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I’m finally getting around to sampling this Sheng, from the September (Final) edition of the Reserve TOMC. I’ve been drinking this for a couple of hours. The leaf is beautiful, expertly separated off the cake to preserve each piece without breakage. The initial dry smell is a rich & creamy green aroma that I love. After a quick initial rinse, I steeped in rounds of 3, sipping from each cup separately.
The earliest cups were gentle & like freshly mown hay, sweet & green. The 2nd round was a little astringent.
In the third round a citrus taste came into play, but it was more in the after-taste than in the actual sip.
One thing I’ve learned about shengs is that it’s important not to write them of as ‘just another sheng’ at the beginning, because if I stick it out, the interesting flavors gradually rise to set one apart from another. With this one, it’s kind of a sweet-lime taste. My parents have a lime tree & they tend to leave limes on there for a long time. I mean, you can only use so much lime, right? So they pick one when they need it, & sometimes there is a new crop of limes & last year’s limes are also on the tree. They just keep getting a little juicier & sweeter, unless they are picked or fall off. So the flavor of this reminds me of those sweet limes, still waiting to be picked from months ago. The 4th & 5th rounds have a creamy texture, a lovely sweet taste, a nice tongue & brain tingle, & even a slight salty sprinkle in the after-the-after taste (4th round), as if teeny tiny geysers of sea water sprayed up out of my taste buds in celebration. Admittedly, I have a tea buzz, & this last cup of tea is like drinking ‘clarity’ itself.