Liquid Proust Send Message

With only two YQH samples, I have been very picky on when I’ll use them. Today was beautiful outside and I just got the 6th book of the new printing of Master Keaton in the mail: https://www.instagram.com/p/BC_UbhwRYLN/
That made me go to my box of ‘this is the expensive tea samples’ with intentions to have a wonderful afternoon. The leaf looked rather dark with clear signs of age on it which excited me. Brewing this was pretty easy as the leaf opened on the second steep, however my findings are more negative than positive. This is not a raw pu’erh for me nor for others who like the lighter teas. If I would have blindly tried this tea, I would have given up at steep three as the first two were really hard to sip down. Very strong notes of leather and tobacco come out from this tea with an underlining sweetness similar to a raisin (not taste, but that small sweetness) and a nice mouth feel. While there is no bitterness to the taste, the texture that the liquid leaves behind has the similar feeling as that of a smoked tea where your mouth feels like it is being dried a bit even though your mouth feels like it is being dried a bit even though you just drank a liquid.
Well, since I did not blindly taste this and knowing what it was, I continued to brew this out. At least the tea was consistent for me in regards to all the mentioned taste. Continuous leather mixed with tobacco and a diminishing undertone of sweetness that gave it an attribute that I liked, I just can’t see myself wanting any more of this.
Now that I have finished my 12 steep session, I have decided to go check the price because in my head YQH means $$$. It looks like this tea is $.48 a gram which I wouldn’t consider a really high price as I associate with YQH. As usual, I read nothing of this tea before drinking it because I want my own thoughts to bring forward my tasting notes; it looks like this is noted to be stronger than its mellow cousins per the description which would have already made me realize it wouldn’t be one for me.
Going through the YQH and knowing my preference, it looks like I have two I’ll be looking at: 2004 Dingji Yesheng because yesheng is tied for my favorite with bang dong and the 2004 Jinhao Chawang.