The name ‘Chunmee’ always makes me laugh – I mean precious eyebrows? I consider my eyebrows to be a lot of things but ‘precious’ generally isn’t one of them. The dry tea does sort of bear a resemblance I guess – the leaves are twisted into short little curves, though to me it’s still a bit of a stretch.
The tea brews up fairly dark for a green tea, turning the water a sort of dark-golden colour. Right away I can taste the sourness in the description, it’s not exactly gack-worthy but it takes some getting used to. In my head it’s not so much like sour plums as it’s comparable to a crisp, dry, white wine like a sauvignon blanc. The body of the tea is rather grassy and the aftertaste has a touch of sweet that I wish was a bit stronger.
The resteep (@ 3:30 min) is much mellower, but it still has a hint of that dry, grass-like sourness. The sweetness at the end is a bit stronger however – possibly because the other flavour elements aren’t drowning it out.
All in all I’d say that this isn’t my cup of tea (pun not intended…okay maybe a little) although I think that might be down to personal tastes rather than this being a crappy tea – I haven’t really tried enough chunmees to form an option of how this particular tea holds up to others of the same kind.
