Crafted Leaf Tea

Gongfu!

I seem to be craving white tea today, so brewing up this 2019 Wild Baimudan sample I received for free from Crafted Leaf Teas this evening! My tea, earlier today, was interrupted by the fire alarm and an apartment evacuation (everything is fine!) So finally back to relaxing for the evening. This is really nice, it has the sweet and refreshing vegetal notes that I love in baimudan like cucumber skin & pulp, and sweet and almost floral garden peas! However, there’s also an interesting top note that’s like a moderately ‘Sharp’ hit of lemon juice. It’s exactly what I was craving for the evening!

To be honest, the worst part of the fire alarm earlier is that I was brewing tea while watching the series finale of The 100 (a show I have put seven years of investment into) and the alarm went off right in the middle of the episode just at a VERY emotionally charged moment. So I evacuated with a fully puffy face and red eyes from sobbing like a little emotional baby.

I don’t want to talk about the finale yet – I have mixed feelings and am too emotionally exhausted after it…

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CF23FApgXro/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSpJT4-splY&ab_channel=TomRosenthal

I had a Western steeped mug of this on Thursday and I really enjoyed it a lot. More so, I think, than my last tasting of it which was Grandpa steeped. I found the flavour very fresh and light to medium bodied with sweet floral character that seemingly danced on my palate. We’re talking notes of lilac, peony, and magnolia that seemed almost magical. The finish had that weird “fresh linen” note that sounds kind of strange until you taste it – but just fresh, clean, and Spring-like. It was a bit green, but no rough edges to the flavour. Everything seems to roll together seamlessly.

It was one of the better cups I had during the week, and thus I feel the need to marginally increase my previous rating of 78…

Grandpa style while I work from home today – just eyeballed some leaf and tossed it into a cup…

It’s smooth with sweet liquor and an enchanting bouquet of heady floral aromas! In terms of taste, I’m getting a lot of lilac, which always makes me nostalgic for the lilac bushes from summers spent visiting my grandparents as a child!! Coating in the mouth & very long linger after the sip.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CC86P2DAWbQ/

The cup is one of the new ones I picked up from my Cameliia Sinensis mini haul last weekend; I think it’s going to be perfect for grandpa brewing!! It’s also hard to believe, but this is the “decluttered” version of my at home tea desk – before I only had space for tea OR a laptop, and now I can fit both!!

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5QQjqiw7mQ

I like white tea, but they typically are either too powerful or too soft. This one started out quite strong, but after the second infusion, it died down, a lot. I used 9g/120ML, but the strength of the tea wasn’t there. Yes, the notes were present, but I had to use full on boiling water to bring them out; which hadn’t helped much with bringing those notes out.

I liked that it started out strong, but I didn’t like that the strength of flavor backed a way after the first steep.

Flavor profile: soft mineral notes, with a slight milkiness to the mouthfeel. I wanted more, but it just wasn’t there.

This is a very green raw puerh. Light vegetal notes throughout the session. I had to push the tea a bit to get a lot of flavor out of it. I started the session with 195F water, but boiling the water and increasing the infusions from 10-20 seconds, to 20-40 seconds helped release more of those prominent vegetal notes (while testing the boundaries of the tea).

I think that the tea is soft, uninteresting. Honestly, this would be a good tea to give to a newbie; experiencing raw tea for the first time. It doesn’t get bitter, unless you REALLY work at it, like I had. It’s not astringent—which is a plus for a beginner—but, I wish that it might’ve been. I find myself relying too much on those bitter/astringent notes these days.

Anyway, it’s a nice tea, but one that I’ve outgrown, as my journey has progressed forward.