Three minutes seems short, but it says 2 – 3 so I’m gonna give it a shot.
The dry leaves smell lovely. Earthy and smooth and a little sweet. No fish to be found so fingers crossed.
My first thought upon smelling the wet leaf was ‘seaweed’. But not exactly. Kind of like… dirt-covered, boiled wakame. The tea itself smells sweet but there is an undertone of… not quite fish but something oceanic or seafood-ish in it. But the dominant smell hits me as dried sweet hay that has been rained on. This reminds me of the fish pu-erh so I’m nervous.
The taste is better than ROT’s. No sweet smoked fish. There are similarities though. But not in the bad tastes, only in the good. This one does have a weird aftertaste, though. Not weird, just… not expected. There’s actually a little bit of dryness that kicks in within the sweet hay flavor at the tail end of the swallow.
I’m not 100% sold on this one. I definitely like it more than ROT’s but it doesn’t come together quite as happily for me as Samovar’s Maiden’s Ecstasy.
