do you prefer sheng or shou?
I love shou the best! So far, anyway. It seems to fit my personality and tastes better in a number of ways. For example:
1) Shou has a strong, dark flavor, and I’ve always preferred darker and richer teas. Even before I got into loose-leaf teas, my favorites were chai and earl grey. (After all, tea is basically flavored water, so the more flavor the better, right?? Especially if it’s a good flavor. I know this is an amateurish way to think but I still haven’t quite gotten over it yet.)
2) Shou is so awesome because you can steep it like nine times or whatever. (I suppose sheng could be the same way and I just don’t know it yet, lol.)
3) Shou often, depending on the variety, takes milk and sugar well for what my husband calls an “addictive” latte-type drink (this is probably sacrilege but we like it anyway).
4) The flavor notes common in shou are by far some of the most enticing I’ve ever come across in the tea world. Sometimes it smells like alfalfa hay or a clean-smelling barn full of happy goats (I had a strange childhood, okay?) or the dark, rich loam you find in forests once the leaves from last year have finished decomposing (this is another happiness-inducing mental image for me since I’m an avid gardener).
5) I think the composting-type process used to make shou is so cool! Despite being a germophobe most of the time, lol.
Awesome way of putting it. Yeah the compost/autumn leaf/fermentation taste is called “wo dui”
In my current inventory I have probably a couple of dozen shengs and 5 kinds of shu. I find sheng a lot more interesting (and variable). I am likely to be a lot more focused on the tea when drinking sheng, whereas shu is something that I pour some water on, set a timer, and sip from a mug while paying less attention.
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