white2tea

This brick’s virtues have been described a lot more eloquently than they will be here, but I thought I might as well corroborate. While I don’t quite share Hobbes’ level of enthusiasm for this thing, I think it’s a great deal, even with the rising price. The taste of the 5g I (very messily) liberated the brick of was consistent throughout all the steepings — dark wood, a little caramel, a slight cooling effect and a dark undercurrent of sweetness. It brews up a deep, visually pleasing orange and the leaves continued to yield quality tea for about 4 mugs. My only complaint flavorwise is that there is a bit of a sour aftertaste and not quite as much bitterness as I expected. My most substantial issue with this tea is that the qi isn’t very strong for the amount of caffeine present. This isn’t a huge gripe for something as cheap and as tasty as this, though.
Usual brewing methods, though I didn’t have to extend steep times for quite a while…

I was lucky enough to get a sample of this tea from a kind friend. Only my 2nd Naka puerh ever and so far they are consistently winners. The taste was wonderful and the feeling even more so. I drank this on Thursday while making art and it was like liquid inspiration! Sadly I did not steep the leaves all the way out in the first sitting, so I decided to try to save them to have again the next day and that did not work out very well for me. Lesson learned though. Next time I’ll just drink it all at once! No wasting Naka!!!!

https://hotleafjuicetea.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/white2tea-obsx-old-bush-shui-xian-wuyi-yancha-oolong/

I dug through my quickly growing selection of samples and picked out this neat OBSX oolong from White2Tea. I received this as a sample from the ever-knowledgeable TwoDog, of http://www.twodogteablog.com/ and http://www.white2tea.com/.

image(48)

TwoDog is quite the mysterious person, according to the other tea blogs I’ve read. He has appeared on a few blogs out there, but his face is covered in all of the photos I’ve seen. Suspicious! Perhaps he is secretly a famous actor or something. My bet is that TwoDog is actually Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. Or perhaps this explains what actually happened to 2Pac. He gave up the life of being a rap musician in order to write about tea and help people on reddit. 2Pac, 2Dog…it all makes sense.

Anyways, on to the tea.

Screen Shot 2015-04-04 at 12.04.01 PM

I was quite puzzled by the name “OBSX,” until I looked on White2Tea’s website and discovered that it was an acronym for Old Bush Shui Xian. That was good news, since I’m a big fan of shui xian style oolongs. I drink a lot of shui xian oolong, but this is the first time I’ve ever tried the “fancy stuff.”
Shui xian meats “narcissus,” referring to the flower that is often used in Greek mythology. I’m not sure what the connection is between narcissus and Chinese culture, but perhaps a reader out there can inform us.

This shui xian, like almost all shui xian style oolongs, comes from the Wuyi Mountains in northern Fujian Province, China.

Screen Shot 2015-04-04 at 12.05.11 PM

Here is Fujian Province, in case you were wondering. I bet you weren’t expecting a Chinese geography lesson.

Dry Leaf

This was quite a generous sample. The bag was packed full of leaves. It was actually 14g, so it looks like TwoDog was a bit heavy handed on the samples. I appreciate that! I used just shy of 9g for this taste test. I kept the rest for some grandpa style brewing later in the week.

image(47)

Whoa, these leaves are huge! They were long and thin, and super light. The 8.9g of dry leaves filled my rather large gaiwan all the way to the top. These leaves are very dark brown, perhaps even black.

Once I smelled these leaves, I knew I was in for a treat. The most notable smell is probably the roasted aroma that the leaves give off. They do not smell overly roasted at all. I would call this a medium roasted yancha, which is also how TwoDog describes this tea on his site. There is a very nice fruity aroma present, perhaps more on the dried fruit side of things. It’s very woody and sweet smelling as well.

Teaware

I used a standard gaiwan for this sample. Kinda boring, yet again. I should definitely switch up my teaware selections a bit more.

