Hi, no more guessing about yesterday's sample, the solution was "Upper Namring" - whispered over the counter into my ear. Let me add some few lines on my first (and probably last) impressions:
Appearance: pretty greenish, silvery tips, a couple more oxidised leaves, around 20% broken leaves and some fannings
Dry blow: slightly grassy, a wee bit balsamic, pronounced sweetness, balanced
Prewarmed my 180ml/6 oz Gaiwan, poured out the water, added 2.2g of leaves.
1st sniff of moistened leaves: fairly sweet and "round" aroma, grassy notes, slightly woody, a wee bit of vanilla wafting up (maybe I need to recalibrate my schnotz one day)Added 180ml of Kingfisher Mineral Water, 92 Deg C.
- steeping - 2'15" - light amber:
- pretty adstringent, flat spectrum with a wee bit of fruitiness
- steeping - 2'45" - light to medium amber
- adstringency picking up, some rounder profile showing, some warmer spices coming through, weak vegetal/grassy notes, dominated by a woody edge but everything dominated by the adstringency on the edge of bitterness
- steeping - 3'15" - slightly coppery amber
- very adstringent / bitter now (as always I do a 3rd "tickling" steeping for completeness sake), some woody notes making it through, the profile is pretty "edgy" now - a few oscillating peaks dominate the flavour, as opposed to round and balanced.
All in all the aroma of all 3 steepings was fairly weak and nothing special to report on. The 3rd sniff of the now cold leaves showed a somewhat rounder spectrum than the first two, dominated by vegetal and bready notes, but the leaves lost their aroma by the minute, 10 minutes later it felt liked sniffing wet cardboard.
Bottom line: nothing I'd kill for. This morning I gave it a second try and found that a bit of sugar helped a lot in bringing up more of the weak base spectrum.
An interesting side note: I can't remember any Darjeeling that hit my caffeine-o-meter like this one. Hooweee, in the mid of the sampling session I noticed a change in my optical perception, similar to the effects any of those energy drinks used to have on me. That, and the overwhelming adstringency / bitterness of the 3rd steeping made me ask if anything in the firing of this tea might have been slightly out of tune, as so often seen among the first five invoices of DJ FFs.
I sampled one more FF this afternoon, and I definetely liked it a lot better - but will get to know the name of the estate on Friday. The guessing goes on - short "review" follows.
PS: Sungma, Rohini and Jungpana have arrived. More in the coming days.
Best, Karsten / Darjeeling