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.

Tea Master's Pick

Opening a package of Keemun Traditional Supreme will transport you into a library full of fine leather-bound books. The infusion will yield a glossy, mahogany liquor tasting of figs, almond blossoms, and sanded timber. One can easily imagine a sea captain bringing this tea across the ocean to his titled patrons, reserving some first for his own personal use. The taste of Keemun Traditional Supreme stays reminiscently on your palate long after the drinking is done with just enough caffeine to set your sails to the wind.

This tea is like medicine for the soul. It’s a very complex and intriguing experience, worthy of having a focused session where you can really pay attention to the intricacies that would otherwise get lost in the midst of a busy mind.

This is a very powerful dancong, with an incredibly thick and sappy flavor profile that is reminiscent of blooming jasmine and fresh-cut chrysanthemum flowers, drenched in eucalyptus, Chinese liquorice, and wintergreen oils, then rolled in pine needles and left on top of a wet rock to bake in the heat of a hot summer day before being soaked in mint-infused pear blossom honey.

That may sound like a strange description, but this is such a complex tea. It marries powerful, resinous, and sappy textures together with bright, lively, and crisp florals into a harmonized experience that perfectly balances the yin and yang found only within the top tiers of dancong.

Tea Hong’s Ye Lai has a powerful mouthfeel with a graceful presence, and a strong minerality with a lingering sweetness that is persistent, seemingly emanating from the gums and coating the entire throat.

Everything about this tea is superb and should not be missed. I am careful to not even drink plain water for at least an hour after my session; the sensation on the palate is divine.

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.

Stunning & memorable (2011 version)

This is an outstanding tea that is unlike and better than any other Wuyi oolong I've tasted (with the possible exception of Tea Hong's Sacred Lily). It infuses forever, and somehow manages to display lasting aromatic characters alongside power and intensity, but with no element dominant and no intrusive charcoal. Every mouthful is pleasurable. It's worth every cent.

A very special experience for a seasoned tea drinker who has been around the block with both Fenghuang and Taiwanese oolong.

The experience this dancong offers is one that extends far beyond just what is possible to perceive in the cup. You may smell and taste one thing, but if you understand what this is, it will open your mind up to a completely unchartered territory that no other dancong can access, and no other vendor can offer. I have yet to find Wulong genetics elsewhere in a Western-facing market; and even if I could, I sincerely doubt the quality would be the same as what Tea Hong offers.

In other words, this dancong is ridiculously good. What we have here is a genetic fork-in-the-road which represents a thousand-ish year old evolution of genetics that are separate from what normally defines Fenghuang oolong. This is not a Shui Xian hybrid... this is entirely different, and it shows across the full session.

Creamy, buttery, exceptionally round and smooth with tons and tons of exquisite nuances, this harmonizes the subtleties that only the highest caliber dancong and Taiwanese high-mountain oolongs can bring into existence.

It has the powerful minerality and complex mouthfeel that defines premium dancong, coupled with the graceful elegance that make Taiwanese high-mountain oolongs so desirable and expensive, in perfect equilibrium that both balances each other out and accentuates the differences in such a profound way that it becomes impossible to describe, and only possible to experience.

You simply must try this.

This is a very fantastic tea. I usually like the more fruity Dan Congs, such as the Eight Immortals Wudong or the Huangzhi Xiang Classic and have tried some more fruity Song Zhong from other sellers. But this tea, even though it doesn't have the strong fruitiness that I usually enjoy so much, still makes me appreciate this tea even more for its very pleasant taste which I would probably describe as vanilla pinewood with a very pleasant sweetness. This tea has a very long and pleasant aftertaste and during the session the whole room fills with the unique smell of this tea.
But I think what makes this tea so unique for me is that its taste has a certain calm wisdom to it. Drinking this tea almost feels like a form of mediation that directs my thoughts inwards and makes me think about the things in life that truly matter. I don't think any other tea I've drunk so far has so much wisdom in its taste. This works very well with the calming body sensation that this tea brings during the session. It is a gem in my tea collection that really has the perfect balance.
I prefer to brew it using 3g in a 100ml clay pot at 95°C, increasing the temperature to 99°C for the later infusions to get more out of the leaves.

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.

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.

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.

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!

One of the few teas that made my heart skip a beat, or shed a tear in pure admiration. Everything about this tea is graceful, refined and elegant. I was shocked since the entry is quiet and subdued, but the mid to late palate is so smooth and gentle with veritable depth. I've never thought that an oolong could emulate a gushu pu'erh. Too many plantation teas smack you in the face with their sappy, candy-like fragrance. This one is the definition of minerality and long aftertaste.