Smelling both the dry and wet leaves really made me want to sneeze, so I didn’t inhale too much.
The first steeping immediately coats the tongue. It’s thick and sour. Kind of a toasty aftertaste. which is weird. Maybe I should have washed my pot more thoroughly after drinking all those roasted teas. Interestingly it’s very mild overall, except when you’re hit with that… sour-astrigency? Maybe lot more sour than astringent, but it hits the back and sides of the tongue in such a thick and juicy way.
It’s…. extremely intense, though, I think a bit too much for me. Drinking it also gives me a weird…. headache/sinusy feeling, and a tickle in my nose, like I am going to sneeze. Is it possible to have respiratory allergies to tea? Did a bunch of pollen end up in this somehow?
I gave my housemate some of it and they also got the nose-tickly feeling from it, so at least it’s not just me.
I think this is the first tea in the sampler I just can’t drink past the first steeping. The flavor is complex and interesting, and I’d really like to explore it more, but it’s probably not a good idea to keep drinking a tea that is giving me such weirdly strong allergy symptoms. I don’t see any of the other notes mentioning this though, so maybe it really is just us for some reason. How odd.
