Jingmai Tian Xiang (Spring 2017)

quick rinse, smells sweet and strongly of GUAVA, of all things

7s: Still smelling guava, but mixed with something else now. Light sweet barnyard orchid guava? The infusion is very pale, and the taste is, well, light sweet barnyard orchid guava. Truth in sniffs right there. Faint dryness after, just the barest pinching in of the cheeks, and after a delay the tightness fades out and cool breath fades in.

12s: The scent is now floral straw, the guava seems to be gone. There’s a brief roughness across the roof of my mouth with the sip, and then again with the pinched cheeks but now they’re kinda sticky (which has bothered me in other teas but for some reason I’m kinda into it this time). This time my cheeks stay a bit sticky even when after a delay the brief huigan comes in.

15s/17s: A bit of the guava has returned to the scent, and finally even hit the flavor a bit! The texture is a bit astringent from the start of the sip now, but the huigan is coming in sooner after and feels more floral. I wish it lasted longer. I think my lips are vibrating.

20s/26s/30s: Hay with slowly decreasing flowers. The texture is maybe a bit less sticky dry than before, instead getting just barely a bit fuzzy now. Feeling sort of little muscle twitches at various places around my body. Jumped up after each steep to do chores around the house. Definitely more of a bwee! tea than a sneepy tea.

40s: This is the first bitterness I’ve gotten from this tea. Not really sharp, a sort of floral scented front-loaded dull bitterness that’s fading into into slightly stickyfuzzy cheeks and oh hey the sweetness afterwards is going further down my throat now. Then it finally lingers for longer as sort of an airy floral note by the roof of my mouth.

50s/1min/80s/2min/5min: Floral hay, with vegetal bitterness getting a bit stronger each time (still fairly mild, though), and flowers in the huigan. Could go longer, but gonna stop now just because I’m hungry.

This tea begins very light, and then the astringency creeps up on you like some sort of ski-masked purse-snatcher. Three/four steeps in, and all of a sudden the sides of my tongue are numb and the insides of my cheeks are dry and tingly, like I’d just eaten a Saltine Cracker. Farmer-Leaf self-describes this tea as having a “very active” and “robust” mouthfeel, and they’re not lying, in the best way possible. Complex mouthfeel is a front-runner for what makes puerh so unique, and this tea is a great example…
Link to full review: https://shenggut.wixsite.com/shenggut/single-post/2017/10/08/Farmerleaf-Jingmai-Tian-Xiang-Spring-2017