The leaves in my sample are quite dark in color and broken up into fairly small pieces. The wet leaves strongly smells of apricot fruit, and the leaf itself has a slightly different fruity note, like a sour plum sort of smell.
It brews up as a deeper, golden yellow color. It has a very strong and forward body combined with an upfront bitterness that generally blends together well. The bitterness reappears in the aftertaste, though in this early steep, it’s an enjoyable bitterness. There is a little bit of fruit in the aftertaste as well, that quickly fleets by after you drink.
The second steep brings in a little bit more roundness to the flavor. There’s a smooth transition between a low sweetness to a medium body and bitterness up to the ever-so-slight fruity high notes.
Overall, this is a tea that plays quite low in its overall flavor profile. It has a unique sort of sharpness to it due to the way the high notes appear and disappear as an aftertaste, but overall, the main allure of this tea is the mouth filling bittersweet. This isn’t a beautiful, delicate tea, but you’ll definitely know it’s there when you drink it.
