I finally got a good session out of this tea, after giving up on it for five months. This time, I was more liberal with the amount of dry leaf I put into the yixing. I’ve come to realize that despite my pot’s tininess (~190 mL capacity), it’s not sized for a single person drinking gongfu style; the appropriate amount of dry leaf will yield more than a liter of good steeps, which is way too much to drink in one sitting.
As soon as the leaves hit the inside of the pre-warmed pot, they released a potent peachy perfume. The liquor was soft and light, with an omnipresent toastiness which muted any other notes. Here, I was a bit put off by the stodgy nature of such a flavor: it’s not refreshing nor inviting in such a context. Things finally started to turn around at the fourth steep: dark amber with a distinct dry sweetness. At that point, I started to notice that while the front of my tongue was being hit by the toastiness, there was a taste of peaches in the back of my throat, that built up as the session progressed. I stopped after the 7th steep. The spent leaves, smelling both fruity and vegetal, reminded me of fruit skin. They were an olive green with tinges of copper.
