Tea Side 0802 HTC 2006 Thai sheng re-review

I must admit, I feel like I'm starting all over again with tea in getting back to pu'er (hei cha in this example; it's a Thai tea).  And I don't mean in only a good sense, although that's part of it; I'm way back at figuring out brewing.

Anyway, the tea is a Tea Side 0802 Hong Tai Cha (HTC) Thai sheng hei cha.  It's not really a pu'er since it's from Thailand instead of Yunnan.  Pu'er within Yunnan varies by specific origin location (most blanket statements like that require qualification, but that seems conservative enough to stand alone), and this could be all the more "varied" due to being grown in a different climate.


But that's not really something I'll address here, how it compares to Yunnan versions, or related to tea sourcing issues.  That last subject and the history would be interesting; there are "old" tea trees in Thailand, although old is quite relative, and dating trees is problematic.


About the tea, even the dry tea smell wasn't what I expected.  It comes across a lot like a shou, too dark, too rich and sweet, too much caramel and raisin range, with a bit of old leather.  But clean; no mushroom or peat, none of that other range that can stand out in shou, definitely nothing remotely like fish.  I'd tried this tea before, a sample of it, reviewed here, so it's odd to be going back through all this, being surprised by how it comes across.




Part of why I'm re-reviewing it relates to testing my own experience against my earlier experience, not that I could really separate out error, subjective preference changes, and other possible changes.  What are those, you might wonder, since a nine year old pu'er shouldn't change that much in the 10th year (or could it?).  If storage conditions had changed over the last year it would be different, and people tend to speak of pu'er resting from travel (seriously).


I've had this tea for around two months so it should be feeling ok, settled.  One odd variable is the tea being sold as either 0801 or 0802, apparently two different but closely related teas, perhaps not identical to what I tried last year, one more thing I won't really get sorted out.

Review:

After overdoing it with a Golding Nan Nuo sheng pu'er proportion of tea to water (a real pu'er, with Nan Nuo being one of those distinct regions), and after getting better results the second time, but brewing slightly too thin, I went light to start on this one.

This tasting is going to have to go in rounds, and more ideally several sessions would be better.  I was reading up and watching videos on brewing and drinking pu'er and a Tea DB video talked about trying the same pu'er ten days in a row to get a feel for it; sounds about right.  I'm not sure if those guys actually have jobs to schedule tea drinking around.  On to review then.

The first infusions were way too light, although still nice, interesting fruit and earthy flavors.  Later when I get my sense of taste adjusted I may well drink the tea like that, but I just wasn't getting much out of it at first.

It's early for a tangent, but related to that, I was just talking to a friend about subjectivity in tea tasting, and to me that means a lot of different things.  One thing is that preference determines what is good; very straightforward (eg. tea can be enjoyed at different infusion strengths, a preference which can change over time).  Another is that one person might "get" a taste as plum and another as raisin; a bit more going on there, seemingly that one person is right and the other is wrong, but maybe it's not that simple.  Or two people might have completely different impressions, and this is where it all gets strange.  Other factors could account for real differences, brewing parameter differences, even using different water, or tea ware.

so much for straining

Where am I going with all this?  One other interesting case--interesting to me--is that maybe I could taste a tea differently at different times, for reasons that might not be so easy to explain.  In that post where I tried to comparison taste a black tea from one year to the next to determine that I couldn't separate the effect of different tea versions from year to year.  Now I'd like to do the same for this tea, compare the tea and my sense of taste, and to practice on the type.


Once I did get the tea brewing--it sort of "opened up" after some infusions, and after I lengthened infusion time a little--it was even more interesting.  It was complex enough that it would be hard to describe, but that's the whole point of this exercise.  The tea tastes of dark wood and raisin, maybe a bit of leather, possibly with just a touch of peat (much as I know what that tastes like; maybe I really mean "forest floor").  Oddly by all that I mean the tea is nice.  It has a cool feel, not a dryness, but towards that, something in the range I'd need more vocabulary to say much about.  From there aspects get even harder to describe.  Even if I added another three or four taste aspects I'm not sure I could really describe the tea through them.


It has an earthiness that tastes like actual earth, like dirt, but in a good sense.  That isn't helping describe it, is it?  It's like the smell from digging up roots from under the ground, dirt mixed with an unusual vegetal smell, heavy on minerals, something different.  Oddly that's one of the smells from my childhood, playing with dirt, damming small streams, or playing in basements and root cellars, out in the woods knocking down different kinds of plants for no good reason (I think the last relates more to green tea range though).  It's rounding things off too much to say it's a taste of age itself, but there's something to that.  Like a really old baseball glove, or at least along that line.

