I purchased 2018 Jingmai Sun-Dried Three Aroma Bai Mu Dan on a recommendation, and I went all in at a 250 gram bag because that’s how I roll with white tea. My brain auto thinks I need puer cake weight for the long term.
By the way, if you have never purchased this much loose white tea before, it is a total PITA due to the volume it takes. I need to find a way to store this stuff.
Leaf and Steeping Instructions
Jingmai Sun-Dried Three Aroma is a rustic chunky stemmy leaf with mostly wide green leaves with some fuzzy buds and red pieces. Overall, the tea is quite green looking. The scent is a bomb of floral hay, sweet, and cucumbers.
I admit I had this tea a number of times, adjusting ratios and temperatures as I couldn’t replicate results in other reviews, so I have simply given up and will just face the tea as how I thought it tasted best. I use 1 gram of tea to 18ml of vessel size, 200F. If I went too low on the temperature the white tea comes out too light in flavor. I found boiling water cooked the Jingmai Three Aroma into a bitter stew and this tea likes a bit more leaf than usual. However, this white tea does fine with boiling water and you only have time for no more than three infusions.
The hot leaf smells like squeaky sweet grass and tulip stems.
Tasting of Yunnan Sourcing’s 2018 Jingmai Sun-Dried Three Aroma Bai Mu Dan White Tea
First and Second Infusion: Jingmai Sun-Dried Three Aroma Bai Mu Dan is bright, clean and crystally. It sips in squeaking like cleaning glass. The flavor is floral and light, leaning again on tulips, gnawing on sugar cane, with a slight golden kiwi vibe.
Third and Fourth Infusion: The first time I heard someone say a tea has the texture of glass I laughed. I pictured drinking creatine, aka shards safety glass and cement mix. I now understand, or at least attribute the sharp squeakiness of this Jingmai Three Aroma as “glass texture” due to the light astringency. This tea makes my mouth squeak and my teeth feel polished, I had a chuckle thinking about using this as window cleaner.
The notes are vegetal, having lost the floral. It is a cucumber with a slight hint of sweet orchard grass hay. Some sips have a mealy pear note. I like this infusion best, it reminds me back in the 2000s when everything was cucumber melon/fruit scented as it was thought as an aphrodisiac. Jingmai Three Aroma is fresh, green, sweet, vegetal just like that scent.
Fifth and Sixth Infusion: This is where I have problems steeping this tea. It runs out of steam, so it is a balancing act of either getting a good cup, flavorless cup, or astringent. Thankfully I paid attention to timing and did okay here. It sips in a slightly bitter tulip, with a nice lingering aftertaste of fresh cucumbers and more floral.
Seventh and Eighth Infusion: First sip is creamy honey, but it quickly slips stewed bitter and makes the back of my teeth dry out as if I slept with my mouth open. I only steeped it for 1 minute. The eighth infusion I let it go for 5 minutes, and it was drinking straight green peppers and bitter, while my mouth got sandblasted dry. I think she’s done.
Comments
Yunnan Sourcing’s Jingmai Sun-Dried Three Aroma Bai Mu Dan, at its youthful state of a 2018 tea being tasted in Fall 2018, is a green, vibrant, crisp vegetal, floral and sweet white tea. It does take special care to brew if you want many re-infusions, so don’t lose track of time or beat it up with mystery temperature water. As is, this is a white tea for those who also enjoy green teas. It is a tea for peeps who love delicately aromatic teas, not types like me who beat their teas into submission. I did serve the Jingmai Sun-Dried Three Aroma at my aged white tea tasting, used as a baseline for a young tea. It came out quite well as steeping at boiling, 3 infusions, stacked into a single pitcher for a group.
I think it has lots of potential for the long term. Those sweet and pear notes I’m hoping will get better with age, along with a reduction of bitterness and astringency. I figure it’ll get more hay-like as it ages into the awkward phase in the next year or two.
Either way, Jingmai Sun-Dried Three Aroma Bai Mu Dan is inexpensive, right now $5.75 for 50 grams, or $22 for that 250 gram bag. This tea is also available at YunnanSourcing.US for US shipping. It comes in loose and cake form. Admittedly, I would have purchased the cake if it was available at the time and I may still purchase it. Be aware that pressing a tea into cakes changes the profile, so likely the cake will taste different.
