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Toasty, with some high mountain delicacy and florals and green. Good centering in the chest and upper back, I think. I’ll be saving the rest of this and the Hongshui to savor in a quieter and more focused environment on down (up?) the road.

Solid JJM. Good malt and cocoa and toast — generally a nice warming profile for the morning. Bought this on a whim when all the blacks dropped in spring and will be happy to pour it for wake-up cups.

Peanut M&Ms: roasted peanuts, darkly toasted peanut skins, milk chocolate.

I’m perfectly content to drink this, but I’m a little shocked at how underwhelmed I am by it. It’s solid and feels good, just not my bullseye cuppa. I will, also, always have my heart’s eye trained squarely on FL’s Lala Shan Hongshui. Guh guh guh guh. Not all Hongshuis, turns out!

I blind-bought this cake on an impulse. It’s not a smart time for me to be splurging on tea, but here we are. This hasn’t been with me long, and I think it needs more time to adjust… but I did want to jot down first impressions so I can come back and have my mind blown later. No pressure, little cakey-poo.

Impressions are not much, honestly. I felt like the entire session had a straightjacket on it, the leaf being pleasant enough but not really offering up anything in the way of distinct or interesting tasting notes. Classic Bulang tobacco, if I may be so bold, but muted. I read over Tea_Ass’s 2yo note just now and it feels like we drank different teas. This one’s going in my crock, then up the mountain, then into a sunny window… and then I’ll pull it back out in a few months. Qi is nice enough; I do feel more grounded and relaxed than when I sat down with it (a function of the ritual or the molecules, hmm?).

I drove up the mountain and signed all my papers today. Keys in two days. Met some super cool neighbors next door, and one across the way who lives alone and reminds me of Eeyore and I love her. Met some other townsfolk, too, and feel like they’re my people. I’m excited and a little dreading how much work moving + prepping our current place to sell is going to be all at once. But. Excited.

Fun little dragonball. Quite green and planty, with a smoke profile approaching burning cigarette levels. More enjoyable than that sounds — it was a hoot observing the pings and bitters and ash darting around. Good body throughout, but especially in the last stages when steeps started taking 3-5 minutes — the body got very luscious, with a balanced flavor profile once the green and smoke had toned down.

Bowled 8g of this up for an easy sipper in a giant bowl tonight. More tannins have come out to play in this venue, but the sweet honey and old-sweater cuddles of this little yellow did not disappoint.

Eh. Tasty and comfortable, but perhaps not terribly exciting to this betel nut chaser.

Dry leaves: tea tree (melaleuca alternifolia) oil, smoke, tobacco. Nose on the liquor was rather dull — my cha hai just kinda smelled like it came out of a hot dishwasher(?) the whole time.

Steeps were bright, with a rounded feeling in a horseshoe along the back of the cheeks, some throat scratch. Herbal, smoky, tobacco punch, playdoh. That beautiful Bulang smokiness coming through from the wet leaf, along with tobacco, Chinese medicine, old wood.

This tastes younger than 2008 to me (a sheng baby, admittedly, but I’m thinking of a favorite 2010 Bulang that tastes more aged than this one does)… based on notes from 5+ years ago, it also doesn’t appear to have changed super-much in that time? YS’s relatively dry storage, maybe?

I enjoyed it but don’t feel the need to chase it at this point.

Tastes more like a ripe than a raw; I’m a little unclear from the notes which it is. Good body and depth — very slightly medicinal, though I wouldn’t have picked it out if the notes from Bitterleaf didn’t include it. Salivation without astringency. Overall, though, I feel this is lacking complexity and the surprising, delightful discoveries which make me love [raw] Liu Bao.

Maybe a good fireside sipper for autumn and winter…

These dry leaves are delicate — thin and fluffy. Steaming in the gaiwan, they smell like cardboard boxes in a cinderblock basement. The rinse tasted like licking the walls, so I dumped the balance. Adding water immediately disintegrated any large pieces nearly to fannings.

First proper steep after a few minutes of rest gave up betel nut, cherry pit, basement camphor with a big hole in the middle. Wet leaves started opening up to something reminiscent of a spicy brown cocktail or brandied spice cake.

Is it possible this tea is dropping off at the second steep already? I adore huangpian, but it would certainly create the possibility. I let the third go for a minute or more, and it does indeed seem to be fading. Camphor numbness, alcohol muted by mineral water, with what feels like a metallic patina layered on top — a bagfull of rinsed beer cans.

And it appears: grandma Alice’s basement, flooded with twelve inches of water, hundreds of Old Milwaukee cans lazily floating around, the sad clank-dank-clank when my dad started wading through. Chucking the empties down the stairs and forgetting about them seemed like such a good idea before then, I reckon.