Brewed Tea

I gave this tea a quick one second rinse, and then moved on to the first steep.

image(49)

This first steep came out a lovely orange-red copper color.

image(50)

This tastes so complex and interesting that I honestly don’t know how to describe it. This shui xian is on a whole other level compared to other shui xians I have tasted. The sweet mineral taste that most yanchas have is certainly present, but the flavor is a lot more complex with this tea. There is a very strong floral note that I have never tasted in a shui xian yancha before. The fruity, woody taste is very strong and pleasant as well. I also taste a sort of roasted grain or bread kind of thing going on. I notice that flavor in a lot of yanchas, so maybe that is just how my palate works.

I also got the sense that this tea is a lot less roasted than most shui xians I’ve had. Although this shui xian is definitely roasted, it is not overly so. Many shui xians are very heavily roasted, presumably to cover up the taste of cheaper teas. These shui xian style teas are still enjoyable, but definitely more one-note that White2Tea’s offering.

The aroma was even more intriguing. This tea smells so much like cinnamon. This tea seriously smells like Big Red chewing gum. I haven’t seen any other reviews mention this aroma, so perhaps it is just the way this tea interacts with my particular senses. But for me, the cinnamon smell was so strong and obvious!

image(51)

By the third and fourth steep, the tea calmed down a bit. The strong spice flavors have died down and tea has settled into a pleasant fruity and mineral taste. The sweetness is definitely more present, and the tea leaves a very sweet aftertaste with no dryness.

image(52)
The spicy flavors returned for a bit of an encore in the sixth steep, completely out of nowhere.

image(54)

Finished Leaf

image(53)

To be honest, I kind of forgot to get a good finished leaf photo for this tea. Oh well, at least here you can see the leaves inside of my gaiwan. This was towards the end of the session, so the leaves were pretty finished by this point. The leaves were very large and leathery, and did not really expand much from their dried state.

Conclusion

This tea is without a doubt the best shui xian yancha I have tasted. I enjoyed this sample a lot. However, tea like this certainly comes at a price. At $35 for 50 grams, I don’t think tea will become a regular fixture for me. But I really could not say anything bad about this tea. It is definitely worth a shot if you are into this style of teas.

In short, this is a really superb oolong. If you are a bit less price sensitive than I am (college student!), I would highly recommend purchasing this tea.

http://www.white2tea.com/tea-shop/obsx-oolong-tea-old-bush-shui-xian/

About 2y ago, when I started daily drinking ripe puerh, the ‘gong-ting’ cakes were my favories. The are usually composed of the smallest leaves of all and not include any bigger leaves. This cake is composed only of gong-ting material. It is super good.

This morning I’ve used 7g for my 95ml gaiwan. It gave a really nice dark and creamy liquor. It still has a bit of bitterness and I would not call this a sweet ripe at all. Considering I don’t like sweet ripe, that is a good thing to me. The only thing I could say is that with all that time I’ve grown to love more bigger leaves ripe which are a little bit less one dimentional. This is by no mean a bad comment for this tea!

I’d recommend this tea to anyone that want to wet his feet in the world of ripe puerh! It is very good :D

Cheers

This tea is my all time favorite. Let’s see, first brewing parameters :
~6g of leaves in the W2T gaiwan which is 95ml! For timing, I usually go lighter
on the first 2-3 brew b/c of it’s storage taste and then go really heavy. This will
tend to yeild what espresso geeks call god shots by the 4th infusion and that for 3 more.
So something like this : Rinse, Rinse, Pause, 5s, 10s, 10s, 45s, 1m, 3m, 10m….

This morning, I was able to achive that godly taste, basically imagine milk texture, except
hot and with all this shou pu’erh godness!!! I am completly biased on that tea, sorry :D

This is also the first tea since I started drinking pu’erh that I’ve actually re-bought in
larger quantity! I have 2 cakes comming my way and I’m about halfway done with my
first one.

This is, to my taste, the pinacle of shou puerh :) BTW, anyone who despise wet stored tea
should stay away as it has quite a bit of humidity in the first steeping which I like because
it seem to help the flavors even better

AWESOME TEA basically!

