Teaview: Bai Hao Yin Zhen from Umi Tea Sets

Recently the famous company Umi Tea Sets was kind and send me a nice package of Bai Hao Yin Zhen tea and a Yizing earth teapot as a gift.
Unfortunately the teapot broke during the trip ( Italian Posts are really terrible …), but at least the tea arrived healthy at its destination!

The first time I made this tea I used country water which I almost always use to make tea ceremonies and for most “informal” tastings. The tea, however, did not have the taste that I would have hoped it would and since the leaves were really beautiful I did not give up: I threw the old tea and prepared another one with a bottle of Santa Anna mineral water (the one I use for “important” tastings).

The leaves, as I said before, are truly beautiful: a bud-only tea with large, hairy, silky and silvery tips.
Opening the bag the scent of the leaves was really intense: a sweet apricot fragrance.
Picking up the leaves again after a few days that the package was open (but well closed and kept refrigerated) the smell had changed anyway and from apricot we had passed to a clearly perceptible aroma of watermelon.

Wet leaves do not have the same aroma as dry ones.
They still retain a sweet taste of sugar cane syrup.
The infusion has a light, slightly golden color, the consistency is fine and the body is thin but the taste remains very sweet (the sugar cane is still perceptible) and the aftertaste, just hinted, has a very light astringency and has final notes of caramel.

Thanks again to Umi Tea Sets ( www.umiteasets.com ) who appreciated my work in spreading the culture of tea, giving me this experience.