I seemed to enjoy this one more the last time I had it, but it was new then and now is almost two years old so that’s only to be expected. The sucky thing about rediscovering my love of tea after such a long crappy time is that no matter how well I stored it at the time, a lot of my tea is now a year or two old and losing flavour. I am desperate to get the oldest teas out of my cupboard so I can find new, fresh teas that I love even more. That being said, I brewed this for almost twice as long at a lower temperature last time so that could be what affected the flavour. Really, I should check my previous notes on how I liked (or in some cases didn’t) the tea so I can replicate it or avoid that method of brewing again. I never learn! Never mind.
This is still a tasty tea, but I’m not quite as in love as I once was. The shou mei is way more prominent than I remember it when hot, but as it cools the apple becomes more dominant. It’s definitely a sweet rather than crisp apple, and I can’t see any pieces of dried apple in the leaf so I’m assuming this is mostly from flavouring. The shou mei was a great choice for the base – apple goes really well with white tea – and the hay notes and slight dryness combined with the apple really do remind me of ponies! The hay is mostly in the smell of the tea with only a little of it noticeable in the taste, which I’m grateful for because whilst it is tasty, hay doesn’t really scream “eat me!” when you’re a human. I added half a teaspoon of sugar which gave the tea more of a ‘warm apple juice’ feel, which I actually quite enjoy in the autumn and winter. It reminds me of when I was little and had a backpack with a pouch for juice and a straw which reached all the way around. My mam used to fill the backpack with warm juice in the winter and I would go out into our back garden and play in the snow all wrapped up with my backpack full of hot juice. I loved it and still have really strong memories, so this kind of makes me feel like a grown-up little kid. I only have a couple spoonfuls of this left, so will probably use it up soon, but if I have any left in the summer I think I’d like to see what this is like iced.
