A Tea Addict's Journal

Mystery cakes abound in Taiwan. I found another one this weekend, and since it looked good enough and is cheap enough, decided to give it a spin.

First let’s take a look at the mystery cake in question:

The shadow in the bottom is a lighting thing — the cake looks quite even throughout actually

As you can see… lots of tips, furry, and light in colour. I thought, when I saw the cake, that it looked pretty good. The leaves look robust (at least in person). When I tasted it at the store…. it was a little bland, it seemed, but the guy used very little leaves. I thought I should buy one and try it out in person, so I did.

I used a gaiwan today, so as to not have any interference from the teaware in the preparation of the tea.

The tea is interesting. There’s a surprising smoothness early on, even though I used quite a bit of tea. The tea still tastes very new — at most two years of age, but perhaps even less than that. The taste is mellow. Some bitterness is there, but on the whole, not very bitter at all, but also not too sweet either. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but I think this is probably Lincang tea.

There’s some throatiness as well as some qi, and the tea generally held up very well over the course of the afternoon (holed up with a minor typhoon — mostly rain and not much wind). The under-the-lid smell is that of a properly made puerh — no aroma, really, aside from the normal smell you’d come to expect. I find that if a tea is odd in some ways, the lid will be aromatic instead of neutral or even has a bit of that “green” odor.

The leaves of the cake, when wet, is the most impressive part

They look very good. I wonder if I should get more of this thing. I’m really unsure, at this point. Perhaps it’s best to sit on it and try it again some time down the road….