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As the vendor description suggests, this tea lands somewhere in between a hong oolong from Taiwan and a wild black tea (e.g. taiwanese Shan Cha). It is more bitter than the former and more fruity than the latter. It also remains interesting for many infusions. Overall, I am quite happy with it, especially for drinking in this late autumn weather.

The aromas are flowery, vegetal, and leathery. The taste is spicy, bitter, floral, sweet, and woody. There are hints of mushrooms, nectarine, later on also malt. The mouthfeel is buttery and gets astringent towards the end of the session. The aftertaste is pungent, fragrant, and biting with a long-lasting sweetness.

This white tea has an interesting mix of tangy, tannic, savoury, and foresty flavours, as well as a hint of pastries. The aftertaste is also a bit sour, and the aroma reminds me of sawdust, apricots, sugarcane, and allspice.

This tea is quite oxidized for a fresh white tea, surely partly as a result of being pressed into balls. These are pretty tight and take a long time to open, it’s definitely not a tea for a quick session. Additionally, it also has a lot of staying power. A great tea for autumn vibes I would say :)

This tea hasn’t aged a great deal yet, but it’s just as tasty as before. It has a complex aroma that blends fruity, nutty, and floral notes with hints of forest and sawdust. The taste is full and pungent. It is bit more on the savoury and bitter side, but also has a mild apple flavour.

The mouthfeel is very thick and oily, and the aftertaste very long and flowery with plenty of returning sweetness and various notes of spices.

The tea retains a bright character with substantial bitterness, sugarcane sweetness and vegetal notes such as mint and moss. The aftertaste is sweet, nutty, and fragrant.

This is always a unique one to return to, although I miss the times when it had more of that bitterness of purple raw.

The tea is now very smooth with flavours like cola, strawberry, earth, and only a very mild bitterness. There is also a hint of mint in the aftertaste.

I really enjoy this tea’s development. It has planty of character and seems to progress towards a well rounded and balanced aged pu-erh in the future.

At present, its aroma reminds me of barn, hay, and alcohol. The liquor is thick and smooth with a fruity and herbaceous taste as well as mild bitterness.

Today I also used a new gaiwan I picked up from Laifufu for the first time, and I love it already :)

I didn’t like this tea much today. Both my "dry"and “humid” version were quite astringent, herbaceous, and not particularly tasty. I notice significantly clearer and sweeter aroma in the dry one, with notes of candy and honey. The other one had more vegetal notes of bog and parsley.

This tea is very well aged given its age. It has a strong heady and warming cha qi, slick mouthfeel as well as pungent taste. The flavours are a bit like beetroot, wild mushrooms, the sourness of coffee in the liquor and more like whiskey, bergamot, and sweet wood in the aftertaste.

This is a superb black tea that is very well balanced and complex. The taste is positioned between bitter, woody, leathery notes and more fruity, sweet, and sour ones. The mouthfeel is thick and buttery with a numbing touch and a decent astringency. Aromas remind me of eucalyptus and strawberries when dry, and of gnocchi and cherries when wet.