It was a beautiful spring afternoon today. When I pulled out the sample of Scott's Yi Bang from my sample bag, I did not know it would become even more beautiful. Looking it up in my notes from previous times, I see I noted "very interesting, taste once more when having more time". I had two hours available before digging into subsumption architecture of agents so I thought I'd spend them with this tea... and with our new orchid:
Dry leaves smelled quite tender, grassy and honey sweet (the interesting thing is that the honey did not appear in taste).
Wet leaves got me immediately - this is one of "while (true) do sniff();" teas. Lively fruitiness - almost like of certain good specimen of lucha (I've had one wonderful sample from Honza of Chawangshop, I think it is similar, if not the same as Yunnan Sourcing's Jade Pole - certainly looks the same). Except, of course, with more depth.
Now, incidentally, my speakers (or Johnny Cash in them) sing "the taste of love is sweet" - just when I wanted to write about the taste of this Yi Bang. Well... it is sweet too. As opposed to certain Yi Wu cakes, it is much more than that. Its very fruity and fresh, playful. The fruitiness is really like that of Jade pole lucha, but this tea has more pronounced sugarcane sweetness, thickness and certain "puerh depth". And a bit of sweet grain taste, which I quite like. "This is a proper puerh" says my girlfriend and I can only agree.
The taste lasts long, hui gan intense and the tea gives very good mouthfeel - although the mouth tickling comes later than usual, it does come. The tea numbed my mouth in a pleasant and relaxing way (so that touching anything with tongue feels funny, but keeping the tongue very acute to taste).
Around the 4th brew, bitterness did come, but it is also pleasant, nondisturbing (at least for me). Also, it transforms to long-term fruity taste. The bitterness lasted till the end of the tea session.
There is really nothing unpleasant about this tea and there are many pleasant aspects. Above the very good taste performance, it feels good and has a great stamina (it lasted almost 2 litres of water while i generally use 1 and a bit). Definitely shows that not all autumnal cakes have to be mediocre and short-lived.
Big thanks to Scott for making such a lovely tea!
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