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The bitterness of this tea has calmed down quite fast indeed. It still has a lot of grainy flavours and pungency to it though. The aroma reminds me of apples, soil, hay, and forest honey. The taste is sweet and herbaceous with a clear vegetal sourness. The aftertaste is more nutty with a honey-like character.

A good example of one of my favourite areas, but also not exceptional.

The aroma is sweet, floral and fruity. The taste is more bitter, sour, and mineral on the other hand. The tea is very bright at the moment with notes of rapeseed and green apples.

I like the progression of this tea, one of the cakes that has been in my collection for the longest time. It has a strong and unique taste that balances sweet, savoury and bitter flavours well. The notes remind me of dried fruits, ginseng, taro root, but also camphor and grain in the aftertaste. The mouthfeel is very thick and engaging too.

Two days ago I returned to this sheng in my collection, which always means engaging time.

The aroma is nutty and has hints of alcohol. The taste is sweeter than in the past, but still with plenty of pungency and the interesting bitterness layers present. It somehow tastes ‘yellow’ to me, but I’m not even sure myself what that means. Specific flavours include wood, hay, sugar beet, tree bark, gin, barley, birch, wet earth and others. There is a strong minerality and thickness to the mouthfeel. The qi is very grounding and warming in the core.

As the vendor description suggests, this tea lands somewhere in between a hong oolong from Taiwan and a wild black tea (e.g. taiwanese Shan Cha). It is more bitter than the former and more fruity than the latter. It also remains interesting for many infusions. Overall, I am quite happy with it, especially for drinking in this late autumn weather.

The aromas are flowery, vegetal, and leathery. The taste is spicy, bitter, floral, sweet, and woody. There are hints of mushrooms, nectarine, later on also malt. The mouthfeel is buttery and gets astringent towards the end of the session. The aftertaste is pungent, fragrant, and biting with a long-lasting sweetness.

This white tea has an interesting mix of tangy, tannic, savoury, and foresty flavours, as well as a hint of pastries. The aftertaste is also a bit sour, and the aroma reminds me of sawdust, apricots, sugarcane, and allspice.

This tea is quite oxidized for a fresh white tea, surely partly as a result of being pressed into balls. These are pretty tight and take a long time to open, it’s definitely not a tea for a quick session. Additionally, it also has a lot of staying power. A great tea for autumn vibes I would say :)

This tea hasn’t aged a great deal yet, but it’s just as tasty as before. It has a complex aroma that blends fruity, nutty, and floral notes with hints of forest and sawdust. The taste is full and pungent. It is bit more on the savoury and bitter side, but also has a mild apple flavour.

The mouthfeel is very thick and oily, and the aftertaste very long and flowery with plenty of returning sweetness and various notes of spices.

The tea retains a bright character with substantial bitterness, sugarcane sweetness and vegetal notes such as mint and moss. The aftertaste is sweet, nutty, and fragrant.

This is always a unique one to return to, although I miss the times when it had more of that bitterness of purple raw.

The tea is now very smooth with flavours like cola, strawberry, earth, and only a very mild bitterness. There is also a hint of mint in the aftertaste.