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Happy new year! I hope 2019 will be a better year for everyone.

I bought this as part of a Taiwanese tea sampler in 2018. To my knowledge, it’s the first time Camellia Sinensis has carried this varietal. I steeped around 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 40, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds. Annoyingly, there’s about 2.5 g of tea left in the bag, which I’ll subsequently try to Western steep in my ridiculously huge mug.

The dry leaves smell like honey and heady flowers, and the liquor backs this up. The first four steeps have notes of honey, lilac, honeysuckle, spinach, and grass. A balsam note comes in on steep three, and the balance among the spinach, honey, and florals is good. By the fifth steep, the honey starts to diminish and the tea gets more vegetal. It lasts for a good eight steeps.

This is a pleasant, if not a very memorable, oolong with decent staying power. I’d definitely recommend it for the price.