calm the mind. It is quite easy to brew, doesn't turn bitter when brewed too hot or too long. This makes it a great tea to have during philosophical conversations with friends.