So why do I like this?  Maybe there really is no accounting for taste.  Something in all that effect I kind of connect with.  I think it would work good and strong, since there is no astringency to brew around, beyond whatever component is giving it an unusual feel.  I don't mean unusual as in how fresh teas come across, it's a full bodied and complex feel, just different.  Some teas taste better as strong as possible, based on a limitation from one aspect, and more often a great balance point works best, probably how this one goes.

I honestly can't say if this is a good sheng pu'er or not; I don't have enough background to have a clear judgment on that.  Me just liking the tea is a good start.  It has an aftertaste but nothing too unusual, not so lingering.  I'm not sure if that feel is preferable to pu'er enthusiasts or not.  It coats my mouth and tongue in an unusual way, which I feel in the top of my mouth, but I'm not really feeling it in the throat.  I never really got that part anyway, about taste or feel in the throat, how that's such an interesting thing.

junior taster likes hei cha, just a little

My junior assistant had no idea what to make of it so she said it tastes like flowers.  She's stuck on that.  I guess if I had to give it just one taste description I'd go with old leather, which isn't even something I've ever actually tasted, at least not that I remember.  I'll give it another try before I finalize this, and compare it to last year's description.

Re-tasting, a second go and earlier notes:

I tried the tea a second time, with a higher proportion of tea to water, with somewhat similar results.  I didn't need to keep adjusting time to get some flavor out of it but did need to adjust time to keep it in the right range, soft and balanced enough.  The basic flavors were similar, raisin and date, dark wood and old leather, with an odd feel, a slight fullness and dryness, all of which seemed to work.  It's consistent enough with the first tasting, I just need to get parameters dialed in a bit finer.  I'm sure it does evolve across transitions but I wasn't noticing as much of that as I expected, probably related to still messing around with parameters.

This is probably a good place to check that review from last year:

not dark, not green, in the middle

Very nice; the tea is smooth and rich, full flavored, not astringent, complex, a little sweet.  Flavors are all layered together:  plum and fig, molasses, earthy tones, tobacco, a bit of mineral, maybe something like roasted almond in there.  A number of infusions in the flavors mellow a little, deepen, with some of the fruit giving way to stronger earthier tones.  The fig and plum element is still prevalent enough to give good balance, and the texture stays smooth, with just enough astringency to give the tea some body but no bitterness.


Sounds a little better than my last description, but similar, although that difference could just relate to paying more attention.  I'm not sure what it's all about but my kids are louder than ever lately, often engaged in minor battles with their mother, interesting in small doses but not a great background for tea tasting.


Maybe as well to cite the vendor's take, given going this far:


The tea is made from old and wild 200-300 years old trees. This Sheng resembles a sheng of purple bushes in looks - the tea is very dark for its age. This is my absolute favorite among Thai Shengs...

Dry flavor: Raisins, tree bark and spices. Neat leaves are carefully ripened. The infusion looks like dark amber, it's absolutely clear.

Taste: Full-bodied, very smooth (balanced) and intelligent. Nice raisin profile laced with spicy woody tones. Notes of plum are also present. Velvety and spicy aftertaste remains long after the drinking.


Close enough.  The parts about tea tree age are a bit taboo these days but I couldn't resist including it, and his subjective judgment wasn't necessary, but why not.

Conclusion:

Oddly I find myself considering how much I really like this style of tea.  Usually that type of response is easy to sort out, it's right there, I do or don't.  I had said I did, but now I wonder if I like the tea as aspects and a whole experience, or if it's more about the novelty, since this is quite different from most tea experiences.  I think I like it, but it's not that "wow, I love this" experience people tend to express.

It makes me think more about shifts in preference curve, that idea of people acquiring taste for some teas, as they do Scotch, in the other post.  Perhaps a different tea example will put more context to this.  Related to sweetening tea, I recently commented in a Facebook group that there is a natural tendency to evolve a preference away from sweetening tea, expressed as such (quoting myself, again--strange):


There is a natural tendency to use less sweetener over time, as a result of preference change, brewing technique improvement, and from drinking better tea. I only use sugar in masala chai now. There is nothing wrong with the existence of a preference curve or people being at different places on it, and I wouldn't pass judgment on someone that stopped in a different place.


