Camellia Sinensis added a small tin of this to my last order (which was mainly supplies for class) and I’ve been meaning to get to it for a while – I’ve pulled it out of the cupboard only for it to find its way back in without getting tried many, many times now. Finally I decided that tonight was the night to drink it. Procrastination be damned!
I had a nice, soft of informal gong fu session with this one during the early evening while I packed my lunch for work and made the syrups for a couple different tea sodas. 3g in my smaller celadon chawan. If I’m being honest, the different cups definitely blurred together and I’m not 100% sure how many I ended up having. Probably about five or six which is quite a lot for me…
That’s why I’m not reviewing this one on SororiTea Sisters even though I had initially planned to; I don’t feel like I drank it ‘consciously’ enough to put a review up for it there. Side note; my celadon ‘winged’ chawan I got from VariaTEA is looking really good now with all it’s little tea filled cracks. When I first started noticing them I kinda freaked out ‘cause I wasn’t aware that was a thing that A) was supposed to happen and B) would happen so quickly what with this being my first celadon piece. I love the way it looks now though.
Anyway; first couple of cups I observed a more distinct smokiness to the flavour and stronger malt and cocoa notes. Initially this was rather astringent (but not unreasonably so) but that faded quickly throughout each cup. There were some soft raisin notes, but they too soon subsided after the first three or so cups/infusions. A little woody; not as much as anticipated.
The last half of the session featured more floral notes, less malt, about the same level of cocoa notes and a light honey and lemon-like finish that was especially prominent with the second last cup, before the leaf was totally spent. Overall, every cup surprised me with the lack of briskness and the instead fairly mellow and well rounded flavour even in the first infusions where there was more astringency and that stronger smokey note.
Very pleasant overall, though not my favourite Camellia Sinensis offering that I’ve tried. This session used about a third (or possibly closer to half) of the small tin I got as an extra sample, and I kind of want to do something different with the rest of it instead of another Gong Fu session. The steeping instructions on the tin are Western style, maybe I’ll try that instead…
