2015 EoT Yiwu San Jia Zhai

This tea seems pretty classic Yiwu, albeit a high quality example thereof and more changeable than I expected. Throughout the session I had with it today, it kept a noticeable honey aroma and maintained a decent thickness. Oddly, the tea started lighter in flavor than it ended, beginning with predominantly sharp notes amid background sweetness, but developing an almost juicy fruitiness in the last several steeps after a brief citric period. The mouth activity was pretty solid on this; the aftertaste lingers and a few steeps towards the end had a genuinely cooling finish. Other than a little bit of head feeling, I didn’t notice much actual qi on this; mostly just some uncomfortable jitteriness early on from a fairly strong caffeine presence (I overdosed on caffeine some yesterday, and some of this may have been aftershocks).

This was the latter half of a sample I’ve had around for a good seven months. I ended more impressed with this tea than I started, but I’m not totally sure how I’d rate it; ideally, I’d really want to play around more with it. As it is, I’ve got a lot of tea sitting around, and I’m not enough of a Yiwu fanboy to pay the asking price at this point. That said, if you consider yourself a stronger fan of the genre than I, it’s definitely at least worth a look.

Another sample out of the Puerh TTB here. This is one of the few teas I’ve tried from Essence of Tea – for some reason they just haven’t really been on my radar as far as puerh orders go yet. The leaf had a nice straw aroma, along with some fruitiness and sugar once I rinsed it.

The tea started out with some bitterness in the first four steeps, along with a pretty mouth drying effect. I tasted straw and a fruity finish, sort of apricot, but more the rind than the fruit. That fruitiness started to move more into a pineapple area around steep 4, but not as acidic as pineapple would be.

Steeps 5-8 were mostly just soft straw sweetness. The fruity notes were almost gone in the finish. 9-12 got a bit of a new sweet finish, slightly burnt sugar along with the straw notes. The tea was noticeably drying for the whole session – people who don’t like the mouth drying feeling might not be into this one. I’m really not a huge fan of it usually, but it didn’t detract too much in this instance. At this point in the session, I was feeling a decent amount of qi. Decently powerful, almost jittery.

The tea went on for another 4 or so steeps, getting progressively weaker – still mostly just sweet straw with a drying mouthfeel. This tea was pretty good, but will probably be better in a few years. It probably has decent potential for developing into a really good tea down the road.

So… catch 20/20 here… this was in the TTB so I should review it, but it was so ‘eh’ that I have had nothing to say for the last week about it. I thought to myself, ‘just let it pass and don’t review’ but then I realized I got to do what I got to do.

With so many different sheng out there and what not, and being that I’ve had a ton: Either this is something that isn’t very noteworthy or it needs time?

From the Puer TTB 4

This is a pretty light sheng. The taste is very clean, with a gentle fruity sweetness. I got around 9 steepings, with the final ones being a touch dry, giving a squeaky clean mouth feel, with notes of steamed grass. A good sheng for someone who likes whites, greens, and delicate young shengs.

I didn’t get much cha qi, actually this one made me sleepy, haha!

Taste started out soft, sweet and fruity (not quite apricot, but close) with a good finish. My whole body is feeling the cha qi. Decent body: I’m feeling some thickness on the tongue. I’m noticing a bit of acid under the flavor, and a bit of what I think is smoke riding on top of the fruit. Very interesting.

The 3rd and 4th steeps were balanced between sweet and bitter. Flavor is more woody than fruity, though I see hints of fruit. Still lots of cha qi. I reduced my usual steep times for the 5th steep, and found that the astringent woody flavor receded while the fruit came forward. I preferred this balance, so did relatively short steeps. Still going strong at #8.