As for preference shifting from one type of tea to another it's not so simple.  I keep referencing back to an idea I'd read in another blog (Tea Addict's Journal) that people drink tea for taste preference first, then others, related to feel and other aspects next (body and aftertaste), and then effect (qi).  I've mentioned before which teas seem like better gateway teas to me (light oolongs, to go with a short version, but it's more complicated related to better oolongs from Taiwan).

So what about pu'er (hei cha, in this case); is there a natural drift in preference to that type?  It doesn't seem to be so simple.  Pu'er is really two types of tea anyway, sheng and shou, and maybe it does work to say shou could function as a gateway to aged sheng preference, or even young sheng (another idea from the Tea Addict's Journal, but then he says lots of stuff).  But really it's not clear to what extent anyone would naturally change what they like over time, or how exposure is going to work related to that, or if there really would be a natural direction or number of likely stopping points.  A lot of people seem to keep drinking broadly related to types.

Some types are trendy, and expectations factor in, group "consensus" direction.  One could find justification to continue to prefer pu'er or oolong in tea groups, and might feel a bit marginalized if black tea seemed best for some reason (or green; both don't get much respect--individual teas can by the types sort of don't).  White teas are different, held in higher regard, fine to cite as a favorite type, but it would seem strange if someone just drank white teas.  For now I'll stay on the same path, trying a broad range of teas, but this is an interesting way to evaluate preference shift, by experimenting with one type I'm not so attached to.

Golding (KL shop) private Nan Nuo gushu sheng pu'er

Back into pu'er!  Based on talking about tea with people online a shop in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Golding, sent some tea samples to try, including this Nan Nuo version; many thanks to them for those.

I'm relatively new to pu'er but not completely new, but as well to clarify that first.  I tried many around three years ago when I found a pu'er shop near my office (what are the odds), JRT Imports.  There is no website to mention; strange, but a street-view link is here, and a Tea Chat discussion of local Bangkok pu'er shops goes into background.  A friend recommended that I try drinking a lot of one type of pu'er, buying and drinking a lot of one cake, to get adjusted to brewing and the general profile.  I did that, finishing a lot of one back then--two and a half years ago?  the time flies--but I got side tracked on other tea types.

The Tea Side vendor sent a good number of Thai hei cha samples last year, but I didn't really make the switch to pu'er then either.  I didn't dislike what I had tried, sheng or shou, or variations from different regions, and it kept coming up a little.  But I tend to explore tea types organically, almost randomly, which led to drinking a little of every other main type instead, from lots of countries (except yellow tea, that's only came up once).  I just bought a 2006 HTC Thai hei cha cake / bing from Tea Side (reviewed in this post), sitting at home now, so maybe I'll do a comparison review of trying the same tea again later.  I tried that idea with a Thai black tea in a recent post, a re-tasting test, but I couldn't pin down year-version variations against review-interpretation changes.

Review

Even the first rinse was promising; lots of sweetness, interesting mineral tones, not much similarity to taking an aspirin.  The first infusion was more of the same, sweet, lots of mineral, with a hint of smoke, really lots going on.  The general range was familiar, I'd just not been drinking teas in that range for awhile.

Brewing was going to be unfamiliar; still using quite short infusions the taste strengthened a lot due to the tea starting to brew.  In retrospect I'd added too much tea; more on that related to brewing difference description from the second go.

Texture came into play more, of course hard to describe.  At first it seemed like a dryness but really the tea caused a bit of mouth watering, the opposite.  What came across as mineral was really vegetal and mineral, in a kale range, with a little mineral close to chalk.  That might sound awful, or maybe to a pu'er drinker just a normal general range.  The effect was interesting, and it reminded me of a tea drinking friend's comment that people tend not to drink pu'er for taste, or at least there is less necessary connection, less emphasis on that.

With short infusions the tea still brewed light, with sweetness offsetting vegetal / mineral / slight bitterness, with just a hint of smoke.  The tea did cause an aftertaste, but I have no idea about throat feel or taste in the throat, those more exotic properties (more on all that here).

My assistant taster liked it. She said it tastes like flowers.  Either that's a standard answer (I had been drinking some Chrysanthemum in the evenings recently) or she's on to something.  It is a little floral, maybe especially after you drink it, the aftertaste more than the taste.  The scent on the gaiwan lid or in the empty cup includes more honey than I'm noticing during drinking it too.


