Mei Jia Wu Long Jing
2020 Spring
Tea Urchin
3.4g, 250mL, 185f Brita filtered water
dry leaves smell fairly toasty
aroma in warmed gongdaobei (which I am using to brew because my highball glass shattered and I can’t gongfu a green well to save my life) is a tart fruity and also has a dimension eerily similar to artificial matcha flavored snacks
smell of the first brew has a slight floral hint. This brew is a nice light yellow, which is apparently a quality to look for in LJ.
2min 15s: vegetal with a hint of astringency and bitterness that fades into a sweet aftertaste, which unfortunately doesn’t last all too long, and ends leaving the mouth a little dry. Aftertaste definitely doesn’t compare to Tea Drunk’s 2018 LJ I tried earlier this year, even though this is supposed to be 2 years younger, and therefore fresher. Caveat is that this is very much on the cheaper end for LJ, and Tea Drunk is on the insane end. sure TD is true XiHu whatever, whatever. Nonetheless, I do think there’s better things to get if you’ve got the money for TD (not that my opinion matters on this, if you have the money, you can do whatever you want lol).
Later infusions are a bit sweeter, but lose aftertaste. not much else to add here. I’ll admit that I only purchased this since I was ordering a cake from Tea Urchin and I thought I might as well just spend what I’d have spent on the undiscounted cake trying out some of this. Overall, this wasn’t too exciting for what’s offered, even at the discounted price of $5 for 15g (or in my case, multiply that a few extra times). I’ll drink through rest of my order, but this was a gamble that I wish I’d spent on trying out extra puer samples from TU’s collection instead.
