The dry leaf has some long stems and is a cross between balled and what looks like machine-rolled which give the tea a rustic, textural appearance. I smell raspberries, twigs, rye toast, blackberries, walnuts, charred food, forest floor and surprisingly a floral high note. The warmed leaf gives off a sweet aroma of brown toast dipped in honey-sweetened coffee, grain, walnuts.
First steeps are fruity with red apple and pineapple, mineral, spicy with cinnamon and darker tastes of caramel and rye. I pick up on strawberry hear and there. The tea has a good body and is oily, very clean. It reminds me of an Wuyi oolong. It’s roasty but not overly so, mineral, grassy and light, even; minty. Banana leaf-unripe apricot aftertaste. The tea fades pretty quickly after the fourth infusion, ending with the eighth infusion of 1 minute revealing only a gentle caramel-grassy taste.
I brewed the remaining almost 2 grams grandpa style and the most notable aspect was a very apparent nutmeg nose!
This is on the gentler end of dong ding. The roast is really nice and doesn’t produce those intensely nutty flavors I don’t like about a lot of dong ding oolong. The tea, though, doesn’t have a lot to give. It’s a mellow cup and would be a good no-think’um daily-drink’um.
Thank you Leafhopper :)
Flavors: Apricot, Blackberry, Brown Toast, Burnt Food, Caramel, Cinnamon, Coffee, Floral, Forest Floor, Fruity, Grain, Grass, Honey, Mint, Nutmeg, Pineapple, Plants, Raspberry, Red Apple, Roasted, Rye, Strawberry, Sweet, Walnut, Wood
