Tea: 2007 Kunlu Mountain raw from Bana Tea
Prep: 100cc gaiwan, 8g, boiling water, 10s, 10, flashx2, 10, 20, 25, 30, 30, 45, 50, 60×4, stopped timing
Sessions with this tea: 1
Taste: Good god. Where to start? Delicate floral bitterness up front with a nutty walnut flavor. As it steeps out this transforms into like, honey that has been microwaved and is ready to add to cooking. With nuttiness built in. Maybe honey drizzled over walnuts and left in the oven a bit. That bitterness from walnut shells is there. The bitterness stays across all steeps, and is very pleasant, turning into sweetness. The bitterness and sweetness evolve from floral to deep and rich, never really veering into that fruity sweetness of like a darker tea.
Body: Darker orange color. Thick slurpy mouthfeel. Where do I put all of this saliva? Saliva floods my mouth like I turned around at the beach and got hit by a wave I wasn’t expecting. Except the wave is made of the burnt honey flavor which the tea tasted like. Cooling in the cheeks. The energy for this one sits in my upper chest and exudes alert calmness, not too jittery.
A very enjoyable tea. It has just enough bitterness to keep me interested, and the overall complexity of the interplay between the flavors is very interesting. I needed a bib to deal with all the saliva dripping down my chin. The body is great. Please someone tell me where to get more of this.
