Spring 2019 Sweet Green Nantou Dongding Oolong (50g)

This is the second of two green dongding I'm offering from Spring 2019. I've decided to call this the sweet dongding since I found the aromatics from this tea to be sweeter than my Deer Valley Dongding when I first tried it! That gap has since narrowed now that the tea has had a chance to breathe and absorb some air and moisture from the environment (often necessary with Taiwanese oolongs to get them to where they need to be)!

When I first tried this tea, I didn't get malted barley from it, but this note became apparent on my third session with this tea. I can detect some sweet qingxin character, reminiscent of a green Anxi tieguanyin, but smoother, and cantaloupe and date dominate in the finish. The cantaloupe-heavy nature of the aftertaste from this tea reminded me of a high mountain oolong, but after breathing some, this tea is definitely all dongding. The qingxin character here really drove home the point that green Anxi qingxin tieguanyiin was an attempt to replicate dongding oolong in Fujian. I was once sold green qingxin tieguanyin by a Hong Kong dealer and she told me it was 'like dongding.' I thought it was sales talk until years later, when I realized the same cultivar is used on both sides of the straits (but Taiwanese qingxin has been reworked differently from the kind in Anxi)!