Um… This is weird. This tea bears no resemblance to the jin jun mei sample I had from Yezi about 8 months ago. It came in one of their $6 sampler sets, but I’m not very happy that I just ordered 4 more ounces because of the 20% off sale. Even at 20% off, it’s a lot more expensive than what I would normally spend per ounce of tea. I remember this tea being sweet — tasting like sweet potatoes and marshmallows. I’m not getting any of that now. It’s more bitter, not as complex or interesting… And if anything, I probably steeped it at a higher temperature for a longer amount of time back when I tried it before, so it’s not an issue of steeping at a higher temperature.
Yezi just sells it as “jin jun mei.” They don’t include a year or harvest season on the packet — at least not on the samples, which are all I’ve tried so far. So I have no idea whether this tea was grown in the same place, or whether the harvest time was much different. But this is not nearly as good as the jin jun mei I remember. It’s not bad, but it’s sort of a generic black tea with nothing special about it. Not cool, Yezi. I got this because I thought I could at least count on it being as good as the last product — and similar to it, if not identical.
I’m mad at myself for buying several ounces of this before making sure it was the same jin jun mei I wanted. I’m gonna cross my fingers and hope this was a mistake in the sample bagging.
Oh no