Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!
I’m not sure white teas really say Christmas but the holidays are full of indulging in things that make us happy, right? Or I could reeeeeeaaalllyy stretch it and say a white Christmas needs a white tea? But a fair bit of our snow melted yesterday so it’s not really that white out…
Anyway…glass gongfu bottle, glass cha hai, double-walled glass teacup. Near boiling water, about 130-ish ml for the 7g ball of tea, steeps starting at 20-ish seconds.
The dry tea smells like some kind of jam or baked fruity desserty thing. Pie filling but not so much the pie crust. The brewed tea doesn’t smell as fruity to me. Or at least not the same kind of fruity. Smells a bit like a pu-erh or maybe a black tea with sugar. Tastes smooth and sweet. Hot I mostly taste something that reminds me of fancy sugar…really good molassesy dark brown sugar or one of those gourmet raw sugars. Like make one of those crystal rock candy stick things out of the really good sugar and swirl it around in hot water for a while. As the tea cools I get more flavors that remind me of a darker tea. Something almost woody. Not the damp bark type wood you can get from ripe pu-eras, more like things that have been barrel-aged and have a little bit of a wood taste but the wood also gives a little bit of vanilla-ish flavor too?. The ball came apart more quickly and the leaves are more broken up than a lot of the White2Tea dragon balls I’ve had. Around the fourth steep I thought I could smell some of that pie filling type scent I could smell in the dry leaf, and maaaayyyybee get a little of it in the aftertaste of the tea. Or it could have just been my imagination as I was dreaming of cherry pie. Or peach pie. Any pie! 1:30am pie cravings are the worst. Everything is closed (in my corner of the middle of nowhere, anyway, especially on Christmas) and you’ll wake the whole house if you decide to go crashing around the kitchen to bake something. This tea is not really what I was expecting but it’s not bad. It’s kind of like taking all the sweetness of a white tea and sticking that in a mild black tea. It feels like a kind of mellow and soothing flavor. Sweet and easy to drink, not bombarding you with all kinds of crazy flavors. It does really make me want fresh from the oven baked goods, though. I think this is one where I might pick up a few more minis if I can fit them into a future order but I’m not sure I need a whole cake of it. I’m curious how the Patti and Judy white teas released at the same time will compare.
Merry Christmas :)