2000 Yi Wu "Huang Pian"

Infusions

1. Has a strong sweet & sour tang coupled with a buttery smooth mouthfeel. The tang is engaging and gives an experience similar to eating a sour gummy bear. There's a woody hay body that leads to a mid-level drying & complex finish. The finish is pulpy with some earthy vegetation.
2. Muscatel grape, a bit cotton candy-like, still punchy on the sour. Kind of like a shoumei on research chemicals. Leaves a lasting aftertaste like the same thing you get after eating sour-sugar coated candy. Much more fruity than the first infusion.
3. Some delicate smokiness, kind of like lightly smoked raisins which makes me want to try actually smoking raisins for a dessert. That sourness takes a couple of sips to punch through but it comes in with the same intensity, just delayed. Has some complex fruity funk with an umami grab around it. It's a balanced savory-floral-fruity kind of thing without domination by any one area.
4. Has a spicy grab on the throat with a candy aftertaste flavor throughout the mouth.
5. Really appreciating that dry Kunming storage on this tea. Curious about how the same material would taste aged parallel under different conditions. The body is staying in that strong raisin/muscatel grape realm but isn't too sweet by any means. I personally much prefer this to an Eastern Beauty, for example, where I find that muscatel sweetness and perfume can be on the verge of nauseating at times; this is much more controlled and balanced, sitting atop a hay-like thing.
6. Reminds me of diluted warm honey.
7. Sour tang has mostly dissipated now, leaving a sweet warmth in its wake and allowing more of the woody raisin and honey flavors to come to the front. A bit brothy in a nice way.
8. Floral spices and a good time
9. Has a mix of black tea and white tea flavors, kind of like Hot Brandy by w2t. Very interesting. No bitterness at all for the whole session.
10. Getting much more of a vegetal brothy backing kind of like celery. Steeped this about double the time of the previous and it pulled a tinge of the tang back out of the leaves again.
11. Very brothy, like a vegetable dashi made from carrots, celery, and onions.
12. I drank prolly 10 more steeps from here on and it maintained that brothiness and was very enjoyable. Could probably keep pushing it and boil the leaves on the stove to get more out of them.

I really liked this one - it's different and you should consider trying a sample