Fall is here and it is perfect black tea drinking weather! Today I’ll be checking out White2Tea’s 2019 WTCCCTV black tea cake sample I purchased with my last White2Tea order. 2019 WTCCCTV is a puer varietal large leaf tea, sun-dried to black tea, then compressed into 200 gram cakes.
Leaf and Steeping Method
The black tea has a sweet, malty, and fruity scent.
With a rinse, the leaf smells like grapes. I used 1 gram of leaf per 15ml of vessel size, gongfu steeped in boiling water.
Tasting of White2Tea’s 2019 WTCCCTV Black Tea
First and Second Infusion: 2019 WTCCCTV Black Tea is cotton candy fluffy and thick to drink. The profile is sweet potato and grapes with a touch of honey. Some sips taste like a stale dried nectarine. The texture is balmy feeling to drink.
Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Infusion: The sun-dried oxidation inconsistency starts shining on steep three with a hint of bitterness and astringency. One thing that is quite distinct in WTCCCTV is a light profile from the sun drying. It is the opposite of White2Tea’s Arbor Red black tea, which is strong and chest hair inducing. The flavor pokes out green grapes, skin, and twigs, with a yam and stone fruit finish.
Seventh and Eighth Infusion: 2019 WTCCCTV Black Tea has lightened more, tasting like sweet potato with a bit of marshmallow on top. The finish has a dry bitterness like I found some potato peel in there disrupting the fluffy tea.
Ninth and Tenth Infusion: The tea has shifted again, sipping in with an interesting sweet mineral that goes incense smoke and savory, with a long dryness.
Eleventh and Twelfth Infusion: The final infusions of 2019 WTCCCTV Black Tea sip in sweet and minerally, like sucking on sugared wet crystals. The tea then turns softly peaty before the strong dryness sets in and deserts my throat.
Comments
White2Tea’s 2019 WTCCCTV Black Tea is a lighter profiled sun-dried black tea with notes of yam, grapes, and honey that finishes with savory notes. This tea is sweet and on the delicate side, so it does get bitter and dry a few steeps in. It is a long session for a black tea, with a number of flavor changes, making this for a tea to sit down and enjoy. WTCCCTV would likely be best at a lower temperature like 200F/ 93c, though like other pressed black tea cakes, it might have some interesting changes in a year.
If you like fruity, light, and complex black teas over the rich malty ones, WTCCCTV might be for you. It does come with a heft of a price tag, at this time $97 for a 200 gram cake, as it is a labor-intensive tea, nice leaf, under 2019 spring harvest drought. Out of White2tea’s recent black tea cakes, I’d still put Arbor Red as the best, despite my personal prefers WTCCCTV. Either way, 2019 WTCCCTV Black Tea is quite good and what I hoped Sugar Rush was.
Happy Hootyween! Owloween?
