white2tea

I got this as part of the October tea club (with “Fruit Bomb”, “Strawberry”, and “Traditional” lapsangs. It’s what it says on the tin: lots of medicinal herbs and spices over a fruity, malty black tea. The leaves are beautiful, uniform in size and fairly small. It stands up to several steepings.

Someone compared an earlier year of this tea production to “elevated Lipton” and that’s a great description. The gongfu session didn’t have the complexity of some other stuff I’ve had, but it did provide several steeps of pleasant if unremarkable tea. Very sweet overall, a lot of sugary maltiness. I intend to buy a cake of this, for stressful days where I need some tea but don’t have time to sit around appreciating it.

This is from Cameron B!  Thanks again!  I always wanted to try these little guys.  I was intrigued to see if the flavor was anything like pancakes, or just that the shape it’s in is like a tiny pancake.  I will say, it’s one of the sweeter raw pu-erhs I have tried… very agreeable… at least on the first steep… though not unraveled quite yet.  The second steep is also very sweet!  The third gets a typical “you’re-rushing-it” raw pu-erh harshness, but that is always my fault, every single time.  I always go too hot on subsequent steeps.   The fourth steep just seemed muted, which I guess is better than harsh.  The first and second steeps were the best.  I think I’m still ruining raw puerh by steeping them badly after ALLL these years.  I just don’t think sheng is made for western steeping, making them never really something I want to drink.  These steeps weren’t even a minute long!  So possibly on the next little flapjack I will try even shorter steep times.
Steep #1 // 35 minutes after boiling // 55 second steep
Steep #2 // 32 minutes after boiling // 45 second steep
Steep #3 // 22 minutes after boiling // 40 second steep
Steep #4 // 22 minutes after boiling // 45 second steep

Good stuff. Really smooth texture with a lingering cooling sensation. I’m not picking up fruit here, more coffee and dark chocolate, but not too bitter at all.

Pleasantly sticky with nice fruit undertones. The leaves are durable and hold up well to several steepings. More bitter than I like, though, I might prefer this with some age on it.

I’ve been enjoying this material in mini/dragonball form, but since I don’t want to drink through all my minis just yet, I figured it was finally time to crack open this cake. Literally. The smokiness, which is reminiscent of the fresh steam caused by dousing a summer campfire, really hits you across every part of the sip, though it waxes and wanes at different moments. The top notes are sweet and mildly fruity with elements of honeydew melon and pears before getting crisper and more intense, marrying snappy cucumber pulp and skin with the dense blanket of smoke. The finish is woody, before trailing off into a lingering haze of petrichor and tobacco. I don’t know if I’ve ever had another tea that tastes as much like the look and feel of a heavily foggy day as this one does, which I mean only as a compliment.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C__QUa9yZhY/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GZu5aoG4eY

Backlog

Sheng/shou blend which lands flat and surprisingly bitter with a sheng bite. I’d’ve imagined this to be more balanced, but the sheng takes charge, and it’s not very good. I think the idea of blending sheng and shou is interesting, on account, Yunnan Sourcing succeeded with their 2015 Green Miracle; however, I’ve not had anything like that since then.

Dry leaf: Fruit by the foot, fruit leather
Wet leaf: Glazed donut, instant coffee, coffee shop, cinnamon, leather, floral
Flavor: Sweet, green florals (orchids), mildly bitter
Mouthfeel: oily, astringent
Rating: 65/100

Sip Down & Backlog -8/29

I really enjoyed this tea. I topped it off Western style on Sunday because I wasn’t particularly in the mood to gongfu. I hadn’t made any notes on the session (or sessions prior to the last) regarding any flavors, etc.

Not certain which year I have of this, but it tastes pretty young so I’m guessing it’s the 2024. Not particularly thick in texture, but nice and flavorful, getting some fruit and floral things going on here. Easy to brew, easy to drink.

Super dark brew, looks fantastic. I don’t get much of the molasses flavor on the front but the mouthfeel of the tea is sticky. While it doesn’t specifically remind me of gingerbread (or any other Christmas spice), there is an undertone of baked bread. For the price, this is an great shou, just don’t expect a super gingerbread-y flavor.

Grandpa Style!

