Iron Goddess of Mercy - Ti Kuan Yin - Green

I have been waiting to review this tea, because frankly, it baffles me. I have never tasted another tea with quite this flavor. Not having experienced Ti Kuan Yin ever, I cannot compare this but to different types of oolongs. Having said that, it is quite a tea. The aroma is very vegetal bordering on almost fresh paint notes. (which I like btw)
The smooth yet hardy roasted flavor is more intense than most oolongs I have tasted. I want to say the flavor is almost metallic but not in a bad way. It makes me feel I am drinking something extremely healthy. This is a very complex very good tea. This will definitely become a staple for me.

I really wanted to like this tea. First this I noticed was that it had a solid foundation with a little bit of Iron Goddess character on the nose. 3 minutes in the yixing pot brewed a very pale creamy liquor. First brew was weak. Not much flavor at all. I resteeped it, and the second brew yields nothing. I experimented with different amounts of tea, different temps, and different times. Nothing could fix it. And that’s the biggest problem, a quality TiKuanYin shouldn’t take this much effort. One look at the steeped leaves and I could see part of the problem. They look terrible. Broken up and really torn up on the edges. They have no tensile strength and seemed to come apart just from picking them up. No nose on the steeped leaves, lack of flavor, no complexity and unappealing leaves make my :/ grade the only option I had.