White Tea -Wild gongmei

When I opened the bag, the floral scent touched my nose. This natural sweetness cheered me up. Even under the hot weather like today in Sofia, I felt instant freshness.

The best part about this tea is the dry appearance. It is truly beautiful. Various hues of green ranging from dark green to olive green and plenty of silvery hairs. The pluck seems to be standard with bud, first, and second leaves present. Long stems and many covered with silvery hair as well. This smells like a typical white tea to me. If someone were to ask me when you think of white tea what comes to mind? It would be this scent. Obviously, there are plenty of different white teas with different aromas so I’m not saying they all smell like this. Just saying overall, this is a popular white tea aroma. Sort of a barnyard mix of scents. Dry bale of hay and tall dry summer grasses.

Inital aroma: Intense and saturated barnyard hay. Shifting slightly to summer floral and fresh spinach notes.

Flavor: 30 seconds. I know it’s longer than the package recommends but I wanted to give it a little push. Slightly bitter with notes of herbal liquors. This would pair well with 43. Very fresh broccoli and kale. And now let’s push a little more. We took the same water from the one above and just steeped it a bit longer for one minute. The bitterness definitely ramped up. Though there is a lot of leaf in there so I know that’s part of the bitterness issue. Can of green beans? Creamed green beans? Something like that but mainly lots of barnyard hay.

This is a good white tea. But I’m not finding anything overly special about it.

This tea has a thickness to it and feels smooth and silky in my mouth. It has notes of flowers and vanilla, with a lingering powdered sugar like sweetness. Delicious.

The tea has extremely refreshing taste and aroma. If some of you ever tried yerba mate green it share some simmilarities with it. In aroma of the dry leaves we can spot notes of mowned grass, green aroma some fruity notes in the bacground, very fresh smell. Post brewed leaves also shares alot of the freshness, which dominates the smell, some green sweetness and subtle floral notes are also spottable. In terms of taste it's very unique for a white tea, extraordinary fresh and green notes which are the most prominent (as it was with the smell too). They are complemented with some floral notes and subtle sweetness. Defininietely worth a try if you like fresh or refreshing taste in tea.

Nice nose of fresh hay and a light citrusy taste. It gave us hints of starfruit aroma. It reminded us of a baimudan and strangely also a bit of a green Anxi oolong, like hairy crab. It was a bit special for me, as I have never had a white tea, with that prominent citrusy note. The aftertaste was also especially long lasting. We liked it very much.