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An extremely dynamic tea with a lot of character – some of it brash, some of it charming, like a precocious youth.

The highlight is the dry leaf aroma of cereal milk, Special K Red Berries cereal, strawberry milk, freeze dried raspberries, and Grape Nuts. Malty, fruity, creamy, strong and delicious.

The wet leaf is more floral and spicy: lilies, clover, fresh alfalfa, lily pad, big yellow sunflowers with thick green stalks. The liquor is deep brick red-brown and luminous, with aroma of strawberries, cereal, and milk.

The taste is surprisingly vegetal and floral at first, with less fruit and sweetness than expected. Cooked spinach, bran flakes, yellow sunflowers in a field, lilies, steamed broccoli, Corn Flakes with milk, vanilla pod, lily pad, and mild tobacco. The flavor really mellows out by the 3rd steep and loses its vegetal edge, becoming all malty cereal notes with black pepper: Corn Flakes in whole milk with cracked black pepper, yellow sunflowers, and Grape Nuts. After that rollercoaster of flavors and aromas, we landed somewhere calm and comforting.

This tea has personality, that’s for sure, and its enthusiasm is charming, if not always smooth. In retrospect, I enjoyed the journey.

A tropical-fruit laden jasmine green tea. The fragrance is of juicy green pear, mangosteen, pineapple gummies, flowering pear tree, lychee, honeycrisp apple, and tangy green grapes.

Tastes of watermelon and grape Jolly Ranchers, Nerds candies, white flower pollen, watermelon rind, magnolia tree, summer wind, and then finishes with buttery green tea notes like bok choy. Medium-intensity, fruity, and not soapy at all, as some jasmine teas can be.

Today hit 80 degrees in Los Angeles (about 27 degrees C) and the evening was perfectly cool and fragrant with orange blossoms. The hummingbirds seem delighted by the improving weather, chirping their happy hellos to one another, and maybe, I hope, to me as well. A quiet seat outside, enjoying the delicious silence after a beastly workday. The gift of a sunset. A perfect moment for this tea.

Tangy redberry shou. Lingonberry jam on walnut bread. Raspberry dark chocolate ganache. Cranberry sauce with chocolate-chip pancakes. Surprisingly light, clean, and tangy, with an aftertaste like faint cranberry juice. Somehow Christmassy. I bet this would age beautifully… I should get a cake…

Summertime. A charcoal grill smoldering on a freshly mown lawn. Weed-whacking big, hearty, thick-stemmed weeds. Ripe peaches, dandelion, cold bacon, tomato vine in the hot sun. White nectarine, fire pit ashes. A long lingering tang of plum skins, sun baked grass, and vanilla. Tomato water, flowering pear tree, and yellow cherries. Becomes more like a white tea with each steep. A hot summer afternoon. A beautiful memory.

This will be a divisive one. If you’ve ever loved cigarettes in your life, I recommend it.

Camel cigarettes and ripe peaches, and charcoal grilling in the shade of a swaying cedar tree. If that sounds like a nice sensory experience to you, I think you’ll enjoy this feisty sheng puer.

It is musty and herbal from the start. The cake has the fragrance of a freshly unwrapped pack of Camels, with mint, prune, fig, and cedar. The wet leaf is brash and smoky, with charred cedar plank, golden raisins, sun dried tomato, carrots, and wild woody herbs.

The taste is of apricots, peaches, and smoldering charcoal. Big green banana leaves blackening over a fire, and smoking cigarettes in a copse of tall cedar trees. There is also some creme brulee, singed sugar and heavy cream.

There is a long, strong, lingering aftertaste of peaches and charcoal, and the texture is extremely full and airy, like whipped silk that coats the tongue. This tea also packs a wallop of Cha Qi, for the adventurous.

Eating sliced green and red bell peppers on buttery Ritz crackers. Someone in the room is wearing Rock ’n Rose perfume and slicing an unripe green pineapple. Lovely guava aftertaste.

This winter-harvest tea from the hot climate of southern India has a strong, unique character that is vegetal to the max, peppered with spicy herbs, and then finishes with tropical fruit.

It starts with a dry leaf fragrance of apothecary shop (hundreds of wooden drawers full of herbs and spices) thyme, sage, mint, eucalyptus, red pepper flakes, buttery crackers, and green resinous wood reminiscent of Camellia Taliensis lateral buds (Bai Ya Bao).

The wet leaves are heady and spicy: red pepper flakes, mint, garrigue, dried flower bouquet, rose, and guava.

The taste is very vegetal and unique: bell peppers, pico de gallo, thyme, mint, mountain herbs, crackers, and lingering guava. Nice to experience a bold terroir with a strong identity.

Eating walnuts in a hot sauna. Brewed strong, there’s nice cocoa and saline as well.

The dry leaf fragrance is an antique oak cabinet, a cedar chest full of clean cotton sheets, pine 2×4s, an arts and crafts store, paints and paintbrushes, and a wooden staircase to the attic in an old house.

A lot of raw, fresh, sweet wood. Also some mushroom and dried, brown grass clippings.

The wet leaf aroma: sauna, hot steamed cedar wood, acorns and cracked black walnuts. Very woody, but not dusty or bitter at all. It has a nice comforting sweetness to it, like freshly cut oak planks.

The taste is of black walnuts, cocoa powder, silky saline, charred oak casks, cedar chips, and wood vanillins.

Walnut bread, decaying acorns and leaves, very woody and dark. This shou has a phantom sweetness when you first sip, like white chocolate, but then it’s immediately gone and the flavor is aged wood, raw walnuts in the shell, oak vanillins, and lake water. Muted in the mid-palate, but silky and round with a playful, light saltiness. The wet leaf aroma is sweet old wood, like antique Amish furniture, or an old, worn, wooden rowboat.

Quality tea from a Colombian producer that definitely cares about their leaves, but quite a light flavor. Very creamy texture. Delicate floral, green, nutty, and buttery flavor. Light violets, dry roasted edamame, and salty Ritz crackers. All nice notes, and a luxurious silky texture. The long steeps tasted like a raw puer: notes of apricot, apple, and persimmon, but also quite light.

A very dark-roasted Iron Goddess Oolong with flavors of Corn Flakes, Charleston Chew, marshmallow and chocolate, vanilla cookie, Three Musketeers bar, salted caramel, and coffee. Some delicious flavors, but it starts off light and grainy in the first steeps and ends a bit cloying in the later steeps when the marshmallow becomes a bit too artificial tasting. The wet leaf aroma has a powerful strange bitterness like burnt sugar, creme brulee with sliced strawberries, and Special K Red Berries cereal. Overall interesting complexity and surprising marshmallow and chocolate notes, but lacks balance. There’s also a persistent corn/grain note, especially when brewing Western style, that detracts from the other flavors.