EU TTB
I have never tried yabao before, so was excited to try it when I saw it in the box. This is such an interesting tea! The dry leaf is incredibly beautiful. It is made up of large, delicate looking buds and is probably one of the most beautiful teas I’ve come across. The scent of the dry leaf is complex, and surprised me. For such a delicate looking leaf it has a powerful scent! It starts off woodsy with a dominant pine aroma, with an earthy and surprisingly floral base. It has a hint of sweetness to the scent, too, and some spiciness comes out the more you inhale. In truth, there was a note I couldn’t quite identify, and I inhaled deeply several times to try to figure out what it was before I realised that I was just inhaling it because it smelled amazing. If they made this into a perfume, I swear I’d wear it.
Brewing, the scent is not so divine. It loses a lot of its complexity, keeping the base earthy hay and pine notes, which become a lot more pronounced. It actually smells similar to a burnt white tea, by which I mean it smells.similar to white teas I’ve brewed in the past at too high a temperature and ruined them. I actually panicked and thought I’d have to add some cold water when I first started to steep it, but KittyLovesTea has Included a generous sample in the box so I left it as it was, thinking I’d try again if I was wrong.
I’m glad I left it, because the liquor after steeping western style for two minutes was super pale and had very little flavour. I put the buds back in to steep for a further minute, which helped a lot. The liquor is now a pale creamy colour, perhaps just a touch lighter in appearance than most white teas I’ve tried. The flavour is also more pronounced, though still very delicate and I think it could take a longer brew. The subtlety of the flavour was surprising, based on how fragrant the dry leaf was, but nonetheless it is still very pleasant to drink. It has light hay notes followed by a slight smokiness I didn’t expect at all. I can also detect some delicate floral flavours – sometimes it’s as if it’s flavoured with Jasmine, and it is definitely a touch on the sweet side. No real spiciness that I detected in the scent is present in the flavour, but it finishes with a lingering vegetal, almost green bean-like note, though unlike a vegetal green tea, which is actually very pleasant. There are still some notes which I can’t quite place, and I would like to know more about this tea, so I have a feeling that this may end up being one I keep a hold of.
