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Long rinse/steep the first: barnyaaaaaaaaard! I half-forget about these classic aromas, then stumble into one and feel hella joy.

Saponin bubbles on every steep in my ceramic pot. Pours progressed super quickly from reddish gold to hong-colored. Now this is another tea that has me wondering about the processing — it’s only 3 years old, but brewing quite red/dark already. So was it oxidized further than traditional sheng puerh, and is it meant for young drinking? Will it age up into something else, or are we looking at what it’s destined to be right now? I’d absolutely call this more tannic than bitter.

Wet dog and apricot in the second, opens up to some poppy red fruit/berries and fuller mouthfeel in the third. Oof, yeah, that mouthfeel is nice.

Fruity tobacco on the wet leaf. The fruit here is interesting; I wouldn’t necessarily call this sheng sweet, but fruity for sure. Kind of bright-tannic and lightly malty as well — which aligns with the color of the liquor if we’re talking about processing edging closer to hongcha territory, I guess. Hm.

The huigan really starts coming alive now — juicy in the way that makes you smack your jaw around. The tannins are a little touchy — one steep after that, it felt like they tried to step in with a NO MORE SMACKING sign. I smacked anyway, and it worked.

There’s something about this that reminds me vaguely of my mother’s iced tea; bags brewed hot and crisp, with a healthy dose of lemon juice and just enough sugar to take the edge off (“My sister makes it too goddamn sweet!”). All this with a side of damp canine plopped in your lap, scootching for pets. Ah, home.

Thank you very much, derk. This was fun.