43 Tasting Notes

88

My first Bulang. Very enjoyable aroma: smoke, leather, spices, ripe fruits and something herbal/camphor. The camphor is very subtle and merges well with the other elements without being overpowering. I find this tea very solid and balanced, the qi is strong and gave me a grounding feeling. No tension, no faster heartbeat. I felt comfortably high and unfocused. The aftertaste is medium strong, with wood and spices. As the session goes on it gets more herbal, pungent with some vanilla. Bitterness and astringency are never off-putting.

Preparation
5 g 3 OZ / 75 ML

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The 7g mini cake is very dry looking and unusually powdery, I think there’s something wrong here.
After a rinse it crumbles and opens quickly revealing loads of tea particles, powder and tiny fragments of leaves. The first step is cloudy, fruity, with dominating astringency and bitterness. Peach aroma. I immediately get a stimulating and unnerving feeling, plus some mental slowness.
the second flash steep is dark orange, cloudy and overwhelmingly bitter. Undrinkable. I remove some leaves from the gaiwan, and I throw the second steep down the sink.
Actually I don’t feel like keep drinking this, now is basically a brownish tea paste. Taste and aroma are harsh and confused. Disgusting.
I’d like to try the real thing one day.

Preparation
Boiling 7 g 3 OZ / 100 ML
mrmopar

Minis just don’t have the quality of a full pressed cake. I rarely brew them myself.

Tea_Ass

Good to know! This one was especially dry and powdery in a way I’ve never seen before.

mrmopar

I keep all my minis in the open only in case of dire emergency stash. I have enough other stuff here for a few lifetimes though.

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83
drank 2021 Bosch by white2tea
43 tasting notes

The hot leaves smell like sweet apricot/mango/tropical. Intense. As they cool I get more mushrooms.

1
Full, sweet and unripe. Very fruity. Intense. Wet leaves give me almost an alcoholic feeling.

2
Wet leaves: more hay and mushrooms. Good astringency and increased spiciness. Delicate huigan. White grapes. My head starts to slow down.
For now this reminds me of “boundless 2020 by EOT”.
Something tells me this tea needs to rest and mature a bit.

3
Sweet mushrooms aroma, then parfume/apricot as the leaves cool down.
Liquor is very sweet, slightly Cooling. A lot of unripe grapes. A sort of parfumey quality.
Not so intense. Delicate but persistent huigan. Mind numbness.

4
Aroma: strong apricot/perfume. Mushroomness is gone.
Liquor evolved showing different qualities: thicker body and very intense. More astringent and spicy. Drying. Strong fruity huigan in the throat and back of the month.

5
Aroma: peach, fermentation, flowers.
Swallowing the liquor gives me an interesting feedback.
Sweetness astringency and bitterness are all well integrated. It’s a bit drying and feels rough in the throat.

6
Spicy mushrooms are back. It’s interesting how the aroma keeps changing.
I feel nervous and stoned at the same time.
Melted ice fruity sweet pepper spicyness. Still going strong.

7
Now I’m picking up more honey.
Starting to lose intensity and introducing a more sharp astringency.
I feel a strong tension in my chest.

8
1 minute infusion.
A new sourness appears. Everything feels sharper.
I may have to stop as my anxiety is getting worse.

9
Much stronger honey. Milder and honeyed liquor.

10
Mild sweet honey.

11 12
The tea is still strong, but his character changed completely from the beginning. Mushroom-honey soup.

UPDATE 6 MONTHS LATER
The tea has changed a lot, and I find it very good. Flavours and aromas feel wild and keep changing all the time. The Qi is strong and relaxing. A lot of attention goes to the interesting mouthfeel and aftertaste.

Preparation
Boiling 4 g 2 OZ / 60 ML

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73

Beetroots. Mold. Mushrooms. Damp soil.
Bittersweet, spicy/dry finish. Interesting for sure, however I don’t see so much complexity and I’m not a big fan of this flavours. It brings to my mind images of Slovenian forests, dark and wet, with a rusticity difficult to describe. I think “lack of humanity”, “bears and worms”, “grey sky”.
Mild alerting qi.

Preparation
Boiling 5 g 3 OZ / 75 ML

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79

Many Shu I tried felt too “hollow” but this one has a real soul. It’s rich and bitter in a good way. Digestive. Strong presence, long lasting aftertaste. Very good durability. Not super complex. Maybe not a daily drinker. I can imagine drinking this after a heavy meal. Also powerful caffeine kick.

Flavors: Bitter, Bread, Cacao, Earth, Hazelnut, Walnut, Wood

Preparation
Boiling 5 g 3 OZ / 75 ML

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84
drank 2016 We Go High by white2tea
43 tasting notes

At first an intense aroma from the wet leaves: leather, wood, vanilla, dried fruits.
Then something more like clay… soil… fermentation… I don’t know.

