I’m so glad to see Steepster back up. I have gone through a ton of samples in the past week and have been needing to get some more reviews up for at least a couple days. I finished off the remainder of a 50 gram pouch of this tea back toward the start of the week. Though I’m still not huge on white tea, I found this one to be quite appealing.
I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a brief rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea in 4 ounces of 176 F water for 7 seconds. This infusion was chased by 13 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.
Prior to the rinse, I found aromas of hay, dry leaves, and malt. After the rinse, I picked up emerging aromas of sweet corn and squash balanced by hints of smoke and melon. The first proper infusion brought out hints of citrus on the nose. On the palate, the liquor offered smooth and mild notes of hay, grass, zucchini, malt, and cream underscored by hints of lemon zest, sweet corn, and smoke. Subsequent infusions grew somewhat astringent while bringing out considerably stronger impressions of smoke, sweet corn, and lemon zest. I also began to find notes of butter, oats, straw, cucumber, minerals, almond, peanut, spring honey, basil, thyme, lime, and lettuce balanced by underlying notes of sour apricot, lettuce, seaweed, and honeydew. The tea washed out quickly (I still have not managed to effectively adapt my gongfu methods to white tea), as mineral notes became increasingly dominant after about the 50 second mark. However, I could still find a lingering astringency and fleeting impressions of herbs, citrus, sweet corn, hay, and lettuce on these final infusions.
Despite the fact that I went through a brief white tea phase in college, white tea has never really been my thing. I can appreciate it from time to time and would like to develop more of an appreciation for it, but at this point in time, I’m still not able to muster consistent enthusiasm for any type of white tea. That being said, I found a lot to like in this one, much more than I was expecting as a matter of fact. Aside from the fact that the way I brewed it may have caused it to fade sooner than anticipated, there was nothing really wrong with this tea.
Flavors: Almond, Apricot, Astringent, Butter, Cream, Cucumber, Grass, Hay, Herbs, Honey, Honeydew, Lemon Zest, Lettuce, Lime, Malt, Mineral, Oats, Peanut, Seaweed, Smoke, Straw, Thyme, Zucchini