This is my… counts.. second sheng? Third, maybe? I found it to be really astringent.. But talking to Phi and Veck, they let me know that my temp was too low, so I’d really like to try this one again.. I’m still a super pu noob, so I have lots to learn!

The only thing I can thing while sipping this is :
“BULANG HIT ME, HIT ME HARD!!!!”

I love bitter tea, especially shengs… So I actually overbrew this one and it taste soo soo soo good!!! Used 6g of leaves in a 95ml gaiwan, with nice and agitated brewing at rolling boil… give a thick, astringent, bitter tea… It’s delicious :) Leave a nice mought feel… Tea to be enjoyed SLOWLY, watching all the after-effect of that kind of powerful tea!!!

This tea is most definitvely on my to re-buy at some point :D
Cheers

First review on steepster, let’s try this out!

This is a really nice well priced shu. For a ’98 tea, it feels like it was dry stored for most
of his life. This is not a bad nor a good thing to me because I actually love humid stored
tea! :D

As to parameters : 6g in 95ml gaiwan, 2 rinses and then 30s/10s/15s/….
I got 8 interesting infusion out of this! As to taste, it taste like a well
matured shou puerh! Earthy and nice!

My first note got eaten by Steepster…:(

This shou is friggin’ awesome, and I believe I got the parameters down perfect. I aired out this shou for six months. My tea pals can tell you how long it took me to learn that aged offerings need airing!! I’ve learned that the aged teas from white2tea require this kind of patience but to trust TwoDog on his choices, if it ain’t good then I didn’t air it long enough or I didn’t brew it right. The longer an aged tea has been stored in China, the longer it really needs to rest and air out after arriving to really be the best.

I brewed up this 20 g melon in 180 ml Zhuni clay teapot to let it expand but then I used about half the water! So about 100 ml water after doing four rinses. The lump of shou sticks up above the water line. I’m on day 3 STILL flash brewing past 15 steeps. Smells earthy in the pot but the taste is the reward, mushrooms, dates, cherries, cacao, thick port wine flavored brown brew of goodness and double happy dance. Brew it thick and thicker with less water, this tuo is 20 g for a reason and the makers knew what they were doing when they made these! Oh yeahhhhh….

Really nice oolong – complex and the flavors change with each infusion! I got woodsy, cherry, butter, mineral and roasted barley. The cherry is a really tasty aftertaste! The oolong gets nice and sweet, with no dryness. The leaf on this tea is huge too!

Full review on Oolong Owl feat. Hellhoot http://oolongowl.com/march-white2tea-club-tea-review/

Dry – Aged floral bitterness, wood with sweetness, very faint dried fruits, some medicinal notes, raisins, tamarind shell.

Wet – Aged/slightly decayed wood but with a deep sweet fruit background, rich like dried dark fruits (raisins, dates, figs), dark sweet notes (molasses, caramel — the sweetness that inherently has a bitterness to it).

Liquor – Amber to reddish amber (Aromatic of dried fruits and bittersweet notes)

1st 3secs – Bittersweet woody and fruity, some bittersweet notes that resemble a very gentle tamarind with some shell pieces up front. It feels rather thick and as it goes down it is smooth and maintains the thick and rich notes with the same bittersweet-floral and woody note from the start.

2nd 3secs – Bittersweet floral/fruity and wood front that still somewhat resembles mellow tamarind(shell) to me which transfers to a richer/thicker body and notes and a lingering mouthwatering sensation. If well slurped it is more bitter up the front in a very pleasant and huigan enhancing way.

3rd 3secs – Bittersweet floral/fruity, woody front that transitions into the rich woody sweetness that resembles dried fruits such as raisins with a slightly herbaceous sweetness appearing as it washes down. Gentle camphor present.

4th 4secs – Bitter woody that becomes bittersweet woody with floral notes and a dried fruit background. As it goes down, it is still very smooth with apparent bitterness, combined with the rich dried fruit notes and hints of molasses.

5th 6secs – Bittersweet, wood, floral notes with apparent fruit background, the fruit and wood notes still combined continue to resemble a mellow/gentle tamarind note, it is almost an acidic fruit note. As it goes down, the liquor is very smooth with only minor astringency after it has completely washed down.

