This tea tastes pretty good in the end. It is, however a fairly low quality mini tuo cha in my opinion. I base my opinion on quality on the amount of dust I observed and the fact that it was pretty much played out at ten steeps. I think a good quality ripe will go at least fourteen or fifteen steeps. It was fairly bitter in the start. There was also a sour note in the first steep. There was a hint of this note in the second steep and it was gone by the third. The flavor of the sticky rice permeated this tea for all ten steeps. It is an interesting, sweet flavor. I don’t think there is a description of it in the flavor note catalog and I’m not sure how to describe the note anyway. In the end this was an enjoyable tea. Not as good as some other sticky rice mini tuo cha I’ve had. I need to find my sticky rice mini from Yunnan Sourcing and make a comparison. Inevitably, after my move I know where none of my tea is so this won’t happen soon. As to the year of this tea, I didn’t notice a lot of fermentation flavor but the sticky rice flavor tends to cover up the fermentation flavor so who knows. The sticky rice mini from Shanghai Story was better than this one and contained less dust.
I steeped this tea ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with two mini tuo cha or 9g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 1 min, and 2 min.
Flavors: Bitter, Earth, Sweet