The liquor is very tasty from the first steep. I immediately get a wobbling qi rising in my head from the back of my neck. My heart beats faster. My brain is slowly freezing. I sit still observing, and I stop taking notes.

Few hours later:
The tea is good. It gave me some kind of focused/stoned feeling, without making me nervous like other stuff does. This was a quite meditative tea session, strong teas like this demands attention. Flavours and aromas were good but not so defined or remarkable (I had just one session). The liquor was nicely thick with a medium-long aftertaste. There was some sharp bitterness but not overwhelming.
I stopped after 11 infusions, with a 3 minutes steeping. Taste was flatter and I was full. Did I miss something?

Preparation
5 g 3 OZ / 75 ML

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77
drank 2020 Big O V2 by white2tea
43 tasting notes

Very delicious savory aroma, almost like rosmary or some cooking herb. Very thick and sticky liquor. Good amount of bitterness.
Lingering citrusy aftertaste. Strong caffeine kick.
This is good but Saturday Mass is my favourite.

Preparation
7 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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78
drank 2019 Dangerfield by white2tea
43 tasting notes

The tea at the moment is 2 years old. The wet leaves smell like fruits, leather, light smoke, sour plums. Not very intense but I find it delicious.

1
Liquor: stewed vegetables, flowers. Medium thin body. Very delicate aftertaste. Heartbeat accelerates, something slows down and makes my head heavy.

2
Aroma: fruity/floral/dark chocolate. Now I’m thinking of black tea. The liquor is still thin, I get some chocolate feeling, spiciness and cooling/tingling aftertaste. My heart goes fast. My head feels pressurized. The rest of my body feels normal.

3
Black tea feeling, oxidation. Fruity-chocolate. Vegetal. Now the liquor is medium thick, sweeter and more satysfing. Leaves a butter sensation on the lips. Lingering dark chocolate aftertaste.

4 5
Stewed vegetables/chocolate/fruits/malt. Liquor has a pleasant astringency. Heartbeat is back to normal.

6
lighter, a beginning of bitterness.

After this I stopped taking notes. It was less interesting.
Generally speaking this tea doesn’t have the intensity of other more high end teas, it’s a more-than-nice daily drinker.

I found it to be very stimulating, maybe too much. Other people may get different effects. Also I guess it depends on the day, the mood, etc.

Edit: I tried this tea again with a stronger leaf/water ratio and it was a completely different experience. Flavours and huigan were much more intense and interesting.

Flavors: Fruity, Leather, Malt, Spicy, Vegetal

Preparation
5 g 3 OZ / 75 ML

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83

The scent of the wet leaves brings back memories from forgotten summer holidays. North eastern italian seaside. Maritime pine trees, sand. The small flat my grandparents used to rent. The liquor is sweet, full and holds the same mystery.

Then flowers, honey, cream, medicinal herbs. Spicy but polite. Good presence in the mouth. Delicate honey aftertaste. Feels different from puerh (it’s my first heicha).
I find it very enjoyable and comforting.

On the later infusions it gets dryer, floral and spicier. Raw potatoes. I like the aroma at this point but also I find it a bit heavy. Feels slightly stimulating and relaxing at the same time. I got around 8 infusions.

Edit 01/09/21
In the last few months the tea changed a lot, especially in the aroma department. Deep cherry/plum sweetness and floral/ancient furniture. All this elements combined remind me of cough syrup, in a good way. The body and taste tends to be thin, I have to push this tea a lot to extract the right intensity.

Flavors: Cream, Floral, Herbaceous, Honey, Spicy

Preparation
Boiling 7 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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71
drank 2017 Sunday Special by white2tea
43 tasting notes

First impressions:
Signs of aging in the aroma. Old furniture, vanilla, brown sugar. Plus Something bright like cola/cherries.

1
Texture is… slick. Taste very dry and woody, not much sweetness. Light aftertaste and semi rough texture in the back of the mouth. Caffeine.

2
Aroma gets some bakery notes. Yeasty. It’s also fruity in some way. I find it very pleasant.
Liquor is similar to 1 but with a subtle bitterness that makes it more interesting. Empty cup: cherries.

3
The aroma from the wet leaves gets a lemon like acidic note that makes my mouth water.
The liquor is not much changed and a bit weaker, I probably didn’t steep it long enough. A bit more cooling, woody aftertaste.

4 5
I do a 2 minutes infusion. Aroma stays similar. Liquor gets some “ginseng” notes and a nice bitterness. However it’s not so rich or satysfiyng. I may have to change water/steeping parameters.

Final thoughts:
I generally found this tea to be on the delicate side, and I felt like doing few long steepings.
The aroma is what I like the most. The actual drink is nice as well but I prefer more intense stuff, with more presence, complexity and aftertaste. Maybe I need to change the water/leaf ratio. Also it felt more stimulating then relaxing. Anyway I like it.

Preparation
Boiling 5 g 3 OZ / 75 ML

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