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An oldie in a bag with hand-written instructions that I followed: 2 tsp, 185F, 2min. This tea served as a single calibration point for how Nepali teas age. The lone review of this tea is from 4 years ago.

The “zesty taste of orange blossoms” is definitely still there along with a sad perfumey taste. The tea body is light and has a fun, tannic astringency. The base tastes seem to have evaporated. I’m left with hints of wood and malt weaving through the wateriness. Love me some Nepali teas and I’m sure I would have bought this fresh.

Autumn harvest from a state protected forest in the Yiwu mountains.

The sample I have is from just outside the beenghole and has a moderate to tight compression. It smells sweet and cool like an alpine forest with a strong note of baked stonefruits and raisins. The warmed leaf is intensely sweet, same baked stonefruits and now I pick up cherry. A cool undercurrent lies beneath. I gave a rinse and let the leaf steam for several minutes to loosen the compression. Notes of apricot, forest floor, cinnnamon, menthol, pungent herbs and a hint of smoke present. The rinse color is a glowing harvest gold.

The taste is initially somewhat alkaline bitter, umami and nutty, buttery stonefruits with some restrained sweetness. It’s very smooth and round, heavy and light at the same time. Pure osmanthus aftertaste. A cooling sensation grows from a vague feeling in the chest upward along the whole throat and into the mouth. I sit. A wave of sleepiness washes over me. My note for the second steep says only ‘subdued strength.’ I lie down. I can feel the energy in my teeth, electric chatter. My senses are heightened and I’m picking up things I normally wouldn’t, unlike some sheng that seem to gently mute my perception. Can’t describe the feeling well but it feels like coming down from a day trip. I fall asleep mid-afternoon, a bit after the second steep.

The next day, the liquor is like broth, a tone of honeyed apricot juice mixed with walnuts and tobacco, slightly metallic. This character, along with a drying and strong violet aftertaste and returning sweetness, persists throughout the remaining infusions, fading gradually. The spent leaf reveals some of the fattest stems I’ve ever seen.

The tea speaks for itself and is more complex than I can convey. I hope to provide a more comprehensive note next time. Recommended to the experienced. I don’t think a person new to sheng would fully grasp what’s going on here, much like myself. However! that doesn’t mean that only experienced drinkers would gain great satisfaction from these leaves.

Wildflower meadow dry leaf. The heated leaf smelled like a warm, rich spice bread studded with dried sour cherries and drizzled with a thinned caramel. There was also a cleanliness to that aroma. Rinsed leaf smells like antique wood and aged florals.

Let’s talk about the mouthfeel first. Amazing! Thicker than oil — very pectic. Silky smooth, lubricated the whole mouth. Cooling, only lightly drying. Later developed an acidic-enzymatic feeling like unripe pineapple but still managed to retain that special thick body until I called it quits. The longevity of this tea is impressive. I steeped it over the course of 3 days. The only other sheng that I’ve had such accomplished longevity with was Last Thoughts.

This tea is exceptionally clean. I remember it being sweet but didn’t note it as such; more an impression of sweetness. Light caramel-brown sugar flavor, custard-ish, dry grass, green grape skin, high mineral content turned into a bright-toned brew like apricot and the same unripe pineapple that influenced the mouthfeel. Trace bitterness. The second day, this tea was a fantastic cleansing accompaniment to homemade cardamom-heavy pumpkin pie. Fast-moving tannins. I didn’t notice a returning sweetness until this day. The third day, the leaf steeped out still viscous and cooling with lingering fruity and floral flavors.

In terms of body feel and effects, I became very warm and comfortable with the second steep. My vision developed an orange hue, which sometimes happens to me with shou. By the third steep, a spicy burn developed in my ears and the cooling mouthfeel exposed itself as eucalyptus-like in my chest. With the fourth steep, I was so lost in the way this tea was effecting my perception. Get ready for woowoo. I felt menthol in my spine, moving up and sitting in my cerebellum before creeping up and and spreading across the crown of my head, like the unfolded lotus representation of the crown chakra. I lost sense of time in a most natural way. Nothing about this tea made me uncomfortable. It was like a mother’s love as she cradles her babe. Sleep came easily. (Results may vary!)

