PREORDER - Xiao Qing Gan (Tea Orange)

I bought my first tea orange a while back and finally had the chance to use it the other day (I wanted to wait for a day when I knew I'd be home all day so I could get the most out of it!) and I found it quite enjoyable! Definitely follow the brewing instructions for the best results, the first infusions truly only need a minute or two - just barely enough time to pull out some of the earthiness of the tea without it tasting too overwhelming. I found that as I continued to use it throughout the day the flavor of the orange started to come through a little bit more on later infusions. I found the whole experience absolutely delightful, which means now I need to buy more tea oranges for my stash at home!

It's ok, I guess? I thought that this would be the one I would enjoy the most of the four aged teas in my purchase so I saved it for last, but oh my was I mistaken. Do aged/dark puerh teas get put inside oranges sometimes? If so, I would probably enjoy that more. The citrus was great! I got a lot of citrusy and floral notes in this one along with something akin to vanilla maybe. None of that was enough to counter the assertiveness of this tea, though. It wasn't, like, the most terrible thing I've tried or anything like that, but (probably) not something I really care to repeat.

Tea was very, very earthy in early brews, to the point that I told my spouse that I could not drink the first couple of brews because they tasted so strongly of what I remembered eating earthworms as a kid tasting like. And while that did tone down throughout the dozen-ish brews I took this through, it was always very dirt-forward and metallic to the end. I don't know if that is a feature representative of this variety of tea. I only purchased a single tea orange and have never experienced a tea orange from any other source before.

I may purchase one more tea orange before deciding whether to write them off for myself for the future. I think the deep, deep, dark earthiness of this tea could provide an outstanding counterpoint utilized as an ingredient in a blend with some other things that are much, much more floral or spice forward and I think I may enjoy experimenting with that possibility.