Had one of those mornings where I couldn’t decide what to drink so I dug this out of my sample stash to give it a go.
The early steeps are good. Some pile funk on the nose and plenty in the empty cup though it doesn’t really show through in the taste. Has the chocolatey bready fruity thing going on and no camphor. Definitely a lively and complex tea in these early steeps.
In the middle steeps this tea starts to warm up and round out. It gets sweeter here as well and starts to leave a coating of sweetness in the mouth. Up to this point I am impressed with this tea and find it to by very dynamic.
Then suddenly this tea seems to fall flat on it’s face. At this point with most of the ripes I’ve been drinking lately I would expect the tea to have a couple more interesting steeps before settling in to the stewed green hardwoods flavors that most young ripes seem to have in common after steeping the fermentation off the top. The first thing to go was the mouthfeel. Then the flavor. And though the tea soup kept up a decent color there just wasn’t anything left in flavor or texture through the last several steeps.
I’ll come back to this tea as I have more of the sample left. It’s only been in my stash for about 10 days so I’ll give it another try when it has rested a while longer.
