This tea is a real tongue, mouth and throat experience that goes on and on after a sip. The soup is a bit light compared to the thicker greens I normally drink, but the mouth experience is rather powerful. I am glad I didn’t judge it by the light color, and brewing the entire 7 gr sample in a small amount of water would have been a waste, there is so much to get from this in the 3 gr in 180 ml I brewed. First my sour/bitter taste buds wet awakened, not by sour bitter taste, but just light astringency, it is an impact rather than a taste. My sweet taste buds woke up afterward like that latent sweetness I get from anise. I get the pepper reference in the website description, on the back of the throat, but to me it is more like the after effect of chewing on green wood, like a sumac stick after peeling off the bark.
I read about the local cuisine in the Anhui province where this tea is from, seafoods in salty/spicy brown sauces. While this tea is good by itself, it would really be a good follow up to a brown seafood sauce, to clean the mouth and continue the meal experience.
Update: I ordered some more of this tea after putting the steeped leaves into a glass jar of water in the fridge, and 3 days later I got a really fine cold tea. Lots of yummy steeps and then an excellent cold brew spells good value to me.
Great to hear this tea was good cold. I have a 2014 spring yellow tea myself (from a Taobao seller) and am enjoying it, but I never though to ice a yellow tea!