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I didn’t get to taste the 2015 Bosch before it sold out, as it sold out right as I was getting into puerh. Of course, that fact along with the rave reviews this tea gets meant I had to add a sample to my 2016 W2T order. The dry leaf had a pleasant aroma – grassy, with a heady floral note. After a rinse it was more vegetal and powerful smelling.

This one is pretty intense from the get-go. Not intensely bitter or intensely sweet, just…intense. The flavor is sweet and vegetal, with an almost woody or root-like herbal quality. I found it hard to describe. It was an aromatic or wet woodiness, but a kind of gently sweet woodiness. I found the taste of Bosch to be very deep, encouraging small sips. Within three steeps, this tea starts to give me a bit of a slackjaw feeling.

After three or four steeps, the tea gets a slight bitter edge to it – not an astringent bitterness. It has almost resinous qualities to it as well, though this could have just come from the combination of the trademark W2T thickness and the woody-ish flavor described above. This goes on for a further three steeps or so, before the bitterness starts to drop off and the sweetness intensifies.

The next eight steeps were dominated mostly by sweeter flavor notes. I got nice apricot in the finish, along with some pine notes and occasional brown sugar. The tea was still nice and thick. I started to feel a bit clumsy with a bit of a pounding in the front of my head. This is certainly a powerful one. After this, I got maybe three or four more steeps out of it before they got so long as to be impractical in a gaiwan. Those were all a bit lighter but still pleasantly sweet with apricot notes. I think this might actually be the most apricot I’ve tasted in a sheng before. It’s not a really bright and “high” apricot flavor, but a deeper one, like a really ripe fruit perhaps.

Since this is one of the more expensive puerhs I’ve tasted yet, I decided to take the spent leaf and throw it in a thermos with boiled water for a few hours. The result may be one of my favorite parts of this tea. It tasted like I was drinking apricot syrup. Just super thick, with sweet apricot and notes of honey to it. So good.

This is the first of the really high-end White2Tea productions I’ve tasted. I think it might still be a little bit beyond me to be honest. Despite that, it was a really enjoyable tea, though I don’t think it’s one I’m going to buy more of. Maybe 2017 or 2018 Bosch :P Also, I have some spent leaf sitting in Vodka right now, so we’ll see how that goes.