Scent: lovely, gentle, aromatic bamboo softness. I think to myself, “Hey, maybe this will be a hei cha that doesn’t flirt with a level of total horror and dankness that’ll make me half afraid to drink.”
Taste on the first steep: slightly dank, unbelievably dusty and dry.
Me: “It’s pretty old bookshop.”
Wife: “It’s less the old bookshop, and more the abandoned cardboard boxes that they used to move the books around in the bookshop.”
By the third steep, it’s developing kind of… halfway pleasant warm gentle sweet nutty notes under the undeniable taste of bookshop.
Wife: “This makes me think of first grade.”
Me: “Definitely… there’s like, paste and glue under the cardboard taste.”
Wife: “Yup.”
Me: “Do you like it?”
Wife: “Well, it makes me sad that I’m an adult now and there aren’t construction paper projects in my life anymore.”
Me: “I think I’m starting to like it. That makes me worry for the state of my soul.”
She could TOTALLY have construction paper projects in her lifetime. Google ideas for her. There’s always the classic hand-turkey option as Thanksgiving approaches.
Ah, to drink the ancient library scrolls…