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I’ve recently been rediscovering an appreciation for shou, which I’ve put on the back-burner since I started getting really into sheng shortly into my tea journey. It seems to be coinciding with my coming around to more dankly stored aged sheng. This is a sample I bought around Black Friday or so I believe. I smelled a bit of fermentation on the dry leaf, but I didn’t get much of any in the flavor, though that is likely aided by the fact that I generally double-rinse shou.

I have heard some tea-friends mentioning that this tea tastes like almost nothing, or that they found it difficult to illicit strong flavor from it using more conventional parameters. I would certainly agree with that. I used about 8g:100mL in my sessions, which is pretty standard for what I do with shou. The flavor was lighter than I would expect with those parameters, but I think that’s kind of just how this tea is. For me, this one is much more about texture than flavor. It had a thickness which did remind me a bit of cream. The flavor was pleasant and unintrusive – a light chocolatey sweetness with a bit of a deeper earthy flavor just slightly present. It was good, but didn’t ever really take precedence over the thick and creamy texture.

Another teafriend told me that this one does well with super-high brewing parameters, that it comes out like brownies. I can definitely see that considering the chocolatey notes I got here and the creamy texture.