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Magic Mountain DNA is a very good tea, but ultimately not worth the price in my opinion. I think teas like Teadontlie, Year of the Rooster and If You’re Reading This It’s 2 Late all present a better value among the White2Tea roster. It has a nice taste profile, interesting astringency and a non-aggressive and focusing energy in the background.

The aroma is quite weak, reminiscent of wet concrete, florals and lychee. The taste is vegetal and sweet, with a decent bitterness and tangy character. It’s a strong taste, but not so evocative. I noticed flavours like honeydew and Breckland thyme though. In the pungent and warming aftertaste, there are notes of bay leaf, cinnamon, a mix of floral and spicy ones. The body is full and the mouthfeel is quite drying, coating and sticky.

And lastly, the fall pick. I find it to be the most enjoyable of the 4, although it’s not as delicate and complex than the snow pick. It has a stronger aroma than the spring pick, with a nutty, floral and vanilla notes. There are a lot of florals in the smell, most notably osmanthus I think. The taste is strong from the very start of the session. It is quite multi-layered, delicate and mineral. The flavours include ones like custard, cream, grass, orchid, brown sugar and apricot pits. Mouthfeel is lubricating and body is medium I’d say.

The snow pick is least like a green tea among all 4 of them. together with the fall pick, they have the thickest mouthfeel. It is the most reminiscent of Tie Guan Yin. I find it to be very complex, although maybe not as tasty as fall.

There are a lot of elusive notes, the likes of vanilla, sugarpeas, spaghetti squash, milk, lime, coffee, blueberry leaves. The taste is very delicate and crisp, with mostly sweet, floral and vegetal qualities. On top of that, there is a light alcohol character of the aftertaste. Apart from the complexity, the smooth, velvety is the highlight.

Once I also tried a 20 min long simmer at the end of the session. It was not spectacular, but interesting for sure. It smells like stewed kale, butter and a cake of sorts. The taste is lighter than I expected, but it has new notes of menthol and lettuce. The mouthfeel is lubricating and thick with no astringency.

The spring pick is more interesting than the winter one, at least it has been earlier for sure. Over time, it got a little bit more bland and is now closer to the winter pick than what I remember. In the cooling smell I noticed aromas of stonefruits and egg shells. The taste is quite light, sweet and tart. There are flavours of freshly cut grass, umami and herbs. In the aftertaste, notes like spinach, guava appear. Over time, the aftertaste gets mostly sweet, of the molasses kind I think. Mouthfeel is fairly thin, powdery and soft.

I ordered the whole Pear Mountain sampler with 4 different harvest times and drank them all today. This one is my least favourite I’d say. The dry leaf smell is very similar to the fall pick, but I find it sweeter and greener. The wet leaf has more of an artificial, sweet gum aroma. Taste is kind of like a green tea, but more floral. Overall, it is not too interesting though. Aftertaste is more intriguing. There are notes of cinnamon, cream cheese, nuts and minerals. The mouthfeel is quite thin, buttery, watery and slightly drying.

Due to a lot of travelling and work, I have been off Steepster recently, at least as far as reviews go. Next week I am going to California, but once I am back I hope to get to the reviewing again and try to cut down on the teas in my cupboard.

Today, before our tea tasting party started, I had this Hong Shui. It is a very nicely balanced tea, quite mineral, sweet, fruity, but also with vegetal notes and strong floral fragrance in the aftertaste. There are aromas of cookies, rocks, lychee in the dry leaf, reminding me of medium roasted Tie Guan Yin a bit. On the other hand, the wet leaves display peach, mineral and marine smells. The taste is quite floral, leafy and tannic, with a saccharine like sweetness. Aftertaste is very long and fragrant. There is a nice lingering bitterness in the throat. Body is medium I’d say and the mouthfeel is quite slick and a touch dry. Even though I only used 3 grams, I can feel the uplifting and energizing nature of the tea, as well as the caffeine.

This is not a review of the tea, but I used it for a little water comparison today. Having returned from Europe recently, I received a bottle of water from Iceland on an Icelandair flight, which I noticed had interesting parameters – high pH and low minerality (about 65 ppm). I decided to keep it and do a side by side comparison with the water I normally use. Unfortunately, I don’t really have any specific parameters for that one, but I expect it to have a fairly neutral pH and dissolved solids between 50 and 150 ppm.

Overall, I can’t say I preferred one over the other, but there were some noticeable differences. The Icelandic water produced a harsher, more vibrant and bitter brew with softer mouthfeel, while my regular water gave rise to a more acidic, fruity and rounded tea with thinner and more powdery texture.

It’s hard to make any conclusions because of the lack of information, but it was interesting little comparison nonetheless :)

Today while packing I was drinking another tea from the group buy conducted by Liquid Proust. This one was a semi-aged sheng labelled as “Dat TW stuff”. It was an interesting tea to try for sure, especially given my lack of experience with aged pu’er. I suppose this particular one has seen a relatively humid storage, but I can only guess given the information I have.

The tea was very strong on the camphor and mint notes, but also had a lot of fruity ones. In particular, I noticed plums and, surprisingly, also orange. The orange note completely escaped me initially, but once I noticed it, it captured my attention.

The most memorable aspect of this tea was the qi for sure though. Super dreamy and no rushy feeling. I was drinking the tea from flask also in the bus on the way to the airport, with mist and hail outside, listening to some vaporwave music and it channeled me into pretty eclectic lucid dreams, while also making me feel relaxed and in-peace-with-the-world.

First time trying this tea out. Since I have two cakes, I decided to conduct a small test of my personal pu’er storage and left one of them out. I will be regularly coming back to these two to look for any differences. The first side by side tasting is just 3 weeks after I got the cakes, so I don’t expect there to be any differences due to aging, but I still want to see if just the fact that they had to acclimatize to different environments will have an effect.

The “humid” version: more pungent and interesting wet leaf smell, more savoury, herbal, grassy and umami flavours. Stronger and more interesting aftertaste (but tbh it’s very hard to differentiate the aftertaste in a side by side tasting).

The “dry” version: more astringency and stronger flavour (both could be due to different level of broken leaves). More milky, nutty and metallic.

No noticeable difference in the dry leaf smell and mouthfeel.

All the differences are minute though, as one would expect.

I agree with tperez that this is pretty much a perfect black tea. It has the savoury, woody and bitter aspects of Ye Sheng blacks, it has the sweetness and maltiness of standard Yunnan blacks and has the smoky and leathery notes of Fujian blacks plus much more, all contributing to its complex yet balanced nature. Other notes one can find include medicinal/herbal ones, mostly in the aroma, citrusy sourness mostly in the early steeps and the aftertaste, vanilla, honey, tropical fruits, metallic and decaying wood flavours. The aftertaste is very long and a touch biting in the throat, as well as quite floral. Of course, one of the hallmarks of this tea is its full body and creamy, smooth and thick mouthfeel. On top of that, you get a very nice warming and relaxing qi. All round high quality tea with no noticeable drawbacks. I only wish it was cheaper, but I can’t say it’s overpriced. I would highly recommend this tea, especially to people who are already familiar with the landscape of the standard Chinese black teas. Relative to those, one can really appreciate how special this tea really is.

I need to drink the white version of this tea once again to see how they compare, but at the moment this one wins for me by a mile.