Mei Zhan Jin Jun Mei

I apparently bought this tea in 2021 when I was exploring Jin Jun Mei. Since then, I’ve decided that unsmoked lapsang is usually fruitier, not to mention a better value, although it’s nice to revisit JJM occasionally. I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma of this fuzzy Jin Jun Mei is of honey, honeysuckle, sweet potato, malt, and cocoa. The first steep has notes of butter, honeysuckle, sweet potato, honey, and faint malt. The tea is fairly thick and has a sweet, lingering aftertaste. Steep two adds more florality, honey, and starchy sweet potato, with some hints of bread and cocoa. The next couple steeps are very floral, with honeysuckle and something I’ll call violet. There’s lots of sweet potato and honey, though the cocoa has disappeared. The next few steeps offer consistent honey, caramel, bread, sweet potato, malt, and honeysuckle/violet florals, with no bitterness and a very sweet profile. By steep nine or so, the tea fades into something that’s primarily sweet potato, caramel, and faint malt, still without any bitterness or tannins. A few tannins appear near the very end of the session, when the tea is generically bready, malty, and squashy.

This Jin Jun Mei isn’t particularly complex, but the flavours that are present are nice. I particularly like the heady florality and lack of bitterness. As Daylon mentioned, this tea is all about the sweet potato, although I wish there’d been a bit more cocoa as well. This isn’t my favourite tea from Wuyi Origin, but it is representative of the high quality of the hongcha this vendor offers.

Backlog:

I tried this twice-once as tumbler fuel, and the next time in a quick gong fu session from my Jin Jun Mei sampler.

I was honestly not as impressed with the sampler overall. All of the teas were pretty subtle, and the Honey Style was my favorite. This one was surprisingly the least straight forward, and heavily resembled the Wild Jin Jun Mei from What-Cha. Extremely buttery, light, and floral headed by honeysuckle, textured by savory sweet potato, with some caramel/brown sugar hints here and there. There wasn’t more than that otherwise. No astringency or bitterness, and while it was complex, it lacked malt and some qualities that I hope for in a Jin Jun Mei. Combining all the fancy pretentious notes together, I could also describe this tasting like summer squash, and that’s it.

I do think this was a quality tea, and it’s exceptional if you are looking for something that doesn’t get bitter-I was just hoping for more considering the price tag and varietal. Since it was Meizhan, I hoped there would be some redder fruit notes like plum or cherry. Alas, honeysuckle it is.

I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow, I’ve turned 180 degrees from my stance on black teas at the beginning of my tea journey. When I started exploring loose leaf teas, I could not find black teas that I enjoyed. Now, it’s the type of tea I drink most.

Maybe I just needed to find the good ones.

This is a good one.

Tasting notes:
Sweet, floral aroma to the dry leaves, with a backbone of sweet potato
Brewed aroma: floral, fudgy, sweet potatoes
Brewed tea: rich, smooth, full, malty, sweet potato flavors, starchy

There is an addictive quality to a very few black teas, something in the smell and taste that drives my senses wild. This tea has it. Another black tea with that quality is Whispering Pines Wild Taiwanese black, although this tea is heavier while I think of the Taiwanese as quite light in nature.