A change in weather as we slide into Autumn means some serious shou pu’erh cravings, so today I’m brewing up a 2023 Lumber Mini to answer some of those cravings. Maybe it’s in part because I drank this grandpa-style, but I found this to be especially thick, woody, and veeeerrryyy camphor heavy. In a good way. Really, kind of the epitome of a dark and forest-tasting ripe pu’erh and just so deeply perfect for this change in seasons.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C_iqOcYOxCt/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V8ZgfSR_DI

As I took in the dry leaves, the first thing that hit me was the intense burnt wood aroma. Every steep releases that same smoky goodness, but in the best possible way.

At first, the smokiness is strong and bold, but as the tea steeps, it begins to mellow out, revealing subtle hints of pear and a fresh, crisp finish. It’s really an interesting experience, with each steep bringing a new flavor transformation.

Over the last two days, I’ve been really testing the limits of just how long I can stretch out this sheng pu’er mini when brewed grandpa style. It turns out that it can really take a lot!! Very soft yet thick mouthfeel, which is something I remember pretty clearly from the original 2017 production, too. It’s soothing yet syrupy with subtle notes of sugar cane, moss, freshly trimmed grass, and just a bit of a fruity and alcoholic element of limoncello. It’s really quite approachable with the sort of quiet yet powerful profile that builds into something very impactful so slowly yet steadily that you almost miss that it’s happened. Almost.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-8bxTpym3w/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFICGxCFASY

Gongfu!

The rain today has been absolutely relentless and, to be honest, the lack of natural sunlight left me feeling rather unmotivated to steep anything up for most of the day. I finally mustered up the motivation to try this poetically named tea out, and I thought the overall profile of the first three or so steeps post-rinse actually worked quite well with the atmospheric white noise of the rain forcefully pattering just beyond the window. Bright, sweet and a little bit grassy – like dandelion greens, hemp, or that “chlorophyll smell” from freshly trimmed lawn. Also, a light green melon note like just under ripe honeydew or when you get the white part of the melon right before the pith/rind. Fresh and almost “bouncy”.

I didn’t quite finish off the session, though. As much as this was very enjoyable and working super well in conjunction with the rain, I just got the sense that it would be so much better if I finished it off after the storm has passed, especially as the petrichor hits its peak and you’releft bathing in silence and all the fresh, cooling smells of nature. I mean, that’s basically the gist of this tea’s name, isn’t it!? And it really is so perfectly spot on not just in taste but in the feeling that it’s ended up evoking for me. I have no doubt that even without the current downpour that drinking this tea would be drawing these same comparisons for me. Maybe this is premature of me, but I’m calling that this just might be my favourite sheng that I’ve tried so far from this spring’s productions…

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-dz24NOfj0/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebECDsnUtcc

Gongfu!

I’m trying out a new tea and cheese pairing with this smoked sheng pu’erh and some Saint Agur blue cheese!! I’m a huge fan of both blue cheese and smoked teas, and combining the former with a robustly smoky Lapsang Souchong is a pairing I’m quite intimately familiar with and deeply fond of. So, with that in mind, I wanted to see what this polarizing cheese would he like when tried with a different sort of smoked tea.

Honestly, this was so good! I mean, you 100% have to love both strong smoky tobacco-like flavours and the funk of blue cheese already because I definitely don’t think this was transformative in a way that would win over a skeptic of either flavour. But the intense flavours of both tea and cheese were able to hold up to one another, with neither eclipsing the other. The Saint Agar is a double cream cheese, so the very high fat content actually did soften a lot of the rougher, more astringent edges of the sheng pu’erh without smothering the smoke and interestingly the duo both came off as much sweeter and slightly fruity in the finish and aftertaste – and that was unexpected but really lovely. It worked really well with the notes of oak and anise that also come through in this greener, smoky raw pu’erh.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-Yfb-OOxX/?imgindex=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yvr0cKeooc

I brewed this earlier this afternoon before finally seeing Deadpool and Wolverine. I wanted to dip into a tea at the top of the recently rotated puerh collection. I noticed that the 2020 Umbrella was on the top of the pile and I wanted to see where the tea was at in its storage life cycle. Opening the bag, I noticed floral and mineral notes on the nose. The tea itself tasted of minerals, mushrooms, and reminded me of black tea (I can’t quite explain why, but there’s something there that made me write it down). It seems like ages since 2020, but it’s closer than I remember. 2020-2023 is an era in itself, where so much happened in such a small amount of time.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-VJ1YFuXs_/?img_index=6

Gongfu Sipdown (2630)!

This tea was kindly added to a previous order as a free sample. Even though I do tend to really favour roasted teas, in the past, I’ve struggled with W2T’s roasted raw pu’erh so this isn’t a tea I probably would have ever ordered for myself. However, y’all know I LOVE anything weird and experimental, so I was still excited to see it added as a freebie.

