Second session tonight. Good, strong, downer Naka cha qi as expected. It only takes a few gulps to put me in a pretty deep hole. I taste a pleasant mixture of leather, sweet tobacco and apricot, with a little smoke in the background. There’s a gentle bitterness and quite a deal of cooling. This tea yields a bronze-ish liquor with very little body, and the endurance sadly seems to be around 8 or 9 steeps. That said, I feel no compulsion to drink this quickly, as I do with many other teas. The compression is incredibly tight, and the leaves are small and a bit fragmented. Consult last couple reviews for brewing parameters. Were the price still less than $100, I would have gotten a bing without much hesitation.
I don’t think I’ll be giving numerical ratings from here on out, since they probably aren’t very helpful. Taking a bit of a detour into Japanese greens next, since I ordered a kyusu and a few teas to go with it.Flavors: Apricot, Leather, Smoke, Tobacco
