I have been away from Steepster for a while, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t drinking tea :D
I spent the last 2 weeks in Brazil, at a conference and then traveling around. Along the way I would drink tea with my Kamjove all-in-one teapot and a camping stove. Now that I am back home with my usual setup, I can resume the tea reviews :)
Let’s move on to the tea then. This autumn sheng from Jinggu is predominately bitter, with vegetal, floral and tart qualities supplementing it. Overall, there is a lot of complexity though with many more subtleties.
The dry leaf aroma is quite strong and reminds me mostly of beeswax and yuzu. On the other hand, the wet leaves do not have too strong of a smell. It is vegetal and at times woody, with notes like strawberry leaf and celery root.
Taste-wise, the tea is bitter from the get go. In the early steeps, the taste progression is something like: bitter initially, followed by vegetal notes (celery, fenugreek) and tart finish, savoury (matured cheese) aftertaste that becomes more like fermented fruits over time. I found it refreshing and somewhat metallic. Later steeps are more floral (rapeseed) with a spicy and peppery finish. I also get sugarcane and some mildly earthy and dry grass tones.
The mouthfeel is smooth, milky and mouth-watering generally. Overall, it seems like a good candidate for aging. It can be drunk right now if you are ok with a decent bitterness, the complexity is there. However, it is far from my favourite in terms of the taste profile.
Flavors: Bitter, Black Pepper, Celery, Citrus, Dry Grass, Earth, Floral, Fruity, Honey, Metallic, Milk, Smooth, Spicy, Strawberry, Sugarcane, Tart, Vegetal, Wood
