2019 If You’re Reading This

Blehhh. Potent in all the wrong ways. 5 flash steeps. First tasted of absolutely nothing. Next 4 were horribly bitter and astringent with no semblance of beauty. Made me feel woozy on the 3rd steep (should’ve stopped then haha).

The 5 points I give it are for the smell of the wet leaf. Many of the notes I get off of teas are not exact matches in taste or smell. This one was absolutely, no doubt, 100%, hands-down dried apricot. No thinking about it it or anything; it was a reflex. Disappointing, then, that the liquor sucked butt.

Another freebie from W2T and the second strike on them for the day. I need a nice sesh of dan cong right about now…

two rinses, 4 steeps, I think this one needs a LOT more ageing before I’d consider touching it again. It was a tad overwhelming and I got caffeinated so fast I got nauseous.

I got a mini coin, and it’s terrible. I rinsed twice and was surprised that it opened up so well. i steeped it for far too long initially and it was a shock how bitter it was. i made another cup for 20 seconds is (gaiwan) and it was also bad. just bitter.

The 7g mini cake is very dry looking and unusually powdery, I think there’s something wrong here.
After a rinse it crumbles and opens quickly revealing loads of tea particles, powder and tiny fragments of leaves. The first step is cloudy, fruity, with dominating astringency and bitterness. Peach aroma. I immediately get a stimulating and unnerving feeling, plus some mental slowness.
the second flash steep is dark orange, cloudy and overwhelmingly bitter. Undrinkable. I remove some leaves from the gaiwan, and I throw the second steep down the sink.
Actually I don’t feel like keep drinking this, now is basically a brownish tea paste. Taste and aroma are harsh and confused. Disgusting.
I’d like to try the real thing one day.

Gongfu Sipdown (705)!

A freebie, in coin form, from my last W2T order. It looks like most people got Dangerfield coins, but I’m guessing I received this one instead since I had actually ordered a Dangerfield sample. I’m glad it wasn’t another Turtle Dove coin – definitely don’t need more of those in my life. This is an interesting one; probably not something I’d have picked for myself – which makes it the perfect thing to sample/explore.

Soft to start, evolving into something with a smooth, silky top note and slight sweetness and more of a herbaceous and green body & finish w/ a pleasant astringency and mild bitter note. Hard to describe this one; it’s different than what I usually lean towards in a raw pu’erh but still enjoyable…

Side note – I’ve seen my review style go through a lot of changes over the last seven years, and it definitely feels like I’ve hit a place, especially w/ Gongfu tea, where I’m just REALLY casual/vague in describing them!? I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week, and I think it’s because I’m drinking something Gongfu practically every day now but, even a year and a half ago, I only had the time to have a proper Gongfu session MAYBE once a week – if I was lucky. So I don’t want to say that Gongfu has become ‘less special’ to me because that’s not true – but with it being more of normal occurance I feel less of a need hyper document everything like I used to…

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/B2zSz_-gzRq/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_gN3HgjxYo

I received a small coin of this in the W2T club. It’s a strong young tea. I kept getting fruity notes when smelling the lid. I had cut up a honey dew melon earlier in the day and the fruit smell reminded me of that melon. Of course, that fruit note is light, and the dominate note of the wet leaves is young green sheng. There is some nice sugary sweetness that returns, but to get there, you will go through bittervillle. It’s rather intensely bitter even with very short steeps. I think this one has good aging potential. It is thick in the mouth, good lasting sweet aftertaste. Astringency is very low. As for caffeine or qi, it’s strong. I felt my face get heavy, I had to squint my eyes a few times to shake it off, and developed a sweat later into the session. Toward the end of the session, the bitterness did settle down.

Quite smooth and fruity. Missing a little bit extra depth, but a nice tea to drink.