The most aromatic white peony I've sampled yet.

Dry leaf looks much lighter and with more downy tips than usual for this type of tea. Aroma of the dry leaf is intensely floral and delicate, with melon-like tones that I normally only encounter in silver needle.

When brewed as recommended, there is only a hint of the autumn leaf fragrance that I like in bolder white teas. Besides the melon and floral qualities, there are fairly strong tones of vanilla as well in the aroma. Light body. Very little astringency and only a faint sourness.

Produced a second cup which was similar in character to a more typical white peony; it had a slightly darker color and more of the autumn leaf fragrance. There was a little left in the leaf for a third cup but it had somewhat of a soapy aroma.

As is usually the case with lighter white teas, I actually preferred using a smaller amount of leaf, and brewing a single, very long (10-15 min.) infusion. This produced a dark cup with a rich aroma of vanilla, flowers, melon, autumn leaves, and spice. I found this cup to be more complex and much richer. Remarkably, there was almost no astringency.

When I used more leaf and a briefer infusion, I was able to produce a very bold, flavorful, but light and crisp cup. This cup had a light color but a particularly crisp, almost metallic taste and feeling on the palate.

I think this is my favorite white peony or bai mu dan that I've sampled yet, and among my favorite white teas.

Excellent price too for a tea of this quality.

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Comments:

Tuirgin wrote: on October 19th, 2014

I've just tried this tea—it's quite good. When you use less tea for a longer steep, how much tea do you use?

Alex Zorach wrote: on October 19th, 2014

This tea is sort of hard to quantify how much leaf I use--because the leaf takes up a lot of space. So like, while I normally use about a teaspoon of leaf per cup, for a tea with as big a leaf as this one, I'd normally use way more than a teaspoon...but that might end up being about the same weight by grams.

I don't have a scale...but...my intuition / guess is that on a typical tea, brewing it more strongly (like I like doing for a lot of black tea nad some green tea) I use around 2.5 grams of leaf per cup...but on this one I probably like using closer to 1-1.5 grams of leaf per cup.

Tuirgin wrote: on October 19th, 2014

Thanks. I'll have to experiment on what I have left. I was shocked how much leaf it took to get to the recommended weight.

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