A white tea that is roasted and packed in bamboo. Because of this processing, the leaves are broken up more than usual, so it has a pretty strong, punchy, slightly bitter start for a white tea. However, it mellows out on subsequent steeps and develops a nice fruity sweetness with good hui gan.
A very fresh shade-dried white tea, so the leaves on the cake are silver and fluffy and the flavors are very floral and mild. Relaxing and helped me pull through wrapping up a chapter draft in the afternoon (hehe). The sweetness develops over time with a really peachy undertone popping out on the third steep, then fading back to mingle with the light floral taste.
This is a delightfully complex oolong that brings a bunch of nice flavors together. The first steep comes on strong with a sort of tang combined with creaminess that is really unique, and both those flavors chill out in later steeps to blend with the herby and mildly fruity aftertaste.
Good again! The green apple taste really hit on the first steep this time, tasty.
I got some supposedly-chocolatey ripe puers from White2Tea because I was down to about 2-3 sessions worth of the 2013 w2t brick they included in one of their subscription boxes. That one had underwhelmed me before I had a gaiwan but preparing it gongfu style unlocked the very smooth, rich flavors an aged tea like that had... which end up weirdly being a tiiiny bit like dark chocolate brownie batter in terms of taste and mouthfeel. Weird and heavenly.
This one didn't quite reach that level... The first steep was the very basic "wet leaf" flavor a lot of these have with a slightly worrying chalky/fishy taste under it. But over time it deepened to a very dark steep that started getting at the thicker soup and slightly chocolatey tastes I wanted. I'll play with it some more...
A tea coin... this seems to be a popular style of convenience packaging for a few manufacturers lately. It's undeniably more convenient to have the exact amount you need rather than having to break up and weigh parts of a larger tea cake. However, I was hesitant about the long soaking, given that I usually just rinse leaves and then do quick steeps, starting at 10 and adding 5-10 secs each time. My delicate scents and flavors!! I usually break up the White2Tea minis by hand rather than soaking them too. But in this case I gave it a try. The rinse water was very light and the tea overall seemed to respond to a session of several steeps like I expected... so I guess it's fine?
This tea is surprisingly smooth and subtle from the start given the freshness of the material, alongside the typical raw puer grassiness, and has a bit of a creamy, earthy undertone that surprised me. The huigan also has some nice fruity and floral elements to it.
I'll probably be singing the praises of this tea every time I drink it. It's a little pricy, and the brick format is one of the more stubborn ones to get apart that I've had. But it's worth the effort! The leaves break up a bit more in processing, so just 4oz of this tea will do. It's wonderfully rosy in the cup, and starts with a bright, refreshing sour apple type taste then chills out over steeps to a smooth, sweet yet complex, slightly floral oolong flavor.
What a difference a year makes! The initial intensity of the really fresh tea is wayyy smoothed out now. It still is a little bitter on the later/stronger steeps in a way that brings about a strong "returning sweetness," but overall the taste is now much less grassy and much more strong on a sort of brown sugar sweetness with an apricotty aftertaste.
A very fresh tea from White 2 Tea's Tea Club. Opening the cake, there was this immediate grassy/manure type smell similar to Green Hype, but with a bit more dirt and sweetness. Because it's so fresh, the initial taste is very punchy and a bit bitter, but with an underlying peachy sweetness I'm excited to see develop. I might compare it to the 2024 cake that's been aged for a year tomorrow.
Starts out with a sweet warmth similar to toy glass candy mixed with a bit of salty grassiness. The sweetness also becomes a little more plant-y as you go. Energizing, good for many steeps.
After a brisk autumn walk on my day off, I wanted something that was kind of like fallen leaves with a slight touch of decay. That's almost exactly what this tea smells like, with a mild layer of sweet creaminess once brewed. I had three steeps while setting up this new page on the blog, and they were smooth and earthy throughout.