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I’ve been very very bad. I recently bought my first gaiwan from Verdant Tea! It’s a beautiful, bone china, Jingdezhen, hand-painted, mountain gaiwan with matching teacup. It’s so so beautiful! It arrived today and I could barely contain my excitement! I immediately washed it and tried it out with this tea. I love it so much, and I was so impressed by the quality, that I went back onto the Verdant site and bought three more teacups, a bamboo tea scoop, and 1 oz. of Golden Fleece. AAHHHH!!!! What have I done?! I cannot, should not be buying all this teaware! I’ve been a very very bad girl. Shhh, don’t tell my husband. It’ll be our little secret. ;)

ON TO THE TEA!

Ah, on to this tea indeed. This tea is incredible! I honestly can’t do it justice with a review. I feel like my tea tasting and describing abilities are lacking for such a high quality tea. So I shall defer to the notes that Verdant Tea uses to describe it: silk, watercress, green bean, violet, and cashew. Wow! Silk and watercress indeed! This tea is silky smooth and delightful!

The first few infusions are incredibly flavorful. This being my first gongfu experience, I didn’t throw away the first infusion. I steeped the leaves for 30 seconds, which was honestly probably too long – or at least it’s too long when you don’t toss the first steeping after 10 seconds. This first infusion was a tad bitter. The second infusion though was spot on! The bitterness had faded and left behind a punch of watercress flavor. I rushed over to my husband and gave him the cup because I know he loves green tea more than me. He was blown away too.

Subsequent infusions (I lost count how many) were still delicious but didn’t possess quite the same broad spectrum of flavor. The violet and cashew are definitely only apparent in the early infusions. The late infusions were gentler and had mainly green bean notes. Still good to me but my husband said he definitely liked the early infusions more. He actually asked me if it was a different tea! He’s not quite as experienced – read obsessed – a tea drinker as I am, so he didn’t know that I was brewing multiple infusions of the same tea.

Ah, this tea is a luxury. It just oozes sophistication and class. I don’t usually like dragonwell but I think I may have to change that opinion because this is truly something special. How did I ever dislike green tea?

Now if only that bamboo presentation scoop wasn’t so darn expensive, I would have bought that too. I also looked into getting one of the tea pitchers, but I was able to successfully restrain myself. Gah! Why does Verdant have to offer so many beautiful teaware pieces? I want it all!! And after this gaiwan experience, now I see why I need a pitcher. The Chinese tea preparation method is messy! I got water everywhere! Besides that though, gongfu method brewing was much easier than I thought it would be. I have a new found love!

I truly enjoyed this gongfu experience so much more than my regular Western method of brewing tea, which surprised me. It honestly is so much more fun! I felt bad throwing away the used tea leaves in the trash. It felt wrong. Goodbye, beautiful tea leaves! I enjoyed all your delicious flavor and now you have no flavor left!

This was a treat. I am so thankful to Verdant for offering this tea, and I am so thankful to God for bringing me to this point in my life where I can afford and enjoy such experiences.

ETA: https://instagram.com/p/4KKFZvF-sf/
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