After more infusions the smoke picked up a little and the honey sweetness became even more noticeable.  The mineral / vegetal / aspirin / sheng taste mellowed a little, and the tea was probably nicer for being more familiar, again.  The aftertaste was kind of different than the taste, related, essentially overlapping, but not as closely connected as is typical with other teas.  It seems to just not go away, to the extent that I wonder if I'm imagining it a few minutes later.

my back-up taster's back-up

I forgot the tea, interrupted by my kids, and gave it a long infusion; that didn't work.  At lighter strength the taste balance works; I think the floral-related aspect did pick up.  Other aspects are more interesting, the feel, a fullness and juiciness, and the aftertaste, which is pleasant, different. The light smoke seems to come and go, and a very mild bitterness sort of works.


I'm reminded of a recent Dan Cong, with a tartness that could be seen as a flaw or an integral positive aspect that gives the tea a nice balance.  Other tea types, oolongs, blacks, and whites, usually don't really get into much tartness or bitterness, so the challenge of how to interpret them doesn't come up.  A word on this bitterness; it's not astringency, a feel of the tea, but really a subtle taste element, odd to experience.  This could be one aspect people might describe as medicinal but it's really just bitterness.

Brewing parameter variation:  from light to quite light

A friend recommended brewing the tea very lightly, using relatively little of it in proportion to water, in addition to short infusion times, so I tried that.  This was really probably more standard practice; I just hadn't adjusted for the tea type properly, long out of the habit.  It was better, and also just different.

The bitterness essentially didn't come out, and taste range shifted to include some spice, maybe clove.  Clove is nice in tea, although real clove seems to be a complex set of related taste aspects, so this might have been just a part.  Everything evident in the tea was very positive, and there still was plenty of taste left to experience, so it was really more a matter of not being familiar with drinking tea prepared this wispy.  There was still evident aftertaste but issues related to feel sort of dropped out when prepared so lightly; it didn't feel like much.

I think there would be a balance point between prepared lightly and very lightly that worked best.  I mentioned in a post not so long ago I'd been drinking plenty of white teas lately, and that I was calibrated for the type, and I think I'm just not for sheng pu'er, related to brewing and drinking the tea, about taste range and brewed strength.


It's my understanding that some people enjoy white teas, particularly Silver Needle style, prepared so lightly that there is barely any taste to experience.  The subtlety--on the sort of getting something level--and feel is more the point, but I'm not one of those people.  I don't need to brew them up to black tea level flavor strength to drink them either, related to some people using really long steep times, but I tend to like having more going on with aspects in Bai Mu Dan style white teas anyway.  But then I've been drinking an interesting Ceylon Bai Mu Dan lately that you don't really taste as much as sense in some general way, even brewed stronger, and that's turned out to be a cool experience.

My impression is that it's a better tea than I can really fully appreciate, not just interesting and nice but refined, with complexity and depth to it.  It makes me further consider the issue of acclimating to a tea type.  As an analogy, I can't appreciate Scotch whiskey at all, but do I need to?  Coffee and beer worked like that, as acquired tastes, maybe not great examples since I don't drink much of either just now.  I think this may be a different case than with Scotch, that there's a shorter gap to bridge since I already like tea, in general.

But I will keep going with the other pu'er samples, and pu'er in general, and see what I make of it.  I'm reminded of something one of the more out-there tea friends I've met said, that one of the worst things that could happen to you is finding a pu'er that you like.  Maybe I'm playing with fire, and I'll turn into an even worse tea-junkie than I already am.

Shi Li Xiang; a Wuyi Yancha cultivar mystery

During the last visit to the Jip Eu tea shop in Chinatown, where I tried some interesting 40 year old aged Tie Kuan Yin, I also picked up an unusual version of Wuyi Yancha (Fujian oolong), a Shi Li Xiang.  I understand that to translate as ten league fragrance tea, or something such; that unit of length just isn't going to translate properly, and "ten kilometer aroma" does put a more modern spin on it.

This is an unusual type of tea.  I think I've had a Thai version before, or at least a tea sold as this, but it wasn't good.  I'll have to look into what it even is.  I wouldn't have bought the tea except I tried it first and liked it.  It's immediately evident that it's decent tea, nothing like a strange tasting grocery store version, but it's not familiar.

