2015 Zheng Si Long Walong

// Published November 14, 2018 by mgualt

Thanks to Matt’s investigation of the Zheng Si Long offerings by Teaencounter, and after meeting Mr. Zheng through the charming documentary by Jinghong Zhang, I decided to try the ZSL 2015 Walong.

The initial warmed/dampened leaf has a deep pungency, very nice tomato vine activity. No off smells, no mustiness, no geosmin, very clean storage.  Plenty of stems, some woodiness, and tight twisted leaves. Stems tend towards red, and this is consistent with not overly green processing. Good appearance of material.

1. Thick, sweet, slightly watery. Good aroma. Yellow-orange. Very clean. Can feel depth in rear throat right away. Light astringency. Excitement, inspiration, and vision clarity.
2. Dark yellow colour. Very good sweet aftereffect. Bittersweet arrival. There is some green power coming through, but with good sweetness in the aftertaste.  Immediate arrival is blank, but then there is a very nice development. Briny sweetness, I love that briny note.  getting quite a lot of energy.  Quite some greenness but not veering into oolong territory. No storage funk or mustiness on wet leaf.
3. Very dense colour. Dark yellow, nice strong sheng aroma off liquor. Lots of energy, getting perhaps too strong if you drink too fast, can be jittery. Young.
4. More bitter, more green.
5. Anbesol mouth numbing effect, with a very strong sweet aftertaste.
6. Heat and major energy, further mouth numbing.
7. More oily and very good sweet aftertaste, particularly fruity like Del Monte fruit salad. Very moreish. Very alerting.

The wet leaf is very robust, intact, with thick stems, and the processing seems to strike a nice balance between green and red.  I have no complaints about the storage either. Consistently strong sweet aftertaste is a big plus for this tea, as is the quite unusual mouth activity and tongue numbing.  That brininess is addictive and the overall potency is quite high.  Overall I am very happy to have this cake and I look forward to tasting it as it ages further, taming some of that unbridled power.

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