A quick swipe along the edges of the inside of the packet with your finger. Preferably. When you pull your finger out you will find it somewhat covered in white hairs. These glorious beings are trichomes. Aren’t they cute?
Dry aroma: This smells like a typical white tea to me. If someone were to ask me when you think of white tea what comes to mind? It would be this scent. Obviously, there are plenty of different white teas with different aromas so I’m not saying they all smell like this. Just saying overall, this is a popular white tea aroma. Sort of a barnyard mix of scents. Dry bale of hay and tall dry summer grasses.
Dry appearance: Very beautiful. Various hues of green ranging from dark green to olive green and plenty of silvery hairs. The pluck seems to be standard with bud, first, and second leaves present. Long stems, some also covered in hair. Actually, a lot of them are.
Inital aroma: Intense and saturated barnyard hay. Shifting slightly to summer floral and fresh spinach notes.
Flavor: 30 seconds. I know it’s longer than the package recommends but I wanted to give it a little push. Slightly bitter with notes of herbal liquors. This would pair well with 43. Very fresh broccoli and kale. And now let’s push a little more. We took the same water from the one above and just steeped it a bit longer for one minute. The bitterness definitely ramped up. Though there is a lot of leaf in there so I know that’s part of the bitterness issue. Can of green beans? Creamed green beans? Something like that but mainly lots of barnyard hay.
This is a good white tea. But I’m not finding anything overly special about it.