This is a pretty typical red tea with a couple of nice twists.
Nose, there are honey and slight malt notes, but with longer steeping there is also mushroom, earth, and red wine with a slight salty note.
Palate, honey, sugar, light brothy flavor, humus, it can be steeped for a very long time without any tannic notes or bitterness.
Drinking tea is fairly new, but have had good wines for many years, so that is my perspective…
I generally brew in small ( under 200 cc and often under 100 cc ) pots either Japanese Tokoname or Chinese Yixing. I vary my steeping times a lot before I decide on tasting notes — I take a sort of experimental approach, gong fu one time, western short steeping another, vary the water temp, etc. to see what the tea will offer. Also, I will take notes on different days since what one brings to a cup one day will not be the same the next. I rate teas somewhat the same way as I rate wines, with over 90 being excellent, and over 95 being truly remarkable — even once in a lifetime. Over 85 very good, over 80 good.
USA
