Found a few more Jinggu sheng in storage.
The leaf of this is still very yellowish olive green. I noticed the compression of the cake looks a little tighter than others I have tried recently. The leaves also take longer to unfurl, though the tea is full in flavor from the first steep. It’s a very mellow liquor, low-toned in taste and feel. In the mouth, it’s like a gentle mushroom broth with a nutty body and a light honeyed sweetness. Herbal minty cooling, smooth with balanced green woody astringency and bitterness that sits low. It’s surprisingly floral in the nose, bringing a higher pitch to the otherwise savory aroma.
A quality about this tea that stuck to me is the difference in fragrances before brewing. My seasonal allergies were active yesterday after riding my bicycle home from work through invisible clouds of rye grass pollen. When I sat down with this tea, I couldn’t smell the dry leaf at all. When warmed it smelled of rum balls, nuts and faint butterscotch. After the rinse, it was softly vegetal pungent and distinctly reminded me of putting out a backyard campfire in Ohio, like the smell of smokey water running into the thick blades of grass and black, loamy soil surrounding our fire pit. The two entirely different aromas between the warm and rinsed leaf left me perplexed. I would like to come back to this tea once my allergies subside to give it a fair sniff.
Overall, this Jinggu sheng is pleasant and mellow with a very natural forest taste but not currently a preferred profile.
Flavors: Bitter, Broth, Butterscotch, Floral, Grass, Green Wood, Herbs, Honey, Mint, Mushrooms, Nuts, Nutty, Osmanthus, Rum, Smoke, Smooth, Vegetal, Wet Earth
