Time to shake off the weekend laziness and get a few more reviews posted from my backlog. This was the last review I logged in my 2020-2021 notebook. I’m almost finished with that one. Then I only have three more notebooks to get through plus the one I’m steadily filling now. My plan is to hit this one hard and finish it and the 2018 notebook up before the end of the month. We’ll see how that goes. Anyway, this was one of my sipdowns from early in the year. I basically found it to be a gentle, unfussy black tea. It was nice, but it wasn’t exactly a favorite.
I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 fluid ounces of 194 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 18 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minutes 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes.
Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves presented aromas of baked bread, earth, smoke, malt, raisin, and dark chocolate. After the rinse, fresh aromas of sugarcane, roasted almond, butter, and roasted peanut emerged. The first infusion introduced a definite brown sugar aroma that was underscored by subtler scents of pine, eucalyptus, and orange zest. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered up smooth notes of cream, baked bread, malt, butter, cooked green beans, roasted almond, and dark chocolate that were chased by hints of raisin, earth, roasted peanut, smoke, and sugarcane. The majority of the subsequent infusions brought out aromas of black pepper, cream, vanilla, roasted walnut, and sweet potato. Stronger and more immediately apparent notes of earth, roasted peanut, raisin, and sugarcane appeared in the mouth alongside impressions of orange zest, minerals, brown sugar, roasted walnut, roasted chestnut, grass, and sweet potato. I also noted hints of vanilla, pine, eucalyptus, black pepper, leather, plum, red apple, and marshmallow. As the tea faded, the liquor continued emphasizing impressions of minerals, cream, butter, roasted almond, roasted walnut, baked bread, brown sugar, and orange zest that were backed up by a mellow melange of grass, sweet potato, vanilla, raisin, cooked green bean, earth, roasted chestnut, and sugarcane hints.
This tea displayed a lot of depth and complexity, and it was very smooth and pleasant in the mouth. At the same time, it was not tremendously captivating due to something of a lack of liveliness and a lack of one or more standout components. While there was nothing wrong with it, there was not anything about this tea that was truly memorable in its own right. I came away wanting to like it more than I did. In some ways, this tea was similar to the Man Gang Village and Yi Wu Mountain black teas that were also offered by Yunnan Sourcing, but I thought it was a little better and more consistent overall.
Flavors: Almond, Black Pepper, Bread, Brown Sugar, Butter, Chestnut, Cream, Dark Chocolate, Earth, Eucalyptus, Grass, Green Beans, Leather, Malt, Marshmallow, Mineral, Orange Zest, Peanut, Pine, Plum, Raisins, Red Apple, Smoke, Sugarcane, Sweet Potatoes, Vanilla, Walnut