6th 7secs – Very similar to most previous steeps, some more astringecy seems to chime in, but still has that thick and rich body with plenty of that bitter to bittersweet note that keeps reminding me of a gentle tamaring note. The liquor continues to be aromatic.

7th 9 secs – Bitterness and bittersweet notes, wood, floral and fruits notes reappear with more energy again. After the liquor goes down the bitterness lodged in the throat and the huigan is very pleasant.

8th 10 secs – This one was cleaner steep with a bit weaker bitterness, but still very pleasant overall, mostly sweeter.

9th 14 secs – This one appears faded again in the bitterness aspects but still wears similar notes. Time for bigger steep time adjustments.

10th 25secs – Second wind; the bitter and bittersweet notes returned with most of its previous profile, a bit more floral and juicy than the richer and filling body it had before.

11th 35secs – Richer again, bittersweet as opposed to the weaker flat bitterness with less wood and more fruit notes. A very pleasant and lasting/lingering huigan.

12th 45secs – Still holding up for the most part, you can tell this one still has a few more steeps in it.

13th 1min – Returned some of the initial notes of bittersweet, plenty of floral and fruit with some astringency present. Very smooth still, specially in the 13th steep, it has some faded rich notes.

14th 1min 30secs – Good bittersweet notes, floral, some fruit and again astringency.

Final Notes
Very infusable, I feel like it has a perfect balance between the wood/floral/fruit bitterness with sweetness ratio. It has plenty of aged notes together with ‘I can age more’ character. This is not a complex tea, I didn’t get changes along the steeps, maybe something being more up front at times than others. I liked it a lot but this is also the type of tea that takes me two days to get through, not only because of the how infusable it is, but because it can be a bit boring after the 6-8th steep of the same notes. I would still recommend it.

Preface I have had a lingering head cold nothing major but my nose and throat are dry which has a big impact on taste and smell obviously.

I got more of the herbal tonic flavor this time but still chasing its fragrance. When I peak inside the steaming gaiwan after the liquor has been poured I get light whiffs of pomegranate. Definitely a slightly sweet menghai profile with playful tannic astringency. The fragrance hints at red fruits so hopefully it’s foreshadowing flavors to come. I am not completely sold on it’s worth but did a blind buy based on those wiser and more experienced then myself, hopefully I will be proven wrong in due time.

Fairly confused

When the cake arrived I couldn’t help but smell it and I was greeted with a light plum-esque fruity sweetness, which I again smelled from the warmed leaves in a gaiwan. Unfortunately I never got to taste it through all the infusions. The liquor brewed up a clear yellow orange which I did not expect given it’s age. By comparison the white whale and yangpinhao brewed up deep murky red. Clarity is a term I see tossed around not sure what the supposed implications are but this tea had a clarity in every brew from the start that I usually only see at the end of a session when a tea is dyeing out. The only flavors I tasted where generic menghai county no aged flavor or plum sweetness I smelt. Other unique features were the teeth cleaning/coating effect almost like I just ate a salad of raw bitter greens.

Not experience enough to know the implications of the clarity or teeth coating but at the moment I won’t be drinking this tea any time soon which is a shame because I was hoping it would be drinkable as well as an investment.

Backlogging from over the weekend!

I got my new little Ru Kiln pot from White2Tea this weekend along with some samples that Cheri sent! https://instagram.com/p/0gyegXRh48/ Thanks again Cheri!

I drank the ChocoShou Saturday night and I really enjoyed it for an aged tea. I’m pretty picky about my older shou and this was a very enjoyable one. Tasted like sweet old library books. Will pick up a tin with the next group order for sure :)

Truly a step above

I didn’t have high hopes due to paul being primary a puer vendor. I also thought most shui xian cultivars were lower grade old bush or not. Short answer I was wrong, my faith in paul is reestablished. While yancha is not favorite tea or even oolong I do enjoy the flavor profile from time to time and this was a nice sunday treat.

