Ten Fragrance Types, One Mountain
Phoenix Dancong isn't one tea — it's a single cultivar lineage sorted by tea masters into ten recognized fragrance types, each named for what the cup most resembles. 夜来香, Ye Lai Xiang, "night-blooming fragrance," is one of the ten: pale brown, glossy leaf that releases a scent locals compare to night-blooming jasmine on first pour, opens further into orchid, and settles, a few infusions in, into something closer to milk and honey.
This lot is 2025 spring leaf from mid-elevation Fenghuang Mountain, finished with a traditional double charcoal-roast — a slower, more deliberate process than a single roast, meant to set the fragrance rather than just dry the leaf. The cup runs bright gold, clean and sweet on the way down.
Paired with Ya Shi Xiang, this is really one story told twice: the same mountain, the same 900-year cultivar tradition, sorted by a vocabulary of fragrance built up over generations of tea masters tasting the same hillside and agreeing, eventually, on ten different names for ten different things it can taste like.