This tea was a pleasant surprise. Based on its finely chopped appearance, I expected it to be somewhat bland and simple in flavour, but it isn’t; it has a nice smoky note overlaying a rich, slightly astringent malty taste.
The leaf processing style does mean that brewing this in a gaiwan without pouring all the leaves into one’s cup really puts the gongfu in gongfu cha, but it’s worthwhile for the detailed picture of the flavours this presents. It works very well Western-style too, as you’d expect. For being so finely chopped, it re-steeps relatively well. I was able to get four solid steeps out of it in a gaiwan.
Flavors: Astringent, Malt, Round, Smoke