-Scent
Enough jibber jabber, warmed gaiwan I threw the leaves in and took a whiff. I smelled a fruity sweet dried red fruit profile along with a minerally/roasted strong background.

- Taste
Super Complex and a real shapeshifter that progresses in a astonishing way. First I tasted sweet fruitiness coupled with a perfumy slightly floral almost reminded me of a yiwu profile but amped up sweetness. The sweet dried red fruit passed after a steep or two and gave way to a roasted rock taste. After a another two steeps the roast dissipated a all the remained was the shui xian leaf taste which amazed me because most shui xian I have had in the passed have been roast that predictably bled into mineral leaf taste where as this had a very complex fruitiness floral aspect that was layered on top. The sweetness I have experienced before in an da hong pao but even that tea didn’t have this kind of unique aroma layered on top. Even stranger I did a suicide steep (boiling water, half filled gaiwan, 10+ minute steep ) after I was thought the leaves were dead, and instead of a mouth puckering bitter astringent whiskey face I was greeted with a pure honey sweetness I had not even picked up on during my previous steeps?

-Thoughts
Not sure about the caffiene as my tolerance is back up but I can say I did get a pinch of energy that was overpowered by a sigh of calm numbing tea drunk. I am far from a yancha connoisseur so I will not be purchasing at the current price. I trust this price is fair for the quality of leaf outside of china but as far as my oolong consumption goes it would be like taking a designer clothes on a hiking trip. The layered nature of this tea would be wasted on myself as I rarely brew oolongs and on the rare occasion I do I tend to brew haphazardly throw it in a slow pouring yixing that would surely drown the complexity.

After reading countless stellar reviews of White2Tea’s curated selection of puerh teas and impeccable customer support, I had to place an order. The owner of White2Tea, known in the tea community as Two Dog, is arguably the most knowledge tea blogger on the Internet. You can read his work over at http://www.twodogteablog.com/ and http://www.white2tea.com/blog/. He is also very active in the r/tea and r/puer communities on reddit.

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 5.57.56 PM

White2Tea is based in Beijing, China and offers a very minimalist, “no bullshit” approach to selling puerh teas. Although White2Tea’s selection is smaller than some of its competitors, sometimes it is nice to select from a smaller amount of curated puerhs, rather than sift through hundreds and hundreds of random cakes. I also love all of White2Tea’s creative and adorable logos on their wrappers.

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 5.59.05 PM

This 2008 Often came as a sample with my order (White Whale!). Two Dog was very generous, giving me four different ten gram samples. The 2008 Often Tuo is White2Tea’s main budget offering, which is why I wanted to jump in and try it right away.

image(40)

Dry Leaf

I used almost the whole sample for my review, so this is a little bit more leaf than I would normally use. With that in mind, I brewed the tea with very quick infusions.

This tuo (nest shaped puerh) has quite an interesting composition. My 10g sample contained one large chunk and several smaller leaves. The tuo is pretty tightly compressed, just like most tuos. The leaves are on the larger side, and are a fantastic array of color. Some of the leaves are light straw colored, while others are dark gray. They gray colored leaves had beautiful gold and silver hairs on them. I was transfixed by the way that the light was bouncing off of the hairs. If you zoom in on this photo, you can see the hairs!

image(41)

The dry leaf is not overly fragrant. There is a slight hay or grassy smell to the leaves, but it’s nothing too strong. I detected a slight smoky note to the aroma of the dry leaf. Perhaps the most noticeable aroma coming off of these leaves is a sweet and earthy smell, which I really enjoyed.

Teaware

I used a standard gaiwan, nothing too exciting. I picked up this neat tea strainer and hand from Tea Drunk in New York City. I used a tea strainer like this in Taiwan once, and I have been looking for one in the US ever since. I finally found one! I showed off this tea strainer and hand to my friends, but they were a bit concerned about how happy it makes me.

image(39)

Brewed Tea

The aroma of this puerh really took off once I placed the leaves into the warm gaiwan. The fruity and smoky smells were intensified tenfold. Incredible! If I had to describe it, I would say it is very peachy and smoky…perhaps grilled peaches? Nah, that makes me sound like one of those wine snobs.

