Learning to like smoky flavor

Oops, didn’t see the same recommendation right above mine! I will try to get some sent to you, KS, if I can manage to get anything done this week!

Thank you Ashmanra, maker of beautiful cards. My tea journey has covered a lot of ground recently but Lapsang is definitely a direction I have not ventured yet. As one who loves drinking tea and writing about my experience, I am trying to understand each tea for what it is trying to be and how it succeeds or fails. Whether I personally like it, I think, should be secondary to some extent. In approaching it this way my attitude has already been changed. Jasmine, for instance, I used to avoid. Now, opening my mind I find I do like it – just not the grocery store stuff I had tried in the past. Lets face it, without some of this attitude I would have had no reason to dig into pu-erh beyond the first sip. Grassy greens are an area I am warming up to but haven’t quite been completely won over yet. At least now I get what they are and have some basic idea of how to interpret their taste.

With the tea in question in this thread, the smoke in the first cup (that didn’t seem heavy to anyone else) threw me. I can’t grasp why it is considered a good idea. At the same time I like it in the bagged Wuyi oolong I drink. I want to understand the smoke. What makes it good, when is it bad? Personal preference will always be a factor. I just don’t want to taste a tea, score it at 25 and write this is nasty, without some understanding of why it is nasty. I have often been told I think too much. Maybe this is one of those times but that is the way I am wired.