This was a delight of a sheng and one that relies heavily on mouthfeel. While the tea lacks a bit in the aftertaste and also in some grounding tones, it never takes off too high either. If you want to explore just how naturally thick and smooth a teenage sheng can be, I’d highly recommend getting a sample. The price is right. I have no idea how something like this would age, but it seems to be doing just fine in my 2 years of storage. Tea Urchin has fantastic teas and sadly they don’t seem to get much recognition around here.

Smells and tastes like some autumn-themed Yankee Candle in the best of ways. Really. I’m getting a major hit of chamomile in the form of apple, not in the pollen-sweet way and certainly not dusty. Mildly sweet, plenty of cardamom, which in the case of cardamom means there is probably only a sprinkling. Then I notice the warm spiciness and slight drying of woody cinnamon and ginger. The appley taste brightens up in the back of the mouth becoming tart, where it morphs into what I’m guessing is the pumpkin spice flavoring? Some grounding sweet cocoa taste lingers in the aftertaste. Then a bit later comes the returning sweetness of a lightly bitey honeybush in the throat. And lastly, the marshmallow root gives a touch of body. This is blended very well. Smooth flavors! And it can’t be oversteeped! What more could you ask for before bedding down?

The normal low 80s of this week will give way on Sunday to 5 or 6 days of 90s and 100s. At least it will still be in the 50s at night, so this herbal tea will remain in rotation.

Book pairing: The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

When I open the bag, I get hit in the face with wintergreen but it’s nonexistent in taste. It’s mostly autumn leaf and mineral with honey sweetness and florality that are muted, a hint of malt. Can’t place the flower — it almost reminds me of baby powder, maybe gardenia past its prime? Flamboyant this tea is not. It would be good when I’m in the mood for an understated brew. Regardless of its lack of overt character, this makes a fine autumn cup. I’ll have to come back to this one, and I will because I have a whole cake, haha. Stuff the tiny teapot and see what it has to offer. It seems ashmanra had some success 9 months ago.

A White Antlers tea, many thanks!

I wanted to pass this one around so I kept enough for only two western sessions. My experience, albeit limited, says Black Lily begs to be leafed heavy. The long and wiry dry leaf doesn’t exactly conform to spoon measurement.

My best cup of the two was 1g:75mL western. Aroma like raspberries and other berries, orchid, apricot, orange. Smooth and tangy, mineral and very clean, elusively creamy and thick. The flavors were difficult to pin but the main notes I picked up were apple, delicate honey, soft sweet cinnamon maybe allspice?, oats, berries, raisins, wood and orchid, apricot-orange tone, and a brown sugar returning sweetness. Finished bright and clean.

A fantastic profile for autumn that I think would appeal to all seasons of sippers looking for such.

Organic Colombian black tea with cacao husks and nibs brought to my tea table by White Antlers. My first knowing taste of Colombian tea! All I drank in Colombia was coffee… very good coffee.

Dry, the blend smells of cocoa butter and raisin-tobacco. The steeping time range given by Upton says 4-6 minutes; I was aiming for 4 but ended up at 6. The liquor is a dark amber-red color with a chocolate aroma filled out by a complex fruity midtone.

The liquor is very full-bodied, very fruity taste almost like cherry-orange-raisin and tobacco with some rose. The influence of the cacao isn’t so evident but I feel it provides some grounding to the fruity brightness and a unique sweetness to the tea. In general, the flavors beyond the fruitiness are subtle and in a good way. The same fruit taste lingers with wood in the aftertaste.

There is some neat, seamless texture transition going on. It starts like a thick ball on the sip to midmouth where it turns brisk, finally leaving the palate clean and tingly with oily lubrication.

One thing that threw me was sometimes a soapy taste. It could have been the result of the oils in the cacao going rancid but I think this is a relatively fresh tea. Or maybe the temperature was too high and steep time too long. Regardless, I wish I didn’t save only a sample of this approachable tea for myself before dispersing the rest of the bag across the world.

