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I received this tea as part of a white tea-sampler pack that I ordered a few weeks back. This is the first bag I have sampled and I must say, the way that Jing uses to package their teas does a lot for its freshness.
Jing’s Tea storage bags are zip-lock bags made from plastic foil – as are most storage bags these days – but Jing’s are additionally welded shut above the zipper, so in order to get to your leaves you have to clip off that top-most part. This added air-tight seal seems to keep in the aroma exceptionally well – which I subsume from the fact the to two teas I have tried so far were very aromatic. You know the feeling when you open a bag that has fresh tea in it, the smell that emmanates from it is almost tangible. Lack of said aroma is oftentimes an indicator of leaves that have already gone stale.
Not the case here.
The dry leaf resembles Silver Needle-leaves the only difference being the size. These are a little shorter than you would expect Yin Zhen to be.
The liquor brews up to a bright and radiant yellow. I used Gongfu-brewing with a steep-time of about 4-5 seconds initially and increased that gradually over subsequent steepings.
Deliciously floral and fruity aroma, combined the slightly starchy or papery aroma that white tea normally gives off.
The taste is easily described as two parts of the muscat-notes that you love if you are into Darjeeling and one part of the slightly drier and – for want of a better word – nuttier notes of Yin Zhen.
The texture follows the same equation: it is a little bit of what you would expect from a cup of Yin Zhen, the gentle feel that the little hairs are covering your tongue, and a very distinct awarenes of the liquid while swallowing it, but mellowed out by the Darjeeling to only a trace amount of that intensity.

I enjoyed this a lot and it lasted through an amazing number of steepings – must have been around 18, possibly more.
The only thing I was missing from this tea was the complexity that I have come to love from my Verdant Tea purchases. This does not detract from the quality of this tea. I would highly recommend it if you were looking for a tea to serve to a friend you were looking to win over for the Way of Tea.

I have never had the opportunity to sample the pricier range of pu-erh that has ripened for at least a decade, but these mini nests are undoubtedly a good way to get acquainted with the flavour.

Pu-erh is – more so than any other tea – an acquired taste. To me it is rich and earthy and compares completely to the smell of a forest floor after a heavy rainshower in summer. Notes of old wood are also there, but the tea has a very mild taste to it, there is barely a hint of sourness or anything bitter in it. Virtually no astringency.

Warm your pot with some truly boiling water.
Put a generous helping of leaves in there.
Close your eyes and take a whiff.

While the taste is truly amazing, especially when you contemplate the way it changes over multiple infusions, it is that first moment of smelling the leaves in the warm pot that I love best about it.

Wow. It took me a while to fuly appreciate it the way it deserves, but now barely a day goes by without my evening cup of White Oothu.
It is rather aromatic and flavourful for a white tea and has a distinctly fruity aroma to it. In fact the fruityness was so overpowering to me at first, that I shunned the White Oothu for my Bai Mu Dan for a while.

After several tasting though I have to conclude that this white specimen has a deliciously round body that will not disappoint the lover of white teas, even after multiple steepings. And you get a lot out of this beauty – I brew it in a gaiwan and can easily steep 5gr of White Oothu 10 to 15 times before having to add more leaves.

The fruity notes linger for a long time and give way in later steepings to a very gentle body with slight hints of sweetness, melons and very mild grassiness. Very well rounded.