This tea was a pleasant confection of fruit beginning with longan dominating over a plum note and than switching dominance during the later steeps, consistent cocoa notes, butter caramel, that morphed to honey in the middle steeps, and ended in cane sugar, a roasted grain note, cashew butter, and malt that really only became strongly apparent in the later steeps and blended well with the plum cocoa notes. The early steeps were really buttery in texture and the flavours blended well together creating the impression of a sweet nutty, caramel cocoa confection with a bit of tartness. The broth does become thinner and slightly astringent in later steeps. Although this is a light tea it really does have a nice intensity flavours with my favourite steeps being perhaps the second and third one.
I steeped one heaping TSP of this tea at 92*C in 225 ml of water. The leaves are long, dark roughly wound, wiry strips that smell of cocoa and longan. My steeping times were 60,60,80,120,180,240s and 5 min. Onced brewed I had a golden broth touched by brown which became redder in later steeps. The tea smelled of longan, butter caramel and cocoa. Altogether a nice light tea. I especially like the nutty tones and the way the tea blends the cocoa, longan and caramel tones so that neither becomes dominant over each other. Thanks *boychik* for sending me the fall 2013 harvest for me to try. I am happy I have some of the spring tea heading my way!
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