Got this among my Farmerleaf samples a couple of months ago now. This tea just failed to impress me. It was not that it was bad, it wasn’t. It is just that it wasn’t spectacular either. It is no longer on the website so they must have sold out. It did have an initial sweet note, but a mild one. About steep six a bitter note crept in and lasted a couple of steeps to again be replaced by a sweet note. Now I would not go as far as to describe these sweet notes as apricots, they were just not that strong. In some ways it was sweet in the absence of bitterness even. It was just so mild a sweet note it is hard to describe. Was there any qi to this tea? Maybe a mild qi. So far the Farmerleaf teas have just not been really impressive. I have drank sheng I would call impressive, this just doesn’t quite qualify. It’s not even me saying it’s not worth a try. IF you want to try any Farmerleaf teas I would suggest samples because so far I have not drank anything to motivate me to buy a cake. I am not that far into the samples. They now also have a shou for sale. Might be interested in trying that. Of course they may have only made a shou with leaves that weren’t good enough for a sheng. In the end I can neither recommend or not recommend Farmerleaf. They are not bad teas. I just had hoped for more from them.
I steeped this twelve times in a 150ml gaiwan with 8.4g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min.
