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Here is a review of a another of my summer sipdowns for everyone to enjoy. I think I polished off my 25g pouch of this tea in either July or August. At the time, I was concerned about the quality of this tea, as the only previous reviewer had not enjoyed it much. Fortunately for me, I found this to be an excellent Yunnan moonlight white tea. Actually, I would go a step further and say that it was one of the best I have ever had.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a standard 10 second rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 194 F water for 5 seconds. This initial infusion was followed by 20 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and 30 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted aromas of sugarcane, malt, cream, marshmallow, hay, wood, and eucalyptus. After the rinse, I detected new aromas of roasted almond, roasted peanut, butter, grass, and baked bread. The first infusion introduced subtle aromas of minerals and honeydew. In the mouth, the tea liquor presented pleasant notes of cream, golden raisin, butter, malt, grass, hay, baked bread, oats, sugarcane, and roasted almond that were deftly balanced by subtler notes of plum, lemon, marshmallow, roasted peanut, wood, honeydew, and eucalyptus. The bulk of the subsequent impressions introduced a stronger aroma of honeydew and new aromas of oats, lemon, cinnamon, and golden raisin to the mix. More immediate and pronounced notes of lemon, honeydew, wood, roasted peanut, and marshmallow appeared in the mouth alongside impressions of minerals and watermelon rind. Delicate, lively hints of cucumber, cinnamon, pear, orange zest, vanilla, apricot, and nectarine could also be detected. As the tea faded, the liquor began to emphasize notes of minerals, cream, baked bread, malt, roasted almond, and oats that were chased by a swell of honeydew, lemon, cucumber, hay, wood, roasted peanut, marshmallow, apricot, plum, eucalyptus, and watermelon rind flavors.

This was such a lovely example of a Yunnan moonlight white tea. It struck an excellent balance between rustic charm and smooth sophistication, melding gorgeous, complementary aroma and flavor profiles with a lively, substantial, crisply textured mouthfeel, and tremendous longevity. A very complex tea with a ton of depth, I could see how this tea might be overwhelming or confusing to some, but I have been drinking Yunnan moonlight white teas off and on for somewhere between five and six years now, and it hit pretty much all of the right notes for me. This was an incredible offering and one that demanded to be brewed in a long, slow gong fu session in order to get the most out of it. This was quite simply my kind of white tea and a reminder that I need to come back to certain types of tea more frequently.