sophistre Send Message

Tea Guys. I know you guys. You’re all about your flavors and your blends, aren’t you? Why did I feel the need to order a straight bag of yunnan tea from you when there are other places that don’t make so many wacky blends that might have a better track record with tea that relies on nothing but its own leaves to succeed?

This tea seems to brew to a rich, dark reddish hue, which surprised me. It smelled exceptionally robust for a yunnan. I think I’ve gotten accustomed to yunnan jig and yunnan gold from Adagio, from my samplers. The latter even reminds me of their Fujian tea Golden Spring, which I drank no less than four cups of yesterday, and have grown really fond of.

This reminds me of no such thing. There’s a watery foundation that doesn’t seem to make sense beneath such a forceful scent and forward flavor, and as the tea has cooled there’s a bitter sharpness that emerges and leaves me with the impression of something faintly sour that lingers in the aftertaste. Against my better judgement, I’m going to toss out the remaining half of this cup and resteep, and see if that improves matters. I may have oversteeped by a minute on the first cup. What I really want, of course, is to tackle the rest of my samples and rinse this taste out of my mouth, but let’s give the tea the benefit of the doubt.

…

Okay, it’s better. It’s nothing to write home about, but better. I don’t know if the shorter steep time (on steep two? What the heck?) or second steeping overall were responsible, but at least it’s not SOUR. Maybe next time I’ll cut back the amount of tea in the first steep, too. I think this issue is 1/2 user error and 1/2 mediocre tea.

It’s not undrinkable, as a bottom line…it’s just nothing special. With milk, it’d wake me up. Then again? So would just about any black tea. I think I reserve the right to be more discriminating than that.

Edit: Last few sips of steep two had a nice, slightly smoky note worth mentioning.

Still pretty sure I wouldn’t order this again.