The dry leaf on this one smells crazily strongly of dried apricots! Took me aback, honestly, despite someone else describing the taste as oatmeal apricot, heh. This starts off smelling more complex when I poured water on it than it actually ends up being, but the strong prevailing taste of different parts of the apricot remained throughout in a nice way.
First couple of steeps is Jingmai citrus sweetness with a hint of tobacco on the nose and in the cup that blooms into a strong, juicy apricot that turns to a sour tart peel if the liquid cools (although not in a bad way). The apricot goes from juicy to peel to meat minus the juice up through steep 4, with a mild sugar sweetness that lingers in the throat and a heavy/thick creamy texture with an almost basil herb aftertaste quality to it. A strong tobacco nose and flavor kicks in in the mid steeps, overwhelming the sugarcane and almost drowning out the apricot for a while, but then fades out to the sour apricot and then returning with a plummy depth when pushed later.
Very fruity, tobacco-y sheng! I quite enjoyed this, although the energy is kind of giggly and caffeine heavy, almost anxiety jittery level, which wasn’t so pleasant—might be because I back to backed this with another sheng. I thought this was very solid, especially if you like sour apricot fruit notes and tobacco (not the burnt or ashtray kind, thankfully!) as those are the predominant flavors throughout the session. I feel like this would have delivered past the 8 steeps I made, but the jitters made me stop here for this session.
Flavors: Apricot, Creamy, Fruity, Pleasantly Sour, Sugarcane, Tobacco
