I first tasted a sample of this tea and decided to get a cake. The dry tea smells of leather, sweet smell of caramel from the wet leaves. The leaf grade is small and the material looks good.
Strong notes of dark chocolate and walnuts. Hints of coffee and cardamom. Sweet and with a pleasant bitterness, very smooth and easy on the stomach. This is a lightly fermented, easy drinker. Very little fermentation flavor for such a young tea. The aftertaste is not overly strong but very pleasant and lingers for a long time. Keeps going for more than 10 steeps and lands softly rather than collapsing. It takes a few steeps for the tea to get going (or you can do two rinses and let it sit a while).
At this price point you are of course not going to get super-complexity and cha qi coming out your ears, but that said, this tea punches above its weight. It’s a gentle drinker rather than a punchy show-stopper but a very pleasant tea. My rating of 90 is relative to the price point, not absolute.
I bought this tea from www.yunnancraft.com and have not seen it anywhere else. I brewed it for 12+ steeps, 11 g in 100 ml and boiling water.
Flavors: Caramel, Dark Chocolate, Walnut
