2015 Autumn Old Arbor Yue Guang Bai Tea Cake

Another from my YS tea club. And interesting as Ive had a few processed white teas recently, The Makaibari White Darjeeling and Red Blossom Xin Gong Yi.

I love the look of it. 200g cake, with full white & dark green leaves lightly pressed together, comes apart easily. so nice – just look at that: http://yunnansourcing.com/img/p/3701-8965-thickbox.jpg

Like the others mentioned, its nice, un-offensive tea. A bit more body than the Makaibari, with almost raisin-like tones inside. Floral, as you would expect, a little darker than white, in taste & appearance, as you would expect.
Seems to me to have a ‘deeper’ taste. some hint of nuts. It just has that taste, whatever it is. – also its a camellia taliensis, not sure how much that affects the flavour. Sometimes I get a hint of sheng complexity in there too.

It is very nice though. No astringency or bitterness, ive hit it with 90c water grandpa style 2g and its been fine.

Second time around, fresh 3g 90c grandpa style 10 minute steep, a LOT more like a sheng. Stonefruits, slight shengy astringency, I think I went slightly overboard, there is a balance somewhere – i reckon in the temperature, waiting 10 mins for it to calm down it went a bit over the top – 87.5c? Lovely huiguan, really, in fact. Big grin from that! – ‘Oh yeah, that is nice’ I just said to myself.

For me, this is like a sheng gateway drug – it has those characteristics without the strength to make my lips curl or the difficulty getting brewing right. – These leaves have been in there 15 minutes and its still nice. I reckon a bit less temp and we have a winner!

edit* warm wavey head sweats & focus qi. really nice