Bug Bitten Dong Ding
When I was roasting this tea, I intended to make a batch of Noah's Dong Ding. However, my roaster shorted out and the fuse blew right when I went to turn the temperature up - so I had to fix it and wait for another day to do the roast. I was pretty irritated in the moment. However, a couple days later when I went to taste the product of that accident in order to decide the best course of action, it surprised me with the fragrant, rich honey taste of bug bitten tea!
I decided to finish this tea with a quick, light roast to maintain those tasty bug bitten notes. It ended up with a warming spice note almost like nutmeg which melds with the honey-muscat grape of the bug bitten flavor very nicely. It has a fat, bold mouth filling broth. Big tea! It might be too dramatic to call it ferocious, but it's certainly a powerful tea in aroma, mouthfeel and energy. It is also the lightest roast of any traditionally processed Dong Ding oolong that we've ever sold, so it should be a fun comparison for people that are familiar with our Dong Ding.
Bug bitten Dong Ding oolong is sometimes called Gui Fei Mei Ren - a play on Dong Fang Mei Ren (Oriental Beauty) that means Concubine Beauty. I don't much like the name, so we've decided to just call it what it is. Nowadays enough people know what bug bitten means in an oolong tea context that we don't have to worry that customers think they're getting a defective product!
The tea has been resting for months since the original roast date, and is drinking very nicely now. A bold powerhouse of a bug bitten oolong tea.
Facts
- Harvest Location : Dong Ding, Nantou, Taiwan
- Roast Date : 2025 Nov
- Cultivar : Soft Stem [Ruan Zhi Wu Long]
- Farming : From a garden regularly tested by SGS as having 0% pesticide residues
Podcast Episode