What our customers say

Fantastic!
We have tried other Eight Immortals from other tea shops but this Eight Immortals Baxian Wudong 2020 from Tea Hong beat them hands’ down! Makes one fantastic and lingering brew.

If you’re a fan of Anxi or Taiwanese oolongs, you should definitely check Snow Orchid out. It might replace your current-favorite oolong.

The leaf quality is superb, the aroma of the dry leaf is intoxicating, and the experience in the cup is unlike anything else out there. I’ve had quite a few different examples of freeze-dried Fenghuang oolong and this is the best one by far. Employing Ya Shi as a cultivar was a great choice, it naturally has a buttery silkiness to it that is amplified by the processing techniques here, and it has created something unrivaled even in the larger, and more generalized, world of oolongs. You just won’t find any other oolong quite as rich and decadent as this one.

It’s super thick and creamy, it oozes rich and gooey notes of fruits and flower with explosions of milk & whipped honey that are somehow front-and-center, yet also manage to support all of the other notes without drowning them out. I get some fruits reminiscent of citrus and pears, with hints of mangoes, melons, and eventually berries as the session progresses. There are some apparent, mineral-rich undertones that are gentle and stitch the whole experience together, reminding me that despite how velvety and smooth this tea is, at the end of the day it’s a high-end Fenghuang oolong, and so it will carry that characteristic bright minerality with it that all good dancong should have.

I’m surprised by the persistence of this tea. It has remarkable stamina when brewed up gong-fu style and will hold its composure very well across the full session, never falling apart. The color of the soup retains its clarity and does not become hazy. This is definitely a marathon runner, and it will go the extra mile where other freeze-dried dancong will fall apart and become bitter.

The leaf quality is superb. These are thick and wholesome leaves, processed uniformly and gently to retain the full spectrum of oils and aromatics that are produced within the leaves.

A quick word on processing: if the “zao qing” is done improperly, the freeze-drying technique will create brittle cell walls, which physically fall apart in the presence of near-boiling water. The cell walls disintegrate, the leaf starts to break down, and the resultant extraction becomes cloudy with tiny, almost microscopic bits and pieces of what used to be the constituents of the cell walls. Therefore, the real trick with freeze-dried Fenghuang oolong is to figure out how to pair the manual/mechanical processing techniques (“rattling”) with the freeze-drying in order to create something that releases tons and tons of flavor, but does not physically fall apart during extraction.

Tea Hong’s Snow Orchid achieves just that. I see why it took over a decade to fine-tune the process… it’s not easy to make something like this, and the mastery of the technique shows in every single second of the session.

Zhenghe White Peony King

I have had Bai Mudan and Shou Mei white teas, but never a Zhenghe Bai Mudan (always the more common Fuding variety). I was very interested in this Zhenghe style, since the description seemed to fit my preferences more than the Fuding. Opening the package, the aroma is rich and full, kind of like hay, and sweet (a little difficult to describe). The overall appearance is a nice mix of silver, gray, and withered green. The taste is indeed full, deep, rich, and a little sweet, without the floral qualities. It also seems to bring out more of that taste that makes white tea distinctive as a style. This is the best white tea that I have had.

Yummy. This is good sheng at a great price. I enjoy the complex evolution of flavors and the way it captures the essence of what makes Lincang such a famous region. It opens up with some powerful, cooling notes of menthol & camphor, with plenty of fresh-cut tobacco and earthy nuances peeking through, in every layer.

The huigan builds slowly and lasts forever. It really comes out in the second half of the session. Along the way, I get delicious notes of rum-soaked raisins, steamed sticky rice, and lotus leaves. Eventually; and especially in the final steep, the rum-soaked raisins gradually pivot into something more reminiscent of whisky-glazed apricots and apples caramelized in maple syrup.

This maple syrup-like sweetness really clings to the throat, and I enjoy how smooth it is and how long that sweetness lasts for. Towards the end of the session, the earthy notes of fresh-cut tobacco transform into something more reminiscent of tropical hardwood, but the flavor profile maintains an earthy quality all the way through. There’s very little smokiness overall.

The finish is exceptionally bright, clean, and crisp, with well-defined textures and sensations, from the strength of the mouthfeel to the sensation in the throat, and the long-lasting cooling sensation that seems to exude from between the teeth and the gums.

Definitely worth picking up a cake of this if you’re looking for a good sheng that hits the spot but doesn’t break the bank.

One of my friends sent me a 7-gram session of this and I knew I had to buy a whole bag. This is good Yu Lan at a great price.

I particularly enjoy how Tea Hong’s Jade Orchid opens up with a fantastic minerality that carries bright and pungent florals, with hints of bananas and citrus which progressively become more apparent up until about half-way through the session, at which point some fruity undertones of mango and cantaloupe become front-and-center in the flavor profile.

In the second half of the session, the tangerine-like citrus notes melt away into something more reminiscent of apple juice, and the florals that were blooming on the front-end of the flavor profile start to mellow out into something more creamy and milky. The texture remains very silky and buttery-smooth.

The finish is graceful, it has a strong mouthfeel with a very long-lasting aftertaste that is like a mango & cream milkshake with micronized glacial rock dust, which creates a kind of electric vibrancy that I’ve come to know and love in good, high-end dancong. I appreciate the subtle nature of this Yu Lan’s depth. It has a kind of charm that slowly creeps up on you and lingers on the palate.

The empty-cup aroma is magnificent. Wet leaf aroma is super deep and complex. Leaf quality is superb… this Yu Lan is hard to beat for its price and carries all of the right attributes that I could hope to find in a premium version of this cultivar.

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.