2010 CNNP 迎春香 (CNNP Welcome Spring in LP’s listing).
5.3g, 90 mL gaiwan. Brita filtered tap, boiling. 2x 10s rinses.
Steeps of various times, and more one note past say 4-ish steeps. Opens up slightly woody, with a bitterness running mostly throughout the beginning, but can pop up again later with kill steeps. Sort of medicinal by some stretch, and definite HK basement/humid taste. Some very slight floral or mint (?) aspect and varying levels of sweetness in aftertaste, along with a pepper-y taste. Maybe some dirt, very light mushroom, and coming close to beet/geosmin territory on 4th steep, but definitely present after. Pretty darkened color for a 2010 tea, so definitely HK storage at work.
I was wondering why I never reviewed this, but I don’t think I ever got around to trying it out of the Spring sampler teas from my first LP purchase (a couple weeks short of 1 year ago!!) until now. I can’t remember if I still have the rest somewhere, but it’d be interesting to maybe go back and compare. I doubt I’d have enjoyed HK humid stored tea early on, so it’s good I’m trying this now I suppose. Wouldn’t cake for personal taste, but it’s not bad, and right in daily drinker price range ($84/400g). Given how much my preferences have shifted in this year, I wouldn’t count on this being a safe blind bet, unless one already knows they really like HK humid stored sheng and are willing to drink through a whole 400g of it. This reminds me in many ways of the Changtai ‘03 Jinzhushan from MrMopar, which makes me wonder how much I can actually distinguish teas and storage at this point. Going off of memory, JZS is a bit more mellow, given the extra years of age, but at the same time, the mushroom and geosmin notes on JZS may be stronger. At this time, my impression of both of these now is that storage has taken over in determining taste, so I don’t know how much I agree with the descriptor for this that “it has the ability to shift dramatically within ones storage as the fate of it’s taste/aromatics is not completely set yet”. Shift? Sure. Dramatically? Less sure.