It's fragrant, and aromatic, as the name implies.  A primary taste element is similar to almond, but it's complex enough that listing out tastes isn't so simple.  The effect is that the tastes are clean, and the tea is reasonably balanced, and well made, but there's a lot going on, so it's not exactly subtle.  It's a medium roasted Wuyi Yancha, so the roast effect is something else, not coming across as "char," but starting in that direction.

Mineral undertones are the base; normal for the general category (Wuyi Yancha).  The vendor said that the tea would change a lot over a year, which is the way to settle out that char effect (if there had been one), by a relatively short one to two year aging process.  He said that the fragrance would also diminish, so a year of aging would be a trade-off in characteristics.  They had both versions there, this year's and last year's, so if I'd have more time I would have tried both, but I was in a bit of a rush that day.  I tried this one so that's what I bought.  They're nice to visit with in that shop, by the way, with a deep history related to selling and making tea, so better to plan out an extra hour or two of trying teas and talking about tea if you do stop by there.


In the end it's nice.  It's not a tea one would be likely to drink all the time, but then it's probably not a tea one would find a good version of very often either.  That aromatic component is familiar, from a related aspect in a Bei Dou from this vendor, a "real" Da Hong Pao.  Or so the shop said in selling it; I get it that people tend to be skeptical about claims about some tea types, that one more than most.  This post covers why Da Hong Pao isn't always even intended as a plant type, used as a generic brand name, even though it's the general understanding that it is plant type.

looks like a medium roast oolong

This tea is hard to place related to other Wuyi Yancha types.  For having a lot of earthiness, mineral, fruit and floral apsects, whatever else they tend to have, they don't usually come across as having lots going on.  They typically seem to retain a subtlety, in a limited sense, based on showing a few interesting aspects, with some degree of layering of characteristics, at least the better versions.

This could almost be a flavored tea for the range of flavors it exhibits, and that aromatic quality, but I'm certain it isn't one.  The effect is too light and clean, and integrated.  I think using light brewing, experimenting with the normal range of gongfu brewing approaches, one could really draw out some variation from the tea.  That's actually how I tried it initially, prepared gongfu style, brewed a bit lightly, standard enough, but tweaking that might prove interesting.

Research section; background on cultivar versus variety first

I looked up what this really is, since that name seemed to be a branding name, not a description related to a tea plant type, or something that clearly ties to a regional tea.  It was sold as an ordinary Wuyi Yancha type, so that does include the region (Wuyishan area, Fujian), and that it's a well-roasted oolong, but it wasn't sold in a labeled package, just packed separately from bulk tea.

this particular plant, per the vendor

Before getting into more details, lets do a nice long tangent on tea plant types, starting with this decent Hojo vendor tea reference on tea plant naming.  Such references tend to vary a little in how they use the terms (surely with some correct use well defined), but for the most part this matches what I currently understand.  To sum that up, below the genus and species names for tea (Camellia Sinensis) variety (often written as var.) identifies the main, naturally evolving subtypes (Sinensis and Assamica, and some others), with additional cultivar type as the designation of intentionally bred, specific plant types with different characteristics (eg. Tie Kuan Yin).


The World of Tea site weighs in on all this, backing up the other reference, and clarifying the obvious next question that arises, what if a natural variation occurs that people continue to propagate:


Some confusion arises with the fact that a cultivar is simply a cultivated variety, meaning that someone has recognized variations in a plant and has cultivated it to maintain these variations. The plant is still a variety, but because we’re cultivating it, we call it a cultivar. We know that in the tea world, cultivars are created from one of the main varieties or hybrids between the main varieties of Camellia sinensis used for tea production: sinensis, assamica, and to a lesser extent, parvifolia. This is why we sometimes see a variety and a cultivar listed for tea plants — when a plant exhibits variation within a variety, and is cultivated to maintain this variation, we end up with both a variety and a cultivar.

Simply put, varieties are found naturally in the world, once we propagate them for their variance, they become cultivars.


So there it is; if we determine this plant type is a derivation of another type, be it a hybrid (mix from different genetic inputs, from two varieties) or a change from an existing type then it's new cultivar.  It's unlikely that it's not just a variation of the Sinensis variety, although that is a possibility.

