A private gongfu tea session — online from your own kitchen, or in person where arranged — is an unhurried session in Chinese oolong and black tea, built on the winter charcoal roast at Phoenix Mountain.
inside a session
A sommelier session runs through tea.services, the constellation’s booking layer for private sessions with its resident experts. This one centers on dancong as it is made in Wudong village on Phoenix Mountain, where charcoal roasting carries on through the winter season — and that seasonal craft is the backbone of how the session approaches dancong.
For an online session, the format is simple and deliberately unrushed: two teas arrive by post ahead of time, sealed in light-proof caddies, along with a brewing guide. On the call, the session walks through the gōngfū chá (工夫茶) sequence in real time — warming the vessel, rinsing the leaf, the short first steep — explaining each step and why rather than delivering a script. A typical pairing sets a honey-orchid Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香) dancong from Phoenix Mountain against an unsmoked Jīn Jùn Méi (金骏眉) from the Wuyi core area, sourced from a producer family — the kind of side-by-side that makes the difference between oolong and black tea processing legible in a way description alone cannot.
The session structure adjusts to the tea: dancong is brewed short and repeatedly, each steep a matter of seconds to catch the aromatic lift before astringency arrives; black tea takes a fuller boil and a slightly longer first pour. The tasting notes distinguish the aroma families within dancong — Mì Lán Xiāng’s honey-fruit register against Yā Shǐ Xiāng’s startling floral lift (the name translates bluntly, but the tea does not taste like its name) — and the session covers both from the cup itself rather than from secondhand description.
what the session covers
Every session is built around two teas chosen in a short pre-call conversation, tuned to the guest’s palate and curiosity — a spring-harvest dancong against a smoked Zhèng Shān Xiǎo Zhǒng (正山小种) lapsang for one guest, an aged rock oolong against a golden-tipped black tea for another. Sourcing runs through a Tongmu village workshop for lapsang and plots in the Wuyi core area for Jin Jun Mei, so the teas poured in a session are selected lots, not a generic sampler.
Guests leave with a written record of what was tasted, the brewing parameters used, and where the same teas can be reordered — either through the constellation’s shops or directly, depending on the lot. For anyone who wants to keep studying afterward, longer tasting notes are published on puerh.app, and structured oolong study runs on tea.school.