March 2018 White2Tea club time! This month is a whole 250 gram brick of 2009 Jingmai sheng puer and a sample of Autumn Auburn (ANBURN) black tea.
I honestly was most excited by the Anburn black. The spring harvest was in the September 2017 White2tea club, and it was the bomb! I squirreled away the rest of my Anburn black, and I’ll be hiding this one as well until I secure more.
That said, I’ll just be reviewing the 2009 Jingmai today. This tea is promised to have a clean, dry storage, with a floral smooth middle age taste. I had this brick rest open air for almost a month. It smelled a little tart when it arrived, so I think the rest did some good.
Dry Leaf and Steeping Method
The leaf smells how like an antique store smells.
The brick is tightly compressed but has just enough brittle to make pieces come off without total disaster. I used 1 gram of tea per 14ml of vessel size, gongfu style with boiling water, and a single rinse. The hot leaf smells like a hot antique store.
2009 Jingmai steeps up a bronzey gold peach.
First and Second Infusion: The 2009 Jingmai is surprisingly sweet with notes of honey with a background of herbs. The aftertaste makes me breathe out a tobacco flavor. The texture is nice, being chunky slick. There is no dryness or bitterness, but there is some salivation, giving me a bit of drool after at each sip.
Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Infusion: Flavor is hitting maximum. The flavor is sweet, little dried out potpourri floral, and slightly medicinal. 2009 Jingmai is also edging a bit towards a bitter note. Oddly, there is a freshness to this tea, slightly leaning menthol and tobacco, but without being offensive. I quite like the salivation while I drink this. Not sure what the Tea Owls think of salivation… does it help with owl pellets?
Each infusion gets sharper and a bit more bitter. By the seventh infusion, there is an astringency making the tip of my tongue feel dry.
Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Infusion: 2009 Jingmai is starting to settle down and lose steam quickly. The tea isn’t sweet anymore and the dominant flavors is this bitter herb sharpness and a little tobacco that lingers in the roof of my mouth. Each infusion gets lighter in telling apart flavors, but more bitter in taste.
Comments
2009 Jingmai features a clean dry storage with a chunk of aging already done. I’ve had plenty of young Jingmai, which leans floral and sweet, and it was nice to taste the sweetness despite the age. The flavors of tobacco and medicinal were an interesting contrast. Overall, a fairly consistent tasting tea with some awesome early infusions. Figure there is still work to do to kill off the bitterness in the later infusions. I wonder if this will go more medicinal and tobacco as it goes on, or go more like the early smells of junk shop and library?
For $42 for a tea with a chunk of age and a clean storage is a nice deal. This tea is great if you want to try something with age without a big investment and prefer dry storage. In addition, it was also a deal getting a $42 brick of tea in the White2Tea club, which is $30 a month. Deals like this is why I’ve been in the club so long… and tea addiction.
