Just a very short note. It’s my first introduction to tea and mandarin.
Due to the small, loose leaves I found it a bit hard to estimate the amount of tea (I don’t use a scale) and I perhaps understeeped a bit. At any rate, the deep darkness was gone after two steeps, leaving a brownish liquor.
The smell, as noted by others, was dominated by paper. When drinking, there was a very pronounced taste which I assume is what’s meant by medicinal. I haven’t tasted that in other shus, so I’m wondering whether this is the contribution of the mandarin or a result of mandarin and tea aging together. I didn’t get any smokiness.
I think it may be tasting better without the paper smell, so I put the remainder, sans wrapper, in a stoneware pot to be forgotten for a while. The wrapper, by the way, smelled incredibly strong of mandarin/orange. If I’d bought it anywhere else I’d have suspected the wrapper had been soaked in ethereal oil before packaging.
