1113 Tasting Notes
I love being able to call drinking tea ‘research’ :)
This tea has the smell of honeysuckle before it is even brewed! The taste of both the oolong and the honeysuckle is present. Unfortunately this is somewhat dry and really rough to drink as one sips more. I really wish this was a little smoother because it has a nice complex taste between the dark oolong and honeysuckle.
This is one that I’ll send to someone else to verify the dryness.
This tea has a nice low key floral smell, but the taste just doesn’t do much for the drinker (being me).
I brewed this using water at 187f and didn’t seem to get much out of it overall which was unfortunate because I see pretty leaf in my teapot expanding but not doing much in regards to releasing great taste into the water. The taste is nice, but I wouldn’t call it great or strong enough to make anyone pick anything specific out about it.
For whatever reason I have had a bad run in with Goldentip Teas/ Teabox
This tea was an exception though as I really enjoyed drinking it at work today. It isn’t ideal for me to really like a tea at work because then I get up and go to the bathroom A LOT… this has to do with drinking three pots of tea over two hours (which is something like 80 ounces of tea).
Unexpected tea of pleasure :)
This was picked January 5th 2015
While I have never ordered from Mandela, I take everyone’s word about how good their teas are. This tea produces a smell similar to the yellow pu’erh cake I have; which is intense. On my tenth steep right now as I write this and I think I have a grasp on my feels for this tea. The first few steeps were a bit stronger and bitter but then I started to flash steep instead of using my 10s steeps for sheng. This helped out a lot. Unfortunately, it just isn’t as smooth as I would like it to be. What makes this appealing is that I do want to keep steeping it. I will continue to steep this tonight and be thankful that this sheng isn’t another that loses my interest after steep 6 or 7.
You picked a good one here!
I think the advice I was given by a few people to drink older shengs has been the best advice so far. I pick up bitter taste much easier than anything and do not like bitter… I’ve been told the older the less astringent a tea is.
Agreed, the older is less bitter but sometimes more ‘earthy’ depending on storage. This one with some years under its belt is getting easier to drink. Give me a few years and we should see how my storage is coming along.
: ) I find storage of pu’erh with research and experience behind it quite fascinating.
Remind me to send you some things in a few years. I am trying to dial the storage thing in. So far seems to be working. ;)
Mandala has a controlled vault set-up so they can literally improve the flavor in tea.
