Jin Jun Mei (2016)

1 tsp/2.5g (half the 5g sample) of leaf, 96 deg C water (just under boiling)

steep 1: 250 mL, 45 seconds
Medium amber colour, smells of malt, roasted chestnuts, raw cocoa
Tastes of very high grade black tea, sweet and thick mouth feel, flavours of buckwheat, cocoa, minerals

steep 1: 250 mL, 2 minutes
Slightly darker brew, stronger scent (smells of musty cocoa in a grandmother’s baking cupboard)
Flavour is similar but less reminescent of cocoa and more of a mineral (but not metallic) flavour, ground oats, roasted chestnuts

steep 3: 250 mL, 1 minute
The description of this tea lists it as savoury (steamed buns), spicy (ginger), and floral (vanilla, amaretto). I definitely see the amaretto connection, but wouldn’t describe the other tastes as accurate. It kind of has the mineral flavour of char, but it isn’t smokey (more like roasted). I find it difficult to describe the flavour without saying it tastes like a Wuyi black.

Steep 4: 250 mL, 1 minute
Amaretto, nutty, almond, toasted barley, bittersweet cocoa

Steep 5, 6, and 7: 150 mL, 2 minute
Nothing is really changing now. It’s a nice tea, but is best described as tasting like every other Wuyi black I’ve ever tasted. Later steeps are not as flavourful as the first few, but the prominent flavour changes.

starting off with a quick 5s wash. The smell is an absolutely wonderful mixture of honey, steamed buns, walnut, vanilla, and cocoa. The color looks of a ‘deep honey’.

I put about 4g of leaves in around 200 F water.

Infusion times were as follows: 7s, 9s, 12s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 1min30s, 3min

The first couple steeps keep a fulfilling steam bun, vanilla, and honey taste. The third steep had a slight ‘darker’, cocoa like hint to it. Later steeps headed towards being more mild in nature while keeping the steam bun, vanilla, honey trinity taste stable and upfront. Latest steeps get quite smooth and a little malty, but that depends on steep time.

Quite a pleasant tea whose flavour tastes the same as the tea smells. It is consistent throughout the session and is one of my go-to teas at the moment.

For the past couple of days, I have been rabidly digging through my sample hoard and polishing off some of the Verdant samples I have accumulated over the past several months. My most recent sipdown was this Jin Jun Mei. Part of Li Xiangxi’s collection, this tea was picked on May 9, 2016. It is one of several Jin Jun Mei variants currently offered as part of this collection. I found it to be an interesting take on the style.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 5 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 205 F water for 6 seconds. I followed this infusion up with 12 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, a sniff of the dry tea leaves revealed strong aromas of nuts, ginger, honey, and bready malt. After the rinse, the honey and ginger aromas intensified and were joined by a trace of vanilla bean. The first infusion produced a similar, though slightly more balanced aroma. In the mouth, I easily detected notes of malt, cream, honey, vanilla bean, ginger, and roasted nuts. Subsequent infusions saw the ginger aroma and flavor begin to fade and the nuttiness more fully emerge. At this point, I detected a complex of black walnut, hazelnut, and roasted almond notes. Later infusions were mild, smooth, and somewhat malty. I did not pick up on much of a mineral presence at all, which was more than somewhat surprising considering this is a Wuyi black tea.

I found this to be a nice Jin Jun Mei. I would have liked to see a little stronger of a honey presence and I would have preferred that the somewhat spicy ginger character stuck around longer, but this was still very enjoyable. Compared to some other teas of this type that I have tried, this one was drier, subtler, and more balanced. I could see this going over well with fans of traditional Chinese black teas or those looking for a balanced tea with some depth.