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I’ve been curious about Tai Ping Hou Kui for a while, as it’s supposed to be a floral tea. After reading a discussion of it on TeaForum, I finally bought a sample. I followed Teavivre’s instructions and steeped 15 leaves in about 250 ml of 185F water, starting at 4 minutes and refilling as needed.

These long, flat, beautiful leaves stick up above the rim of my cup! The dry aroma is of orchids, pears, and vegetables. The leaves are easy to push into the cup after a few seconds in hot water. The first few steeps are very subtle, with orchid, pear, bok choy, cucumber, green beans, and minerals and no bitterness at all. This tea is quite sweet, with a taste I’d describe as sugary. Predictably, the tea gradually becomes more vegetal, with cucumber, green beans, lettuce, bok choy, zucchini, and minerals. There’s a lingering floral sweetness in the aftertaste. The minerality increases in the final steeps, and the tea becomes even more vegetal without acquiring any bitterness.

This tea is pleasantly floral and sweet, but its subtlety is a bit of a drawback. There’s nothing really wrong with it, and pushing those long leaves into my cup was kind of fun. However, I’d recommend their Mingqian Bi Luo Chun and Longjing over this tea, especially for the price.