Song pairing: Queens of the Stone Age — Mosquito Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiLsvRSU5H8

Spring 2019 harvest.

Dry leaf has a wild look, large dark and craggly leaves interspersed with gold to beige glimmers of fuzzy leaf. They smell of wet grain, specifically malted barley mash for sippers with beer-brewing experience. Warmed leaf smells of Grape Nuts cereal, molasses, black cherry and wood with rose and orchid florality. The steeped leaf reveals the heavy red oxidation.

Western steeps can be adjusted to create a slightly different flavor profile and body. Brewed with the recommended parameters (I think it was a half tablespoon to 8oz boiling, 3/5 minutes), I found the flavors and body rather mild and unobtrusive with smooth notes of brown bread, molasses and a hint of cherry. Using 1g:100mL made a full-bodied brew with a similar, though more pronounced taste. Cherry wood-malt aroma.

Gongfu brewing was honestly a waste. Some fruitier notes popped out in the first steep like passionfruit-mango. It quickly developed a brisk and tannic-bitter quality which it retained through another 5 infusions.

This tea did have the trademark cherry taste which I’ve experienced in every Thai oolong I’ve tried (which isn’t many). I’d call this an above average daily drinker black tea; it did lack what I would consider ‘gushu’ qualities, at least in comparison to Chinese teas. Whether that’s due to the leaf not coming from ‘ancient’ trees, the processing, or my relative lack of familiarity with Thai terroir, I’m not sure.

My taste for citrus seems different than most people here. I adore grapefruit, either a straight pink or a yellow, no sugar please. Ruby reds are too sweet for me. Following grapefruit, I have a deep love for yuzu and its incredible taste and fragrance. Any Japanese dish with a yuzu sauce is an automatic selection. Yuzu hot sauce from Trader Joe’s is all I need to top some steamed dumplings. Meyer lemons, highly floral sweet limes and sumo tangerines round out the top five of my citrus love-list.

This sachet tea from Rishi has all kinds of ingredients I enjoy, like well, grapefruit, yuzu, lime, green tea and matcha, ginger, quince, rosemary, black pepper and coriander. Literally every ingredient in this blend I adore the taste of on its own. And I get the feeling that if the damn ginger didn’t overpower everything, it would be sublime.

I tried brewing these sachets with varying steep times and could never get past the earthy, spicy! ginger. The tastes underneath would change, yes, sometimes one of the citrus fruits would be highlighted, or the black pepper, but I could never get this tea to perform reliably. The ginger spice actually upset my stomach in the morning. It did work okay as an after lunch brew. Overall — kind of a let down.

Next in my exploration of Yiwu sheng is Windfall, a sample kindly sent by Bitterleaf Teas with an order.

Dry leaf was sweet plums with a hint of bitter-smoke and vegetation. Warmed aroma was of baked red and yellow plums. Rinse provides wet vegetation, forest floor, antique wood and aged florals.

First steep was viscous, mellow. I was reminded of 2016 Last Thoughts from White2Tea in many ways. Beyond that, the liquor was mouth-watering, metallic-brassy. Lingering cooked plum aftertaste. Body warm, sinking.

Second steep was a mishap and was very bitter, thick and oily. Bright tobacco, plummy caramel aftertaste. Clean feeling in the back of the mouth. I’m hot!

As the third steep went down, the texture turned fluffy — marshmallow fluff — a food abomination but good in this context. A plummy caramel taste traveled down the throat as bitterness concurrently rose from the depths.

I did a fourth steep and felt the tea to be very bitter and astringent in an unpleasant way. Any similarity to Last Thoughts vanished. Metallic with a heavy sweetness. The tea left me feeling very out of balance so I let the leaves air dry for consumption the following day but never got around to it. Nor any day this week. The dried leaves smell lovely and look pretty sitting in a tea cup but the desire to have a continuation of the session wanes more every day.

Maybe the abrasive, unbalanced power will age into something pleasant. For drinking young, notsomuch.