This tea steeps quite intensely pretty straight out of the gate. Those heavy roast and charcoal notes are very in your face and accompanied by a lot of woody bitterness as well. I tasted log smoke, charred walnut, chicory root and a TON of agarwood with a slightly sweeter and coating finish and aftertaste that was like a mix of ginseng and licorice roots. It did soften up a bit after the third or fourth steep, allowing a bit more of an enjoyable plum-like fruitiness to come through, but overall I have to say that this tea was unfortunately just not really my jam…

All that said, I’m still glad I got to experience it in a low commitment kind of way, and I would still probably encourage others to try it. It’s one of the most unique experiences I’ve had with sheng pu’erh in a long time!!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-LGDpiOG0l/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-LI98Q-rsg

Gongfu Sipdown (2637)!

This mini was added as a freebie in my last order!! This production reminds me a lot of W2T’s original version of this tea; thick and syrupy leaning liquor in terms of mouthfeel and a more soft, approachable vegetal taste profile. Still has that same green bell pepper note, but undercut by mellow peach skins and a more fresh, crisp note of romaine lettuce. A little artichoke, too. Not my usual vibe when it comes to raw pu’erh, but neither were the productions from previous years, and they still ended up finding a place within my pumidor. Maybe it’s my soft spot for huangpian and how incredibly budget friendly it tends to be…

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C95N5K3u_Jo/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqKybYscXC8

Gongfu!

Earlier this week, I got some tea mail with my most recent white2tea order! I mostly just got a bunch of dragonball samples of some of the new teas, but I did sneak in some of the loose version of W2T’s new Silver Fox white tea. I’m letting everything else in the order settle for a moment, but I couldn’t resist brewing something new up so today I enjoyed a short little park session with some juuuusstt ripe yellow plums. The plums proved to be a little too sweet for the tea so they mostly ended up being a post-session snack, but this bud heavy tea was pretty solid!! Soft, smooth and ever-so-slightly creamy mouthfeel with the faintest hint of pleasant astringency on the backend of the sip. Maybe it’s the design on the teacup subtly influencing me, but I also couldn’t help but think of the tea buds as looking like fuzzy like crab legs.

Taste wise, this is a delicate tea, but it has so many of the tasting notes I deeply enjoy in Bai Hao Yin Zhen and similar style white teas. Fresh cucumber pulp, a hints of sweet green melon or Asian pear, floral honeysuckle, and linden honey. Dewy, even. W2T describes it as whispy and bright, and I couldn’t agree more.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C9swUYxu4I6/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuQ0V3ZQeJc

Gongfu!

This tricky to categorize mini was one of the teas from my last order that I was most curious to try out. I had no idea what to expect, but right out of the gate this tea was INTERESTING. I know it rides a fine line between being a white or black tea, but to me I felt like I was getting the body of an aged white with more of the profile of a black tea. Such a unique hybrid with a stunning golden liquor. Sweet and milky but with savory undertones. My mind was immediately flooded with imagery of miso caramel, tres leches cake, white rabbit candies, and jammy caramelized onion. Clearly, one of those tasting notes stands out amongst the rest as a bit of an oddball, but this was such an amazing tasting tea, and all of those tasting notes just clicked together in a shockingly harmonious way.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C9u2W5-uxsb/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8BBZk18Oko

I find this tea to be a sort of, guilty pleasure, if you must. Millstone reminds me of the scalloped potatoes with ham and black pepper that my mom used to make every Christmas. It’s not super complex, but the flavor and scent brings me back to watching A Christmas Story as a kid. Yum. Mini from tea club.

Western brewed this 3 times now. Really impressed with it, wish I could buy more. I get no astringency at 3 minutes brewing time.

First couple of infusions smell smoky and even a little burnt. This note does not dominate but it’s definitely present in the liquor as well.
Soft taste with some astringency.
Mineral taste that makes way for sweet aftertaste.
There is also a distinct sour note that I do not care for.
Fairly energizing tea.

If you can get past the smoky and sour note, good intro into sheng puerh but I’d recommend spending a few extra bucks for a cake and pick up the 2023 Veldt,

7g/110ml
10/5/5/5/10/15/30/45/60/120 = 10 steeps
There was room for another couple of long steeps but I felt it wasn’t worth it.
95°C for the first 5 steeps, boiling for the rest.