2016 Spring Mengsong Black Tea

Found this cake in my tea cupboard yesterday. Had no idea I still had this, especially since I just handed the same exact cake off to someone in a stash sale. Figured I might as well chug this one down too.

The storage has been fairly dry for this one, probably around the 50% mark. It was very easy to break apart and toss into my gaiwan. It didn’t take too long for the leaves to expand apart from one another during steeping, filling up my spacious gaiwan. It’s on the fruitier side of a black tea, not particularly exciting, but consistent throughout. It lasted quite a while before I had to call it quits.

This was a lovely and smooth black tea, but I’ve had better.

I had to look up Mengsong to see if this was a Chinese or Taiwanese black, as it strangely had elements of both, flavor wise. It’s smooth and caramely, a bit like A&P from W2T. That’s the element that made me think of Taiwan.

There’s a bit of malt and floral, which is what makes it Chinese tasting.

I’ve had deeper and more complex from both countries, but that doesn’t make this any less pleasant! Thank you for the sample, tea friend!

A little bit disappointed with this one, especially after having enjoyed the little sheng cake that came with it. It’s a very pretty cake, and it smelled just fine – a bit malty mostly. Unfortunately, once I started brewing it, I kept getting a slightly bitter soapy flavor that dominated some of the nicer malty notes underneath it. I might give this a try with less leaf or cooler water or something. Even if it’s better that way, I think it’s safe to say I’d have preferred a 100g cake of the sheng ;)

This was a very enjoyable black tea. Malty, with an overtone of caramel. There is a nice level of acidity, keeping it from being at all boring. I keep trying to find similarities to its companion sheng, but other than the fact that I liked it very much too, I’m not able to identify any.

First Steep – 1 minute

The tea is red brown in colour and bares a sweet malt and wood scent.

In flavour the first few sips taste similar to it’s steeped scent, the malt is sweet but fresh and fairly light with some dry wood in the after taste. Despite the complex nature of the tea it’s smooth in this steep. Further sips reveal some soft smoke.

Second Steep – 2 minutes

More malt and more smoke in this steep, though on the whole it remains smooth and velvety. It’s a medium strength in this steep but even so it’s a light medium because it’s so smooth and easy to drink. Perhaps an increase in dryness which is moderate at this stage but even so the flavour makes up for it. Also because of the increase of strength the sweetness of it reminds me of brown sugar.

Third Steep – 3 minutes

Even softer than the first steep at this point, though the sweet malt still lingers to dance upon my tongue once more. I wish to say more about it but I’m struggling, there is no wood or smoke present, perhaps the last thing I can say is that the dryness has increased substantially.

Conclusion: It mentioned that this black tea was made using the Dianhong processing method and I can see many similarities between this tea cake and Dianhong in terms of flavour. Personally I am a lover of Dianhong and often keep it in stock so it was good news for me to have something like this that I can show some familiarity with. However, a Dianhong in cake form is a new one for me; though I have had it in tuo like buds before which I suppose is similar to a cake. Either way this tea was divine and I was upset to have finished it so quickly. I am not sure what this tea gained from being in cake form over loose leaf but it doesn’t really matter, the result is wonderful.

For pictures and more information please view my blog:
http://www.kittylovestea.co.uk/2016/06/22/white2tea-club-june-2016/

This black was sent as part of the WHite2Tea tea club last month. It is a good black tea. The main note is malt with a nice semi sweet character to it. There was very little bitterness to this tea. To my knowledge this is not available on the website. Overall it was pretty good but not as good as some black teas I’ve had from Yunnan Sourcing lately. I steeped this one with Whole Foods 365 brand spring water. I normally use filtered water but have been experimenting more with spring water. In this case I don’t know if the spring water made a difference as I didn’t steep any steepings with Zero Water filtered water to compare. I stopped at one fill of my kettle or eight steepings. I figured I had had enough caffeine for one day.

I steeped this eight times in a 120ml gaiwan with 7.3g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec. The leaves were not done. I could have gotten a few more steepings out of them but I was done.