2015 Smooch

I received this as a free sample with a recent white2tea order. Score! The ball opens up pretty easily with a long rinse followed by a rest in a closed gaiwan. It’s mildly sweet with a vegetal background. It’s not the usual sweet forward taste I’m used to with w2t productions, though. There’s something in there that I can’t place.

The liquor is creamy and thick and the middle steeps have a huang pian-like dark heaviness to them. It reminds me of some of Yunnan Sourcing’s Lincang productions in that there’s a nutty background to this tea.

Overall, I think this is a decent tea but it doesn’t fit the flavor profile I typically like.

This is another sheng that I just wasn’t into, which makes me feel guilty, as it was a sample from a tea friend.

The first steep after the rinse started out okay. I got some hints of pine sap, peaches, and a green vegetal flavor. There was a bit of astringency.

As it opens up, it gets too bitter, even after reducing the leaf and the brewing temp.

I drank this one during a teafriends google hangout today :) I decided to give it a try after some recent discussions about Lincang Gut Bombs – apparently this region doesn’t agree with some people! I haven’t had any stomach problems from sheng so far, so I saw this as a challenge almost. Happy to report I had no digestional distress as a result of this session.

Having never brewed a sheng teaball before, I referred to the nice instructions that Crimson Lotus Tea has for their Planet Jingmai ball. After getting it to open up, I got about a dozen steeps from this ball.

First 3-4 steeps were sweet and creamy, with an interesting finish that I found hard to place – maybe piney, but not smokey. After that, the astringency started to pick up a little bit, but it was not overwhelming in any way. There was still a good underlying sweetness as well. Not as much of the “maybe pine” flavor anymore. The last 5-6 steeps were smooth and drinkable, still slightly astringent, with slight honey sweetness and some whispers of apricot.

The leaves of this tea were beautiful, as I have rather come to expect from White 2 Tea’s productions. It was cool seeing these big and nice leaves coming from the previously tightly compressed little ball. I’m glad to see that my gut doesn’t disagree with Lincang material as well! Sorry to those who do have that problem!

Made up one of these in the std gaiwan. Around 13 steeps and it went dead. This is a nice, floral-smelling thing, pretty leaf grade, low bitterness, nice mouthfeel at first. I steep these like in Crimson Lotus’s instructional video for Planet Jingmai: a 30-sec “rinse” while mashing the ball with the lid, a 5-min rest in the closed gaiwan, and another 30-sec-and-smush which this time I’m calling a steep because I drank it. After the 2nd 5-minute steaming the ball was completely unravelled.

This is a great little tea sphere. Maybe a bit big for a single session (for me personally, in a 100mL gaiwan), but a went for it anyway. The fragrance is light, fresh, and pleasant. It’s a bit toned down, implying maybe a little bit of aging (I think this is 2012 material, right?). The tea itself is buttery, thick, and flavorful, with no bitterness on the first steep, and just a bit of drying thereafter. This reminds me a lot of the White2Tea Pin cake, which I also enjoy.

This is an excellent tea. There was very little bitterness to this, just a little. While I won’t say it wasn’t sweet, the sweetness was subtle. It didn’t rush at you like some apricoty sheng. This is a tea I was supposed to get for free with my black Friday order. It was left out of that order along with a gaiwan. Paul sent the missing items and gave me three of this tea instead of one. It seems to have some qi, but not tea drunk kind of qi. This is a tea I wish I had picked up more of with my last order with White2Tea which is still inbound from China. This is the second rolled puer I have tried. And I have to say I like it as much or more than the Misty Peaks version. It is hard to say which is better from one session, but this is good. This has a strong, slightly bitter aftertaste.

I brewed this ten times in a 100ml gaiwan with one puer ball or 8g leaf and 200 degree water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. Didn’t give this one a rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min.

Now this is my kind of tea. Intensely sweet fruity and floral with a green aftertaste and glimpses of childhood.