Jing Mai Moonlight White

Dry and before infusing this smells like cucumber skins – fresh, clean, airy, Ahhhh!
After infusion it smells like sweet grass and sweet wood with floral notes!

Taste is…
not as sweet as I assumed it would be! It has a masculine flavor to it…along with a roasty/toasty charcoal hint to it. But you can still tell it’s a white tea. This is very different but good! I like this!

Such an interesting tea. I recently finished up a 12.5g pack, with another 12.5g pack set aside for aging as part of my white tea aging experiment. While this tea is white by process, it’s black by flavor. There’s such an incredible rich sweetness that comes naturally from this tea, like light maple syrup or agave nectar. Cooked stonefruit rounds out. What impresses me the most about this tea is it’s durability. Gong-fu style, I was able to produce rich tea for about 12 infusions!

My general opinion of white tea has not been very kind in the past—usually I think it’s too insipid. This one (thanks, Gingko from lifeinteacup.com!) was a surprise! The leaves are monster huge and it’s a beautiful golden maple color. Flavor is subtle, which you’d expect from a white tea, but leaves this wonderful sweet, biscuity aftertaste. Like drinking liquid suede.

The lifeinteacup website says I can expect to get seven steeps out of this one … it’s a little late in the evening for me to attempt that feat, but I’m looking forward to seeing what an encore cup is like.

This is a very unique, interesting white tea.
Thanks Gingko, for the sample, I enjoyed it both times (I think it was two 3.5g bags)!

The liquor was a light brown somewhat gold color. Honestly, this tea really felt like a black tea, rather than a white tea. The color wasn’t light (green or yellow tinted), the wet leaves were dark brown (again, like a black tea after infusion; not as dark as houjicha or anything), and the first pot I had of this was slightly astringent and had some malty notes!

For the first time a few days ago, I went by the directions; boiled water for 3 minutes. This afternoon, however, for the 2nd bag, I tried slightly under boiling, probably between 190-200 or so, for the same amount of time.

The astringency and drying sensation from the first pot were gone. Instead, the honey-sweetness was much more pronounced! (This was present the first time, but far less obvious). This really reminds me of a less complex Yunnan Gold. It is from the same region, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that.

For a white tea, this was very surprising – it wasn’t too light, flowery, buttery — the honey-sweetness was quite enjoyable, but I can’t remember there being much else to it. I think I would go for Life in Teacup’s Yunnan Golden Buds over this, but that’s just my personal preference!

I didn’t follow the directions for steeping. I oversteep tea so often and I only had one sample. So, it’s quite possible that I’m tasting something very different from the others.

I couldn’t smell this tea when dry. I could only smell my teacup. 160/3 min. Now, I can smell it and it smells slightly vegetal. It’s got a lot of the black tea scent to it, the taste as well. It tastes like a golden yunnan and even looks like one with the golden brown color. I’m tasting something reminiscent of honey or cane sugar. It’s a strange kind of sweetness that is not very pronounced. There is no astringency to this tea at all, nor is it bitter. It’s just a pleasant late afternoon tea.

This was one of the free samples I won from Life In Teacup’s Valentine’s contest…

This does not seem like a white tea at all. It brewed up a brownish color – really like a black tea. It smelled sort of like a cross between a black tea and a puerh- I got a hint of earthiness in the nose after it brewed, and the black tea scent that I’m very familiar with as that is one of my favorite tea types.

Tastewise, I’m thinking it reminds me of a black tea as well, with a small honeyish note. I don’t get white at all, but to be fair, I’m so inexperienced with white teas I may just be missing it.

Overall, though, this is a very pleasant and relaxing evening tea.