What our customers say

Wow, what a delicious and amazing experience. The roast on this is flawless, it perfectly exemplifies what good firing techniques can, and should, do to the Bai Ye cultivar.

Bai Ye is a pretty common cultivar, the market is flooded with it and most of it is, at best, middle of the road quality. A lot of Bai Ye is processed & sold as Mi Lan Xiang, and although there is an authentic Mi Lan Xiang cultivar, most of what’s sold to the Western-facing market is not the real thing. Anyways, Tea Hong’s Phoenix Classic is not a wanna-be Mi Lan, nor is it a middle-of-the-road example of Bai Ye. It’s priced like a daily drinker, but drinks like a special treat.

The flavor profile is just so deep and layered, with complex notes of tropical fruits like passionfruit and lychee, accented perfectly by the flawless roast which only adds to the sweet and fruity notes rather than smothering or obscuring them. The body of this tea is smooth but pungent, with distinct notes of peaches, moss, and woods. It’s like walking through a thick forest on a hot summer day and feeling the fresh aromatics of the soil and trees working their way deeper and deeper into your lungs. There’s something spiritually satisfying about this tea.

As I continue through my session, the clarity of the flavor profile continues to grow and so too does the strength of the aftertaste. The fruity flavors get stronger, and the peachy, nectar-like sweetness clings for longer, emanating from the back of my throat for at least one full hour before subsiding.

The roast is detectable across the full session, but never felt on the palate. This is amazing, and while most people would overlook this characteristic, I want to point it out because it’s a sign of mastery in processing when you can get Fenghuang oolong to have a detectable level of charcoal in the aroma without having any detectable charcoal in the flavor profile. It’s only in the background, supporting and highlighting and accentuating all of the other flavors, and it never touches the palate by itself.

This is a new daily drinker for me. I will always have some of this in my collection.

Reply

I am glad to hear from a customer the kind of attachment he can develop for an Yixing pot like I can. Welcome to the world of tea.

The wuhui shao method is for creating the colour of the clay and is independent of clay quality. As you have guessed, it is done after the pot is properly fired.

This particular pot you bought is of low density but not necessarily low temperature. In real Yixing clay firing, even low temperature is around 1000°C, unless it is not of Yixing material. The density of a pot can be affected by the clay composition and treatment it has received prior to pot making. For example, a mix of combustable materials in the clay or clay that has been fermented for very long can result in low density yet fired at high temperature.

High density, for the same reason, does not always mean a genuine clay fire at high temperature. For example, some people mix glass and iron in ordinary clay to make it high density.

At the end of the day, it is the tactility and infusion effects that matter.

This particular pot has a matte finish, quite porous because of the low density and this finish. To old tea nerds like me, this is a great fun to season, because it takes in a lot of tea before it really transforms. That means time and patience. The infusion effect can be worse than the gaiwan in the beginning for this porosity but gradually changes. It is that kind of pot that requires real attention. However, when result gradually becomes obvious, it is the joy of “raising the pot”.

I hope that answers your questions. Please let me know otherwise.

Cheers,
Leo Kwan

Restocking

Hello Zachno (and other customers who have been waiting for restocking of this gaiwan),

We feel sorry that this product is sold out so much quicker than we expected. We have already asked the manufacturer to produce this again, sooner than already scheduled, but since our order is relatively small, we have to be waiting in line. The fact that it is now Chinese New Year long holiday in Mainland China is delaying it for another two weeks. Please bear with us for the time being. Please do consider our other great quality and great value choices.

Please do register for email alert if you want to be notified as soon as the stock is available.

Right when I opened the bag, I knew this was going to be an amazing experience. The aroma of the dry leaf is pungent and sweet, with just a pinch of woodsy undertones to add balance to what is undoubtedly a creamy, velvety tea.

The next thing I noticed was just how big these leaves are – these are not tiny pebbles, they are more like boulders. The leaves are HUGE! As they brew up they unfurl into thick and wholesome leaves that stretch out several inches. I am very impressed by the uniformity of the plucking and processing as well. The leaves are rolled tight, but not so tight as to make them brittle.

In every aspect of the flavor profile, this tea is dripping with milky-sweet flavors that carry a kind of oily-spicy quality to it that reminds me of fennel or anise, as mentioned in the description. This adds a gentle vibrancy that cuts through the rich and decadent, milk-forward flavor profile, and creates a sense of balance that keeps this tea intriguing every time it’s brewed up.

This tea is easy to brew and very forgiving, it resists turning sharp or bitter, and has lots of stamina so whether you brew it gong-fu or Western-style, you will easily get some of the best “milk oolong” you could ever hope for.

Pleasant Tea

Dry leaf has chocolate, minty aroma. Flavor is smooth with hints of dried fruit as well as in the aroma. Not particularly sweet. A bit on the thin side as far as the body goes, but is pleasant with good huigan and a wet mouthfeel. A gaiwan proved beneficial in bringing out more of the fruit. An easy drinker.

Thank you for sharing your feelings on drinking this tea. It truly is the transcendence of the state of mind that this rare dancong helps us to attain that is the most precious thing about tea.