This is my first yellow tea from Thailand. Kudos to this vendor for finding cool and unusual teas to include in this calendar! The steeping instructions make me concerned that there will be a lot of astringency to mitigate. Following the vendor’s recommendations, I steeped 3 g of leaf in 150 ml of water using the following temperatures and times: 167F for 2 minutes, 175F for 1 minute, 195F for 2 minutes, and boiling water for 3 and 5 minutes.
The dry aroma is of banana, mango, and wood. The first steep has notes of wood and banana bread, followed by hints of mango, strawberry, and sharper berries. In the next steep, I get banana, mango, strawberry, and maybe grape aromas, while the flavour mainly consists of bread, wood, pine, and tannins. The tea has a herbaceous note as it cools. Steeps three and four offer notes of bread, malt, wood, grass, and herbs, with elusive hints of banana and strawberry and increasing astringency. The final steep is very faint, with notes of wood, minerals, and grass and no detectable fruit.
This yellow tea is very different from the Chinese yellow teas I’ve had, which all emphasize corn and beany notes. I enjoyed the fruity flavours, and I assume they would have been even stronger if I’d drank this tea closer to when it was picked. The thing that detracted from this tea the most for me was the barely-kept-in-check astringency and woodiness. Perhaps these qualities are due to this tea being from Assamica bushes. It was an interesting tea to try, but not one I’d repurchase.
Flavors: Astringent, Banana, Berries, Bread, Grapes, Grass, Herbaceous, Malt, Mango, Mineral, Pine, Strawberry, Tannin, Wood
It took me three tries to post this tasting note. I eventually posted the text and the parameters/flavour notes separately. Steepster’s not in a good mood today.
Glad to see that you found similar notes as I did a year ago. Have you considered my steeping paramaters or you followed vendor’s?
I followed the vendor’s very specific parameters. This is a tea that probably needs to be coddled.