I’m a bit tired today, since I went to the Paul McCartney concert in Washington D. C. last night, but this tea did a lot to helping me get through the day. For those of you who like the Beetles, I highly recommend going to the concert if the tour comes to your city, it was a great experience.
I used my gaiwan and a fairly generous amount of leaf to brew the tea for 15 seconds. The fore-taste of this tea is a rather muted chocolate/malt flavor, which is very well-balanced between savory and sweet. The flavor transitions into a muted caramel in the middle, before lingering on the roof of the mouth with an interesting flavor that is a bit like a Wuyi, but also very Malty. David at Verdant says that this is the flavor of a good scotch, but I’m not familiar with the beverage, so I’ll just have to take his word for it. Another interesting aspect of this tea is that it’s not quite like any other Oolong I’ve had. The unique flavor of the leaves creates something new, and it can certainly be considered a successful experiment.
The second cup was very different from the first. For one, the tea steeped very quickly, and I decided to only let it sit for 5 second. Another difference s that the tea actually tasted sweeter now. It has this fantastic sweet flavor that is very similar to the flavor profile of the Laoshan green tea when properly brewed, but it is tempered by the chocolate and caramel notes introduced by the roasting process. The aftertaste remains mostly the same, but the phenomenal development of this tea is still my main comment for this cup. This is honestly turning out even better than I expected.
Third cup, near-boiling water for 5 seconds. This cut is almost the same is the previous cup, but the flavor is a bit sweeter and the aftertaste is changing from the malty/scotch flavor I described in the first tasting session to something more like a Wuyi mineral/metallic smoothness. There is a bit of sensation associated with this new aftertaste that is a bit like when you put some sort of metal in your mouth and you get that interesting tingling feeling, but it’s not that prominent especially compared to the smoothness of the tea. Also, there is a bit of cinnamon sneaking into the flavor profile. Another series of interesting developments from an already interesting tea.
