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Smells of nutmeg, stewed celery and somewhat sweet and earthy. Today it tastes very mild, uninteresting and kind of sickly. I remember it being much better when I tried it in the tea house. Next time I’ll try a more gong fu like setup.

Another sample. What a nice green tea this is, even a year after harvest. The dry leaves smell like shrimps to me, while the wet leaves have an aroma reminiscent of long jing. Taste is very delicate, somewhat sweet, grassy and floral. I find it has a great balance of flavours and doesn’t lack complexity. In the aftertaste, I notice some honeydew melon notes. Liquor is full-bodied and the mouthfeel is very soft. A great tea overall, I would describe it as a midpoint between long jing and a green baozhong.

edit: I just keep increasing the rating. This is probably the best green tea I’ve ever had. I have nothing to object to really. It induces a very nice body warming sensation as well!

Continuing with the today’s Toronto Tea Festival theme. This is a sample I picked up there.

The tea has a pungent aroma of honey, flowers and dried fruits. Taste is also strong and quite bitter, at least the way I brewed it. Flavours are overwhelmingly malty and woody, but the overall profile is a mix of sweet and bitter. I also get a hint of dried black currants, grapefruit and blackberry leaves, even though I wouldn’t call the taste fruity. The aftertaste is a little leathery and has nice dryness to it. I like the mouthfeel too, it is bubbly and the tea has a full body.

Another tea I really liked at the Toronto Tea Festival and was also selling for a really good price. The aromas remind me of magnolia, moth balls, cooked vegetables, okra, rice fields and antique shops. Taste is sweet and grassy with hints of green apple, citrus zest, cardamon and various florals.

It’s not a prime example of a Darjeeling FF, especially now a year after the harvest, but given the price I am very happy with it.

This was one of the best teas I got to try at the Toronto Tea Festival this year, and since the price seemed right, I picked up a cake of this tippy sheng.

Tasting it today for the first time didn’t leave such a strong impression though. The tea doesn’t seem to stand out in any particular way. Nevertheless, it is quite tasty and balanced, which would make it suited for casual brews. The main flavours I noticed are the standard ones – heavy honey sweetness, hay, some herbal bitterness, florals like at a summer meadow and such. The body is medium and there is a decent astringency. Aftertaste is not too strong, but does last for quite a while. The tea also succeeded in waking me up properly after a heavy lunch.

So yeah, not bad, but not too memorable either.

This tea is so different from any other one I’ve had that find it very hard to assess or describe. Either way, it’s phenomenal.

Let me try to put down some thoughts at least though. The taste profile has a strong tartiness and a bitter backbone. It is not very sweet and has a nutty character. Many things capture my attention at the same time so it’s hard to focus on either. The mouthfeel is incredibly smooth and thick as well as somewhat lubricating. Aftertaste is about as strong (which means very pungent) as the taste itself and evolves from tart to spicy to sweetish and remains interesting for a long time. Cha qi can be felt from the very first infusion. My head is clear and warming sensation spreads through my body. Rather than entering a dreamy state, I feel the reality more present in some sense. The aromas are very nice, mellow and clear too, not nearly as muddy as you get with wet stored shou.

Those were notes I got from first two infusions. The third steep somehow manages to be even thicker and is more savoury and balanced than the first two. My favourite so far. Also the texture of this steep is so bubbly, I love it! I will stop writing now and enjoy the tea, it’s also pretty clear that this will steep for a long time.

With my very limited experience in terms of aged pu’er, it should be taken with a grain of salt, but if you – like myself – are new to aged stuff, I can 100% recommend this tea. (but please don’t buy all of it, I want to get a tuo or two once I have the funds :D)

I bought this cake blind recently and this is my first tasting of it. I feel like meeting a new person. Hope it’s a good one :)

Starting from the aroma, the dry leaves don’t have a strong one, but the wet leaves display a range of forest aromas. There’s oyster mushrooms, lichen and other forest-like and vegetal smells. The smell becomes a little different throughout the session. I also picked up notes of oats/porridge and cookies later on.

