Yunnan Biluochun Single Bud Mingqian

Thanks for the sample cookies :D

WOW This is a crazy complex tasting tea. Lovely dry leaf, too. So cute! I want to pet the tiny curly leaves :)

Anyway, vegetal, sweet, fruity, lightly floral and a little bit smokey. Maybe the least boring green tea ever! I’m impressed!

I’m not usually super big on green teas. It’s not that I don’t like them, I really do enjoy some. It’s just I love black teas so much that I never want to sacrifice a cup of black tea for anything else. I usually relegate greens to bedtime duty. But it’s ones like this that make me rethink that status. This is my favorite (non-genmaicha) green. Not grassy like sencha. Sweet, fresh and just a little vegetal. Really a delightful tea.

Sipdown 17/75

This was one of the free samples included in my (very generous) order from Han Xiang Ecological Tea via AliExpress. I must say, so far I am quite impressed with this seller – their tea seems to be of high quality, especially for the price I paid. The samples were two bucks for two small baggies of tea, and I was actually sent three baggies in some cases, along with four bonus samples and a little tea strainer. Huzzah! Thanks to yyz for the awesome recommendation!

So, this tea itself. The leaves are quite beautiful, they’re a lovely combination of white/silver and dark grey/green colors. The contrast of the two colors makes them very striking. I don’t really get much of a dry scent from the leaf, there’s a bit of jasmine but that’s definitely just contamination from the jasmine pearls that they also sent. I was unsure how long to steep this tea, so I started at 1 minute and then kept going until 2 minutes after tasting it.

The brewed aroma is surprisingly smoky and mineral? There’s a bit of the expected vegetal quality hiding in the background too. At first taste, this tea is definitely different from what I expected! At the forefront are fairly sturdy savory smoke and mineral flavors combined with a bit of a seaweed note. The smokiness almost reminds me of smoked meat, ha ha. Somewhere near the middle, that vegetal tone starts to come out and assure me that this is, after all, a green tea. At the end of the sip is a nice mild floral taste that suggests honeysuckle to me, and a light dried apricot flavor, and these continue into the aftertaste. I am left with a fresh and sweet taste in my mouth that lingers long after I’ve finished drinking.

Overall, this tea was unexpected and very enjoyable for me! I’m very happy that the seller chose to include this sample in my order. :)