2005 YQH Dingjipin
4.6g/70ml gaiwan, small sample. [5.9]
Dry leaf: slight smoke, sweet, wood, earthy
Wash: very mild, quite high compression
Wet leaf: very pungent, sweet, grains (oats?)
I had to break up the leaves by hand after a steep or two. Liquor is orange and cloudy, resulting in quite bright looking liquor.
Once I was able to break up the leaves, I got a lot quite quickly: strong salivation and returning sweetness and a lot of heat in the initial steeps. Distinct black tea assam note. In the early steeps very pungent florals, but these die after steep 5. Super pungent empty cup on Steep 3. Metallic+sweet aftertastes which grow to steep 5 and then decrease rapidly.
In steep 3-6 can feel a lot of strength penetrating the mouth surface, as well as numbness in the mouth, neck and down the arms, up to the face. Very early on – steep 3 – can feel the uplift sensation and shivers along with the face numbness. The face paralysis effect is quite relaxing and lasts till steep 7.
The overall viscosity of the tea is medium, but the mouth texture is nice and soft.
It may be that the compression of the tea resulted in a compressed experience — it flattened out after steep 7.
Overall this session was remarkably similar to that I had with the 2004 Simao Fangcha brick, including the face numbness, sudden death pungent florals, black tea notes, and strong/brief body effect.