What would it take for this type to be identified as a new variety?  Of course not necessarily new in the sense of just starting to exist, since this tea is coming from old plants (more on that later), but in the sense of recognition?  The first Hojo article sort of addresses that, but only in mentioning a limitation, that the new hybrid plants used in Darjeeling, crosses of Assamica and Sinensis varieties, do not have a clear scientific name designation; there is no identified variety.  Per a recent post on Darjeeling these go by clonal tea type names, like AV2, discussed in that post.  These would still be cultivars, of course, cultivated distinct types of plants, but per my understanding with no variety designation assigned (which of course could be mistaken; I'm still sorting all this out).

It makes you want to check out a table-style reference of tea-plant types, doesn't it?  Or maybe that's just me.  I'll include one I've mentioned before here, back to Taiwan teas as a reference, where they keep such things well defined.  The earlier section of this table is on the numbered cultivar series, familiar to most (eg. #12 is Jin Xuan), and if it's not you should check this reference out, although it's partly unreadable due to lots of talk about genetic marker testing, but fascinating nonetheless:

The A and S variety are familiar, but the F is interesting, right?  This from the footnotes:


Abbreviation S:C. sinensis var. sinensis, A: C. sinensis var. assamica, SA: C. sinensis var. sinensis × var. assamica hybrid, AS: C. sinensis var. assamica × var. assamica hybrid, F: C. formosensis, FY: C. formosensis var. yungkangensis.

Note#: G green tea, P Paochong tea, O oolong tea, B black tea.


Lots more one might get into there (landraces, wild teas!  I'll get back to those ideas), but lets get back to that other tea.

Back to Shi Li Xiang; what is it?

per this, it's just tea, var. Sinensis

The Shi Li Xiang name is relatively Google-proof; odd.  Except Chinese restaurants tend to use the name, which seems irrelevant.  A relatively complete database of teas reference lists a Kun Ming Shi Li Xiang tea that's seems to clearly not be it (the page is interesting though; described as an International Tea Database).  That listing is for a compressed tea that might be a tisane, not what this is, or at least seems to be.  An academic paper mentions this as a tea tree type here, titled "Research on Protection and Utilization of Old 'Shilixiang' Tea Trees in Kunming," but the paper isn't publicly available.  Since that's already interesting I'll cite the description of that work:


Research was done on the cultivation history, present status and protection value of old 'Shilixiang' tea trees in Kunming in order to deepen the recognition of the precious tea species, and to carry out scientific protection and utilization of the resources.


That brings up an interesting part of that other database citation:


Category:  dark, compressed.  Note:  Uncertain classification. Could be a herbal tea.


This tea was unusually aromatic, so much so I just asked the vendor by message how they made it so.  But it seems natural to me, a taste from a tea, just not exactly like any other I've tried before, except overlapping a little with that one Bei Dou.

A mystery solved, sort of

I asked around and a lead from a Tea Chat discussion seemed to crack the mystery.  Per that input the tea is probably the same as Qian Li Xiang, which is 1000 mile fragrance (so it travels 100 times further, but it's the same tea?  probably just a name anyway, and I might mention that I didn't actually verify those translations).  This tea name (type) does come up in Google search, just not as very many results, and standard tea information sites don't seem to come up, in general (not as if I spent a day cross-checking possible listings, Google just wasn't mentioning them).  All the same, any mention takes it as a given that it's just another cultivar type, and probably var. Sinensis, same as other Wuyi Yancha, just a bit rare.  Descriptions aren't a perfect match but a general impression that it's a very aromatic tea are enough; it's likely the same.

One discussion comment suggested the name may relate to a processing style, not a plant type, which would makes sense, naming conventions do tend to shift about.  I'm reminded of Cindy (a tea-maker friend) mentioning the tea plant name of a Dan Cong she was referring to by the aroma name instead, a more common designation for those:  "its name is juduozai ,but its aroma is xin ren (nut) [almond, typically], so we also call it xin ren xiang [almond aroma]."  She also said that "danzhu" means picking from one tree, and processing in one machine, for harvest and production lots all taken from a single tea tree (which is completely off the subject, but I just saw that looking up that Dan Cong cultivar name discussion).

Here's a vendor description under Qian Li Xiang that seems typical, which says almost nothing about the tea except that it's aromatic (although at first read it seems to say a lot; funny how that goes).  Most likely there is another cultivar name out there for the tea, so something like the World of Tea cultivar database would be no help based on listing plant types only by the actual plant name, and in fact it isn't any help.  The other listing of tea plant types I'd already cited also didn't mention it.

So it was an interesting find, not quite as interesting if it had been some really novel wild tea-related plant, but it drinks the same either way, or probably better for actually being tea.