This is a Lexitus-tea that I got for Christmas. It’s one that I saw on AC Perch’s site and wanted to try and he remembered that, so yay him.
It’s a very interesting tea for me, this one. My first ever tea from the South American continent so I have little clue as to what to expect taste- and quality-wise. AC Perch’s say it’s similar in flavour to Japanese greens, but I have little experience with them, so it doesn’t help me much.
The leaves are large and very dark, so at first glance it looks like an average non-jade oolong. A fair amount of twigs in there too. The aroma of the dry leaves is fairly typical green. Not overwhelming in strength and sort of leafy sweet, a hint of nuttyness. Due to the leaf size it’s a bit difficult to scoop so I’ve fallen back on the same way I scoop my Pai Mu Tan. For one small pot with farm animals on it: Plenty.
AC Perch’s recommend a steeping time of six minutes, which I thought was rather a lot for a first go, so I’ve given it a little less, and since I can’t empty the whole pot into this cup in one go, I’ll get a second cup with a longer steeping time so I can compare there.
The colour is very light, and it’s one of those funky coloured once that makes you wonder if it might actually be mildly radioactive. A pale yellow greenish sort of glow-in-the-dark colour. You know those white stars? It’s nearly that colour. It has a very special smell too. There is an extremely sweet note to it that if I didn’t know any better, I’d think there was a lot of sugar in it. It’s kind of vanillaish, and maybe just a touch, the slightest little bit of something salty or seaweedish. It’s very very very little though, and the primary aroma note is the vanillaish sweetness.
It tastes nothing like it smells. There’s a typical green sort of nuttyness and not really any vanillaish sweetness. It’s got a good kick to the flavour, a bit more woody than grassy. It’s actually rather nice, but it’s not a tea that you can keep on discovering. What you see is what you get.
The second cup, which had a longer steeping time (longer, probably, than the recommended six minutes) is darker and much more yellow in colour. The aroma is pretty much the same, but strangely enough it’s not even remotely as strong as the aroma in the shorter steeped cup. The flavour has lost much of the nuttyness and gained quite a bit of astringency instead, and a sourish note too. I definitely liked the shorter steep better, but I feel that this bodes well for another couple of steeps.
ETA: Interesting. Second steep, although nearly forgotten and therefore severely oversteeped is actually still quite nice. It’s got a bit of a bite, but nothing like the second round of the first steep. Mostly it’s pretty smooth, I think.
