I approached this one with a bit of trepidation. The leaf was very tightly compressed, leaving the first couple of steeps quite light and tasting mostly of storage with vegetal overtones; not the most pleasant of experiences. However, things started opening up on the third steep, where pushing it for about ten seconds rewarded me with a dark, thick liquor featuring a suddenly spicy aroma and richly savory flavor.
Having finally fully decompressed, the tea continued on in this way through the remainder of the session. Periodically, other notes would emerge, like a few remnants of lingering bitterness around the seventh steep, a little bit of a cooling finish here and there, some tingling on the tongue, and a faint sweetness that started coming through as the tea lightened in later steeps. The vegetal notes never quite went away, but stayed mostly masked by the savoriness; remarkably, no sourness ever emerged. Throughout, the qi remained calming and quietly potent, although unaccompanied by much in the way of serious caffeine.
All in all, this tea was a lovely example of well-done Hong Kong storage. The original material seems to have been of decent quality, as well, though probably not the stuff of legends. Definitely worth a try if you can deal with a bit of funk.
