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I received this tea as a sample in my last What-Cha order. It was harvested and roasted in 2020. I steeped the entire 6 g in a 120 ml teapot at 200F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

Dry, this tea has the typically lovely aroma of a Gui Fei: honey, baked bread, stewed fruit, citrus, and grass. The first steep gives me honey, grapefruit, grains, roast, wood, and minerals, with a strange nutty and chicory-type aftertaste at the back of the throat. The grapefruit gets stronger in the next steep, but so does the astringency. I also get citrus, honey, sap, roasted almonds, and roast. I let the third steep cool and the nutty flavour intensifies, along with the grapefruit and piny notes. It kind of tastes like an IPA. There are beautiful peach and nectarine notes in steep five to compensate for the growing astringency. In the next few steeps, the grapefruit, roasted nuts, honey, and grains don’t go away, but the growing astringency makes the tea less enjoyable. The session ends with malt, nuts, earth, wood, minerals, honey, and faint grapefruit.

Although I enjoyed some aspects of this Gui Fei, particularly the grapefruit, the roast and astringency were more pronounced than I usually like. What-Cha says this tea improves with age, and maybe I should have stored this sample in my tea museum for a couple years before trying it. I’d say it’s decent for the price if you like this type of tea, which I certainly do.