Spring 2020 Dong Guo

This is the first tea I’ve tried from William ‘Famer-Leaf’ of Youtube fame. So I have some high hopes!

The leaves come apart easily when I prod it with my pick from the edge. It’s simple to grab about 4 grams of whole leaves. I’m just sampling this right now, so I’m using a 75ml porcelain Gaiwan and boiling spring water.

Initially, it tastes very ‘green’. Kind of like a bitter sencha whack (which makes me a bit worried, I’m not expecting sencha flavours). It’s a rounded flavour note. Bitter without being astringent at the start.

It definitely makes you sweat and it has a bit of body to it. Not ‘thick’ or particularly ‘oily’. The soup is pale yellow with a slight green hint. Mouthfeel is pleasantly soft.

By the third steep I’m tasting the dry subtle tartness of asian Pomelo fruit and maybe grapefruit-seed oil. Bitterness is getting stronger and slight astringency. So I take a swig of fresh water.

The lid smells like citrus rind.

Boom. With the fresh water comes sweetness. Sweet like sugarcane syrup all the way down my throat moving to a more buttery/golden syrup. It has a nice ‘lasting’ flavour on the tongue.

Later steeps and I’m in pomelo territory again but milder and a little sweeter, a bit more floral (orange blossoms). It has that bitter edge I like in a nice marmalade. It’s definitely in the pomelo territory, less the orange.

Nice. I’m going to have to give this more of a shot and play around with brewing parameters. So I won’t mark it as ‘recommended’ for now (which is a bit pointless, I think his stock is all sold out). I’ll put another note up once I’ve given it a few more tries. But this is a very solid first impression.

I’m a bit stuck though, the leaf smell is like a citrus hinted green tea. Which I didn’t expect at all from a young sheng (then again, I don’t drink that much young sheng).

Energy is strong though and I probably shouldn’t have tried this at 11pm.

I’ll mark this as 80 for now and I’ll revisit it over the weekend.