Another tea from the July Simple Loose Leaf box! I have pretty limited experience with white teas, and I’ve only ever had the bai mu dan variety, so this is a new one for me. I think shou mei is a lower grade of white tea, right? The leaves look fairly similar to bai mu dan, except there are a ton of stems in there. The leaves themselves are large and very varied in color. There are a few scant flower petals in there, too. It smells sugary sweet and kind of like grape, I guess. Mostly like candy… Not a great sign for me. 200 degrees seems high to me for a white tea, let alone one mixed with green tea. But I did it anyway! 3 minutes.
The brewed tea smells similar to the dry, but much more muted. There’s also some weird aroma that I can’t identify… The taste is kind of meh. I like the taste of the base – it’s kind of like a rougher version of the white tea I’ve had before. There’s that hay flavor, but then there’s also dry leaves and some grassiness from the green tea. I’m not sure that I really get floral, it’s definitely very mild. But the plum flavoring ruins this for me, it tastes like candy (not in a good way) and it has a very weird aftertaste that reminds me a bit of plastic combined with Dimetapp (grape cough syrup basically). It’s improved with a bit of sugar, but it still tastes just plain odd to me. :(
Flavors: Autumn Leaf Pile, Candy, Floral, Grapes, Grass, Hay
