I probably ought to experiment more with the Daughter Rings and see if I can coax some more flavour, or just some flavour out of subsequent steeps, but honestly, I just wanted something that actually has a flavour in the first place.
So we’re staying in the same region although not the same tea type.
This was given to me as one of two free samples in my Chi of Tea order, and one I thought was rather well chosen for me. If I had been paying proper attention to how much I could actually get from Chi of Tea for so little, I might actually have ordered it myself.
The aroma of the dry leaf surprised me. It wasn’t just the usual earthy sort of musty notes, there was a surprisingly floral layer on top of it. It made me sniff an extra time, but it really was there. Sort of sweet and sort of floral.
After steeping, however, it smells more… um, normal. Earthy, slight notes of livestock. There’s a strong sweetness to it though. It reminds me of the aroma of the Vanilla Nilgiri black, also from Chi of Tea. It sort of hints at vanilla and cream, but not in a way that would make you think either of them are in there. A note of custard, is really what it is. (I like custard!)
Shame it doesn’t taste like custard also, but I wasn’t really expecting it to either. We can’t have everything, can we? Truth be told, I’m not sure I really want a tea to taste like custard when it’s unflavoured… Naturally occurring notes of this and that are great, but I don’t think it would work with custard.
The taste is more your average standard pu-erh. It’s earthy and dark, but while it doesn’t have any custard notes, it has retained a note of vanilla which I’m finding to be very pleasant. Come to think of it, wasn’t it Chi of Tea that gave me that tip of keeping an eye out for pu-erhs flavoured with sweet things such as vanilla or caramel? I can definitely see the potential of vanilla here!
The flavour here seems a bit watered down and thin, but I was bound by the size of the sample, so I think that’s something one can experiment one’s way out of.
I’m very pleased with this! Really very pleased indeed. It’s not impossible I’ll make a purchase of it in the future. For the time being I’m putting it on my shopping list so that I don’t forget about it.
