The leaves are extremely large and irregular, so much so that they don't even fit in my regular strainer.
Fun fact that I just learned: All images of teas on De Theefabriek's product pages are in exactly the same scale, and are 5 x 5 cm squares in real life. This helps give a sense of the size of the leaves.

The tea smells and tastes very nutty like some oolongs I've tried, in a way that somehow reminds me of autumn leaves. However, it also has some vegetal flavour in the background and is recognisable as a green tea. I'm not usually a fan of nutty teas but this one is nicely balanced with the freshness of green tea in the first steeping. Unexpected but good. However, in the second steeping the nuttiness dominates too much for my liking.
It's sold per 30 grams, which makes sense considering the low density. It quite nearly fills up De Theefabriek's standard package (which can contain 90 grams of other teas).

EDIT: I accidentally oversteeped it by a great deal, but surprisingly it's not bitter at all and has very little sourness. It's smooth and soft and doesn't leave the mouth dry. I'm not sure if I used lots of leaf or not - with the large, irregular leaves I'm left guessing whether the amount of leaf I use is more than it seems or less than it seems - but either way, it's a surprising result. I don't really recommend steeping it for extremely long times, but it could have been a lot worse (imagine forgetting about your young hyson for over ten minutes...).

I'm still not such a fan of the nutty aroma/flavour, but that's just personal preference.

EDIT: I used an (I think) relatively large amount of leaves in a teapot and many steepings with boiling water. First steeping about half a minute, second and third only a few seconds, fourth and fifth over two minutes.
The first two or three cups still taste nutty, but after that the aroma changes. It's soft and fresh and kind of fruity. I really like that!

Add your own review

Login or Sign Up to comment on this review.