Hello tea friends! I am sorry (not sorry) that I missed out on blogging yesterday, but I was super tired after getting no sleep the night before (unrelated) and celebrating the next day, in case you missed it, I got engaged!!! Ben took me to the zoo as a little going away present before he skipped town for a few days to attend a wedding out of state, and in the Australian bird enclosure while being watched by Ibises he proposed. My ring is quite wonderful, a simple silver band embossed with laurels (yay I finally have laurels!) and very comfortable, and apparently the little sneak bought it months ago when I was visiting my mom in PA, and waited for the perfect opportunity to surprise me, in typical Ben fashion it was all very romantic. I am still in a state of giggly bliss! Now to start planning the Deep Sea Cthulhu Cephalopod themed wedding!
So, giggling aside, today is a day for some Sheng! Specifically Wymm Tea’s Jingmai Sheng Pu-erh From Ancient Tea Tree 2013 First Spring, a Sheng Puerh from Jingmai Mountain in the Lancang Lahu Autonomous County in the southwest of Yunnan. This reminds me of how badly I want several very detailed maps of tea producing regions, that would be so cool hanging in my tea area. So, the aroma of this tea is not much to jump up and down about, the tea is very tightly compressed, so I am not surprised by the rather mellow and unassuming aroma. The notes I do get out of this sample are sweet hay, camphor, a gentle sharp woodiness, and a touch of spinach. It took a bit of sniffing to get those notes, but nothing wrong with a bit of tea snuffling!
Once I gave the tea its first rinse and brew, the leaves livened up a good bit. There are notes of wet oak wood and wet and dry hay, like a barn but thankfully without the animals! There is also a bit of sourness that fades to sweetness, like melon rinds, lastly there is a hint of green beans, specifically fresh uncooked snap beans. The liquid has a sharpness, wet wood and camphor, with a touch of smoke and sweetness.
I apologize for no photo of the first steep, I was unaware that my camera was suffering technical difficulties and ate my photo, all I got was a sad error. After the sharp aroma I was expecting a sharp taste, amusingly not so much! It is fruit sweetness and smoothness from the first to the aftertaste. Starting with honey and hay, moving to apricots, and finishing with a gentle woodiness that does give a bit of dryness at the very end. There is a very gentle camphorous cooling after sipping, but it is very light.
Second steeping! The aroma is not really at all sharp this time, it is sweet and fruity, fresh crisp apricots and honey with a touch of distant smoke. The taste is much thicker, especially in mouthfeel, it is heavily leaden with honey and fruit at the front, this fades pretty quickly to greenness. Notes of greenbeans and grass with a tiny bit of grapes at the finish.
Onward to number three! The aroma is now quite pungent, wet hay and wet leaf pile with a camphor note drift from my cup. What, the? Hey, what happened? It has gone from delightfully smooth and sweet to bitter, just like not entirely ripe persimmons, however the mouthfeel is thick and not dry, interesting! Maybe I steeped it too long, always a possibility (it was 30 seconds at 185 if you are curious) but woo, that was a twist! In me fashion I went for a few more steeps, the next couple were still rather bitter, but fading back into apricots and hay, with stronger camphor notes, so other than that kick in the face at the middle the tea was quite enjoyable!
For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/07/wymm-tea-jingmai-sheng-pu-erh-from.html
