Dry – Rich bittersweet note, dried apricot, faint toasty/smoke note and a maybe warm sugar.
Wet – Thick/rich apricot, musky (like musky melon), floral bitterness, ‘green’ wood note/herbaceous.
Liquor – dull gold/light amber (initially cloudy but cleans up)
Steeps 5,5,5,7,9,13,25,40,1min.
The tea starts smooth and quickly develops a rich and medium thick body with bitter floral and bittersweet apricot notes and hints of a musky fruit (pleasant like melon), as it goes down it gave me a metallic/mineral hint that I didn’t really enjoy in the first steep, but following steeps become more of a olive/oily note and a bit mineral (not metallic) and at that point it is actually pleasant. The Huigan is lasting and gets sweeter.
By the 4-7th steep the taste is very similar on the front but when it is transitioning (going down) it has a pine note that is very pleasant and refreshing, but resembles most silver needle puerh and still hold some of that floral and apricot note and some thickness.
Final steeps loose the smoothness with astringency becoming noticeable, but not unpleasant. The thickness goes away completely and it’s replaced by the pine note and is very refreshing in the throat.
Final Notes
This was fairly pleasant, but it does resemble most silver needle puerh I’ve had before, I will say that it is very aromatic when dry which is very pleasant to open and smell and the initial notes are thicker than most silver needle puerh. This was a nice free sample from Teanami. I have to check out their other samples and I’ll probably revisit this one later after I air it a bit more.
Flavors: Apricot, Bitter, Dark Bittersweet, Floral, Pine, Smooth
