Got my first ever White2tea order and for some reason decided to start off by tasting the tea most likely to be a huge hit or miss. This is a tea I almost ordered a full cake of because I love orange flavor, but I am so glad I didn’t!
The smell of the dry leaves is fantastic. Musty shou smell with a gentle orange hit. However, the taste is not so good… Unlike in the aroma the orange is quite overwhelming in the flavor. I might not mind that if it was a good orange flavor, but to me it was really unpleasant. It’s a bit medicinal tasting and so distracting it’s hard to taste much of the tea underneath. From what I could taste it was a fairly run of the mill young shou, but it was really hard to pay attention to.
I brewed this gongfu style and had to leaf very heavily since there’s quite a bit of orange peel so you’ll get a rather weak brew with the 6g I’m normally put in my 120ml gaiwan. Unfortunately I didn’t get much evolution of the tea over time, if anything I’d say the orange flavor was a bit lighter on the first two steeps, but by the third it had completely taken over.
I’m not going to rate this tea since it’s clearly so far outside my tastes, but I’d warn for anyone who hasn’t had a chenpi tea: approach with caution, this may not be the orange flavor you’re expecting. I’m going to save the rest for summer and see how it turns out as a lightly sweetened ice tea.
