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This is a shou puer from white2tea.

Brewing setup: 7g tea ball in a 125ml gaiwan brewed with 95C water.

Wet leaf aroma: dry wood, campfire ash.

Tasting notes: starts out with dry wood, campfire smoke, bitterness, and I guess a camphor taste. After a few steeps, the bitterness fades and it becomes sweeter, with some nuttiness and leather; the dry wood and ash notes are still there.

Overall a good tea with a good value at $26 for a 200g cake. I’d consider buying a full cake of this tea.

This is a yancha oolong from white2tea.

Brewing setup: 5g of tea in a 125ml gaiwan with 95C water.

Wet leaves aroma: very floral and tropical sweetness.

Tasting notes: super floral, juicy tropical fruits, slick mouthfeel, and some herbal notes like thyme or oregano.

Overall, this is a very tasty tea. It was a bit tricky to brew, some steeps got a bit too punchy / perfumey if I let it go just a bit too long. I ended out dropping the temp a couple degrees down to 90c to help with that.

This is another lightly fermented shou puer pressed in 2022 and released this year.

Brewing setup: 7g in an 125ml gaiwan brewed with 95C water

Tasting notes: river rocks, damp forest floor, a bit of cocoa powder in earlier steeps, some raisin sweetness on the later steeps.

Overall, this is a very drinkable shou. It isn’t as interesting or complex as the Fleet I had yesterday, this it more like a standard smooth shou that is maybe a bit lighter and has a bit more sweetness. At just $22 for a 200g cake, it would be a great option for a daily drinker. I’d consider buying this tea.

This is a lightly fermented shou puer tea pressed in 2022 and released this year.

Brewing setup: 6g of tea in a 125ml gaiwan, brewed with 95C water.

Tasting notes: 10s rinse 

10s steep: antique books, forest floor, some brightness. My partner says: straw in a barn on a hot day. 

Wet leaf aroma: hot cocoa and fruit jam

10s steep: old library books, cocoa powder

10s steep: forest floor, cedar incense, slightly drying finish. Slight sweetness lingers in the mouth 

10s steep: hot cocoa, old books, cedar incense

10s steep: nectarines, old books, sauna essential oils. My partner says it’s dusty in a good way, fruity tartness, and aerating it reminds her of a petting zoo on a hot summer day.

15s steep: more fruity now, blackberries and dusty library books. 

20s steep: juicy, woody

30s steep: more dry wood with juicy mouthfeel

45s steep: raw yeast dough, dry firewood, blueberry, juicy but drying mouthfeel. 

1min steep: dry leaves, grassy, honey sweetness

2min steep: dry leaves, cocoa, blackberry

5min steep: dry leaves, incense, berries

10min steep: sweet and woody

Overall, this is a very tasty and complex shou. I believe the intent of this light fermentation is to try and mimic an raw puer; and while I haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing well aged raw puer, I can say that this is a lot more interesting to drink than most other shous I’ve tried. We would likely buy a brick of this tea. Now I’m interested in trying a couple of his other light ferment shous that were released this year for comparison.

This is a dancong oolong tea pressed into a brick. I got this as a freebie in my order, so I’m not sure which year this one is (it looks like they have one from 2023 and from 2025 on their website).

Brewing parameters: 4g in a 125ml gaiwan, water at 95C.

Tasting notes:

• 15s steep: light florals
• 15s steep: slightly stronger florals, juicy mouthfeel.
• 20s steep: very punchy, perfumey, slightly astringent. Need to dial it back
• 10s steep: floral and juicy, but even still a bit too strong.
• 7s steep with water dropped to 90C: perfectly steeped this time. Like walking in an a field of magnolia trees. Juicy mouthfeel. My partner is detecting some earthy notes. I smell the leaves now and they’re also super floral with a savory, umami note that I associate with oolongs.
• 7s steep (x3): three more steeps in a row keep delivering beautiful bouquet of flowers and juicy mouthfeel.
• 15s steep: starting to lighten up now, still very pleasant though.
• 30s steep: even lighter florals.
• 60s steep: perfumey, light, pleasant.
• 5min steep: perfumey, light, and pleasant. probably gonna finish up here.

Overall a beautiful tea, mostly just displaying really strong magnolia aromas with a juicy mouthfeel. The flavor and the juiciness linger for a long time after finishing a cup. The W2T description of this tea talks about it being tricky to brew, and it is indeed pretty tricky even though I dropped to their recommended 4g of leaf. After dropping the temp to 90C and keeping the steeps real short at 7s, that seemed to be this tea’s happy place once the leaves opened up after the first steep or two.

I ordered a bunch of W2T samples and have been going through them trying to figure out which cakes we wanna buy. Today we tried the Charing Cross. This is a roasted white tea.

Started with a 20s rinse and waited a few minutes for the ball to open up since it’s quite dense.

10s steep - fig jam aromas, just as promised

15s steep - more fig jam, slightly stronger

25s steep - rich roasted fruits, gonna dial it back a bit

15s steep - figgy, fruity, floral

15s steep - more of the same. Smelling the wet leaves now and I can sniff these all day; getting strong tropical fruit punch and floral notes.

30s steep - getting more floral perfumey notes now

60s steep - violets, cedar

120s steep - violets, blueberry, cedar

Overall a very tasty tea. It feels like it has similarities to white teas, oolongs, and black teas all at once. We’ll probably order a brick of this one. We’re finding we like white teas and the hybrid white teas (W2T Blood Moon was also one of our favorites so far).