If I’d tasted this particular tea a few months ago, I would’ve probably said: what a lovely green tea! It smells wonderful, like a fresh meadow full of blossoming trees, the colour of the tea broth is sparkling yellow with a fresh green undertone. It just smells, looks and even tastes like very good fresh green tea.
Well, these are the qualities I am not usually looking for when buying a sheng sample. Why do I buy samples from 2010 then? Good question. Having tried many samples from previous year I’ve found out that the year is not always the most important deciding factor when considering the potential taste. Even some very young sheng cakes can really surprise you. I would definitely say it about 2010 YS Yiwu Purple cake for example. Yiwu Zheng Shan is, however, not the case.
The smell of dry leaves is fruity, but not very intense and rather citric than sweet. The smell of wet leaves is not sweet either, it even offers a trace of smoky tone but very very tiny. The taste is best described as above mentioned fresh green tea, not bitter though, just slightly astringent. I must admit I did not even find the typical yiwu flavour or aroma in the infusions , despite trying hard to find it..
What I like about this tea is the huigan which comes back powerful, refreshing the mouth and tongue with a sweet mouth-watering effect and stays quite long to give this tea higher credit just in time. It might be simply one of those cakes which is good to be put aside to your tiny tea storeroom (if you happen to have one). Then you can wait a year or two and meanwhile enjoy some other well-ripen treasures.
If you want to read more about this tea session, see my blog entry:
http://teadropping.blogspot.com/2011/10/2010-yunnan-sourcing-yi-wu-zheng-shan.html
