I just finished my sample of this from the TU Group Buy I participated in a little while back. This was a pretty good tea – no complaints about it – but it wasn’t anything special. Good and tasty, but nothing to write home about really. The dry leaf had a nice floral aroma. After a rinse, it gave off a nice and crisp straw aroma with just a hint of a citric feel to it.
The tea had a pleasant and thick texture to go along with a consistent flavor profile. I got a sweet nutty flavor off of this, with slight floral and straw tendencies, especially in the early steeps. This tea was sweet, completely lacking in any unpleasant astringency or bitterness. A very easy tea to just guzzle down. It also displayed rather impressive longevity. I was able to drink almost two liters of the stuff before it finally gave out. Some would probably consider this tea a little boring – and I might count myself among them if I were to drink this every day for much of any period of time. So I guess it is easy enough to drink that it would make a good “daily drinker” for when you are focused on things other than the tea, but isn’t interesting enough to make me want to come back to it on a day-to-day basis.
While I was drinking this tea, somebody in our Slack teachat asked me a question which stimulated some good thinking on my part. He asked me to compare this tea with Bitterleaf Tea’s 2016 Year of the Monkey Yiwu, White2Tea’s 2016 Diving Duck, and a Yunnan Sourcing 2016 Yiwu. I have tried all of those besides a YS 2016 Yiwu. They are all in a the same price range. If I had to put the three of them which I tried in order of how much I enjoyed them, it would go as such: BLT Year of the Monkey > W2T Diving Duck > TU Charity. BLT’s is a clear winner for me, with DD and Charity pretty close to each other.
I’m interested in how other people who have tried these three teas would rank them. Comment away if you have! :)
Flavors: Floral, Nutty, Straw, Sweet