I opened up this tuo with two five second rinses.

image(45)

The first steep came out an interesting orange-yellow color. The color was definitely darker than I expected. This puerh has a very interesting flavor, with many of the characteristic sheng puerh flavor notes, but it is a bit more vegetal than most puerhs I’ve tasted. The first steep was quite astringent, even though I essentially poured the hot water in the gaiwan and then immediately poured it into my cha hai. I actually found this astringent character quite pleasant. This steep was also notably vegetal. Although the dry leaf smelled a bit smoky, there was no smoky flavor in the brewed tea.

image(46)

The mouthfeel was very slick and smooth, giving this tea a very pleasant juicy and thirst quenching quality.

The astringent and vegetal qualities of this tea combined quite well, combining to create an interesting flavor that I identified as green bell pepper, or perhaps celery. The aftertaste was notably sweet and very pleasant.

image(43)

The second steep was a similar color but tasted a bit less astringent. The next several steeps were very strong and powerful. This tea is definitely strong in the early steeps, as noted on the White2Tea website. Steeps five through eight calmed down quite a bit, although the strong vegetal qualities still came through.

image(44)

Finished Leaf

I steeped this tea in my gaiwan about ten times, and then threw the leaves into my tea mug and brewed the leaves “grandpa style” a few more times. The tuo definitely packs some power!

This tea gave an excellent cha qi. I felt super calm and relaxed after this gongfu session.

image(42)

These leaves were definitely on the larger side. The leaves were mostly light green or gray-green, but there were a few darker brown leaves thrown into the mix.

Conclusion

At $22.50 per 250 grams, the 2008 Often tuo is a solid daily drinker with a few years of aging. I would definitely consider buying this tuo again, and perhaps keep a few for aging and see how they taste in a few years. This tea is just beginning to calm down, and I would love to see how this reasonably priced tuo will develop in the future.

I would definitely recommend buying some teas from White2Tea. Two Dog is one of the most knowledgeable and helpful people in the specialty tea business. White2Tea offers a carefully selected and well-balanced selection of puerhs and oolongs at various price points. While some of the offerings are definitely a bit out of my price range, I am sure the quality is impeccable. Luckily, Two Dog also has plenty of teas that are quite reasonably priced.

This tuo was a solid introduction to White2Tea’s offerings, and I look forward to reviewing more of Two Dog’s teas in the coming weeks.

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dry – Old decayed wood house, musky tree, wood-bitterness, dried leafs.
Wet – Sweet, coffee like bitterness, musty decayed wet wood, molasses.

First few (1-3) steeps Have a sweet front but wear a very robust mustiness that can be either very pleasant if you like it or off putting if you don’t that develops pepper like woodiness and slight spicy astringency and woody bitterness. The final notes recover the sweetness with a refreshing camphor.

In the Middle (3-6) Here is where the real good stuff shows up with mostly the sweeter notes and maintaining most of its woody characteristics with out being unpleasantly musky or decayed wood-bitter. The sweetness has some thickness and the bitterness make it seem more like a molasses than sugary which is very nice and almost malty in some sense.

Final steeps The notes start getting weaker, but the sweetness shines more here; with most of the wood bitterness and musk notes gone the sweetness is more like a raw sugar than molasses like, it doesn’t hold much complexity but it is still satisfying.

FINAL NOTES
I like this one as an every day drink, the mini bricks have an undeniable musky, sometimes almost fishy scent that at least to me require a few days out of the container and a good two rinses to get rid of and even then the first 2-3 steeps will have plenty of it.

With all of that said, it becomes more and more pleasant in the middle steeps and flat sweet in the last few ones. I would recommend using the container for other teas and moving this ripe to a box or open container to get the best out of it.

Might as well at least add something short on this one. While the qi was very potent and goes a way toward redeeming this tea, I found it to have way more shu “funk” than I’m comfortable with. Maybe I’ll revisit it someday — it’s certainly cheap enough.

