Dry leaf: Soft, feathery. This is truly one of the most unique teas I’ve encountered in the tactile sense. Notes of sweet potato, cocoa, and malt in the scent.
Preparation notes: 4 g. leaf in my cute little gaiwan and served in my new Tea Merchant cups. I need to post a picture; it was quite the “squee” experience.
Steep one: 10 seconds. Starchy, honey, peppery, in that order. A sweet spiciness and thick, velvety mouthfeel. Honey brown/amber liquor. Sweeter even as the cup cools down.
Steep two: 15-20 seconds. Liquor is a darker brown mahogany. A cocoa note shines through while the cup is still hot. Less honeyed, more straight starch (white potato and not sweet potato). Savory and brothy notes after the cocoa faded out. As it cools, honey fades back in and sweetness returns. Only the Golden Fleece.
Steep three: 30 seconds. Slightly lighter liquor, caramel sweetness in the smell. This steep tastes like the leaves initally felt – fuzzy and soft. Cocoa in first sips, then caramel. Surprisingly a lot weaker in flavor. Will lengthen the next steeping to see if I can fix this.
Steep four: 1 minute. Sweet honey notes, still weaker than I’d like. Sweet potato in the flavor so far.
Steep five: 3 minutes. A red brown liquor but weak flavor. Starting to become a bit astringent.
….I did all those steepings in one afternoon, and saved the leaves to come back to today.
Steep six: 6 minutes. The dry leaf smells really sweet – sugar and vanilla. This is a cocoa heavy steep but it wasn’t just my tastebuds yesterday – this is weak. I’m kind of dumb, though, and didn’t reduce the volume of water in my gaiwan to concentrate flavor. This is starting to be noticeably bitter – will reduce the steeping volume, lengthen the time, and give it one last shot to see what happens.
Steep seven: 12 minutes. Nope. I think the leaves have been spent. It’s just bitter at this point. I really should drink my stash of this down before it gets any older because I think at this point age is the problem. Sigh. Oh well, this is why I’m focused on trying to drink down what I have.
Even spent its miles above so many teas though!
