Another sample from the 2016 Chawang sample group buy I participated in earlier this year. This one was definitely dominated by bitter/astringent notes in my experience. The two sessions I did with boiled water were not particularly enjoyable. I was getting almost no sweetness cutting through the wall of tannic astringency.
I finally was able to get a better read on the tea when I did a session with 200F water. Still had a pretty sharp astringent edge, but I finally started to get some nice floral sweet huigan coming through. This tea is nice and thick and has some pretty good energy behind it as well.
When I try young teas, most of them fall somewhere into the category of “this is good now, but could improve with age.” This one really isn’t worth drinking now, but when that astringency starts to soften, I think it could become something really nice. Would I pick up a cake depending on that to happen? Most likely not…but I bet it would turn out well.
Flavors: Astringent, Bitter, Floral, Vegetal