The rinse is probably one of the most flavourful ones I have experienced in a sheng. There is a lot of sweetness and umami, which gives the wash a green tea like character. Some woody notes are present too. I am now really excited for what the tea has to offer :D

The first infusion is already a proper one. There is no astringency of note and the bitterness is weak too. However, the overall flavour is super strong. It is surprisingly tart and almost fruity. I cannot associate it with any particular fruit though, it just has that kind of character. The concrete associations are more in the vegetal realm – pickled cucumber, grass (not hay, which is more common in sheng) and others. Second steep has some astringency and bitterness appearing, a progression that is nice to see. The taste is more mineral now and by the third steep becomes quite earthy, but not like wet earth or peat. Aftertaste is long and fragrant, now with some tingling and slightly drying sensation in the throat.

The first few infusions had a medium viscosity, but the mouthfeel is interesting. It feels as if the liquor was dissolving in the mouth, if that makes any sense.

Fourth and fifth infusion are similar to the third, but due to the high complexity I always find something new. There is a peppery note in the former, while the latter has a very heavy sweetness I would associate with a stout. The sweetness lasts for a very long time in the aftertaste, but slowly transforms as well. It reminds me of the sweetness of red grapes and milk.

The flavour remains strong and interesting in the later steeps too, the tea doesn’t seem to get flat taste profile until very late. The eighth infusion sees the onset of quite a bitey astringency and in the ninth one I notice a nice coffee like bitterness. Neither the astringency nor the bitterness persist for too long in the aftertaste though, which is still mostly on the sweet and spicy side with an alcohol character.

Overall, I would say the Guardian is a very flavourful and complex tea with an enduring sweetness and no obvious flaws. The price went up recently, but it’s still a great value. Check it out!

Unlike derk, I like cold-brewed greens quite strong. I crushed about 7g of leaves and steeped them in 500ml for about 2 hours at room temperature. The result is a briny and tangy tea with a lot of umami, decent bitterness and no astringency. As usual for greens the taste is crisp, refreshing and somewhat sour. I think it would go extremely well with a hint of elderberry syrup and mint, but I don’t have either at work :D

This is the first true tea I am trying from the new set of samples I got from derk, thanks a lot my friend! :)

As for the tea, it’s magnificent. Bitter-sweet. Very mouth-watering, soft and biting mouthfeel. Perfect balance of the jasmine florals and dian hong maltiness. Long lasting and evolving aftertaste. One of a kind.

This was one of the best teas I tasted at the Toronto Tea Festival, so I got a 5g sample (for a very steep 10 CAD) to try it out at home. I got a piece close to the middle of the cake, but it’s not overly compressed. The leaves look quite coarse.

It is clear that the tea is aging very slowly, I was told it has been stored in Beijing since production. The leaves look somewhat green and the liquor is dark yellow, it hasn’t even properly started turning orange yet. There is a slight hint of fruits in the aroma, which is sweet and reminiscent of some cakes.

The first infusion after rinse is still very light with no bitterness and only a touch of astringency. It has a really nice sweetness, nothing overpowering. There is also a vegetal and floral character to it and the aftertaste is surprisingly strong given how mild the taste was. Second one is so smooth and already thicker. The taste I would describe as sweet grass with a bit of herbal bitterness. I can also feel its effects, clearing and focusing my mind. I have to say though that I am by no means in a standard state of mind, having just returned from a 90km long bike ride (the first one this year – spring seems to be pushing the winter away, yay!).

Third steep is a proper one. It’s such a nice mix of sweet and bitter taste, buttery texture, and a long floral and numbing aftertaste. Fourth and fifth are strong, but not as distinctive. I tried various types of brews next. The lighter ones are tasty and easy to drink, while the stronger ones have a heavy, peaty moss note to them and a much more interesting mouthfeel, which numbing and drying without being very astringent.

All in all, a very nice example of a dry stored Yiwu tea. If it was 4 times cheaper, I would even consider buying it! :P