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This is an odd one. I want to like it, but it has this mouth-drying astringency that isn’t at all what I want in a black tea. The first couple of steeps are downright horrid. Gets progressively and massively better as it steeps, but by the time it mostly tastes really good, it’s starting to get a bit weak. It does get this wonderful sweet perfumey apricot-honey fragrance going on 4-5 steeps in, which lingers in the cup and delights, but the burr of acridity never leaves or ceases to be unpleasant. Perhaps it settles down after some aging and turns that nasty uncivilized edge into something more intriguingly wicked, but I don’t think I would want to buy any more of it to find out.

Yes. I’m into it. Originally bought a 25g sample for novelty’s sake, and liked it so much I ended up ordering two 200g cakes so I don’t run out anytime soon. It tastes like home, home being the thousands of acres of swampy hemlock-and-spruce forest backing my parents’ farm in rural Nova Scotia.

Reliably pleasant. Not the most exciting tea in the world, but then it’s hardly intended to be. It’s just a nice, smooth, lightly nutty, mildly sweet, pleasurably dark cup of always-easy-to-drink pu erh. I like it.

This is an all-time favourite. It’s so incredibly good, and resteeps wonderfully well at least three times. Will definitely buy more.

No matter how many times I brew this tea or how many different measurements/water temperatures I try, I can’t get it to be very flavourful. What flavour it has is pleasant, but it just doesn’t taste like much. Trying hotter water than recommended only brought out a blandly unpleasant bitterness, as did increasing the steep time too much. I’m used to better from Camellia Sinensis; their teas are usually quite exciting. Best results at 85c / 3 minutes 30 seconds.