Sipdown! (22 | 226)
Saturday afternoon gongfu session! This was a sample I got from a countdown box that I participated in on Instagram, and it’s taken me a couple of months to get around to trying it! It’s a Yunnan black tea harvested from ancient wild trees.
I used the whole 8g packet for about 200ml of water and did six steeps – 5s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s. I obviously could’ve gone longer, but there was Chick-fil-A waiting to be devoured… :O
This tea actually really reminded me of a Fujian black. It had some lovely thick bread and caraway notes to it, as well as malt and wood. There was some musty hay in the first couple of steeps, but that dissipated quickly. Starting at about steep two, there was a lovely deep bitter cocoa note that persisted for the entire session. A couple of steeps after that, I noticed some hints of dried fruit, specifically dried cherries.
Quite lovely, though not what I expected! I will say I would probably just steep this Western-style if I had more of it, just because I didn’t find that much of a change in the flavors over time. Enjoyed the opportunity to use one of my yixing teapots though!
Flavors: Bread, Caraway, Cherry, Cocoa, Dark Bittersweet, Dried Fruit, Grain, Hay, Malt, Musty, Smooth, Thick, Wood