Lazy sunday

Received a sample in my mail and after yesterday’s young bulang chugging I figured I try the polar opposite today. I don’t have much experience with aged teas so take it for what it’s worth. The dry leaf originally smelled on old books (assuming that what storage smell is, or maybe humid storage?) and beet root. After a week or so of airing out the storage smell subsided and red beet smell came through.

-Smell
After two rinses , the gaiwan smelled of par boiled beets not quite raw but not quite sweet/cooked and at the end a slight spice that tickled my nose. I cautiously sipped the first flash steeping bracing for dust or storage taste but to my surprise, no unpleasant tastes to be found. As hinted by the smell, it was a pleasant tea soup that almost tasted like a borsch soup which immediately reminded me of lively polish wedding receptions. Obvious not saying the taste is identical but as with puer reference points are the only way to attempt to explain sensations.

-Taste
I tasted no storage what so ever just a pleasant beet root that later steeps showed an almost spiciness maybe cinnamon if I had to name one specific spice but in the way a taiwanese hong yue tastes “spicy”. The mid notes were a light sweetiness like a muddled wine(tempranillo profile) combined with a hint of red currant. As the description notes it is a soft, sweeter end of the puer spectrum but I wouldn’t agree with the floral description at least from my one session. In retrospect I could see “floral” being in the tail end of flavor but super prominent or even noticeable and not a upfront jasmine floral maybe the very light and playful dryness of rose. The feeling I received from this tea was clam and collected just like the flavor which made me almost drowsy hence the lazy sunday name unfortunately it is not sunday and I have a lot to get done today so not so welcome at this exact moment but no way off putting

-Thoughts
I really enjoyed this tea it was my first aged tea I enjoyed and while not super complex(a common theme with aged tea) it was far from one note. If I had to name one bad thing it was maybe that it was too thin not enough body but I only had one session if I upped the steeping time maybe it would result in a different outcome.

Just noticed none of my tasting/scent notes are even listed as options…

This is my second all time favorite,

I’ll do a lazy review, let me just say that all the buzz around this brick is real
I should have bought more when it was cheaper!!!

Dark leaves in the cake which offer some of the typical peat smell. Many whole leaves combined with bits and pieces of leaves and stems. The clear and bright tea soup is gold with a bit of orange tint and a light floral aroma. The taste is brisk with a little astringency. Astringency then sweetness emerge quickly in the sip – sweet fruity flavor which brings to mind thoughts of stone fruit (peach or plum?). These linger in the mouth and throat but notes of spice are added to give a nice punch to the aftertaste.

Overall this tea is fun to drink and it presents decent body from the first steep onward. Full mouth-feel. Sweet with the flavor of stone fruits and a lingering hint of spice. Palpable astringency with a sweet draw in the mouth. Decent durability – 8 rather interesting steeps with an appealing mix of flavors and sensations.

The gift of a sample from one who knew I had missed out on this one — Thank You!

Possibly the best shu that I have yet tasted: sweetly-smooth leather with distinctly-pleasant overtones of the sea (cod-fish?). The soup is a delightful sludge in the middle infusions. Prepared this western-style, as gong fu infusions are too weak.

First infusion – 5 g. per 8 oz water, boiling, 2:00 min.

Second infusion – 5 g. per 8 oz water, boiling, 2:00 min.

Third infusion – 5 g. per 8 oz water, boiling, 3:00 min.

Fourth infusion – 5 g. per 8 oz water, boiling, 3:00 min.

Fifth infusion — 5 g. per 8 oz water, boiling, 5:00 min.

Sixth infusion — 5 g. per 8 oz water, boiling, 10:00+ min.

I don’t think I could properly give this a rating. I was so disappointed by the way the meeting went that I could not remember enough to put a number to it. I hate to admit it, but all of the steepings were awful. The bitterness and astrincency were so prominent that not much else was trying to get through. We did discuss it’s potency and earthiness, we even agreed on the strong black coffee and tobacco notes. The other teas we tried went the same route. sigh.

http://miss-tea-rious.tumblr.com/post/113255134405/little-gold-melon-shu-tuocha