white2tea’s Daily Jinjunmei | Tea Review

As someone who likes black tea in the morning, I am always on the hunt for a new daily black tea!

Description: “Delicious and layered flavors that transcend the affordable price, coupled with skillfully produced aromatics typical of high quality Chinese black teas.“

Instructions: 1 g of tea per 15 ml of water in small teapot or gaiwan. | Rinse once; steep the 1st steep for 5 sec, then add 5 sec for each additional steep[.] | Too weak? Steep longer | Too strong? Remove leaf  | Black Tea: 95°C

Review: This tea hails from Fujian Province, China and is of the Meizhan varietal. The dry needle shaped leaves were a uniform dark brown colour with a golden orange peaking through. The leaves had an appetizing chocolate, malty, sweet, and fruity smell.

After a quick rinse, the tear shaped wet leaves were a milk chocolate colour and had a smoky, cocoa, and bready smell. I tried this tea with 3 to 4 grams in a 125ml small glass pot.

Infusion 1 (5 seconds): The liquor had a reddish brown colour and a honey, and bread smell. Despite the short infusion, the liquor had a surprising range of flavours from bready, malt, sweet, cocoa and ended with a fruity finish.

Infusion 2 (10 seconds): The liquor was a darker brown colour with a red tinge and a stronger smoky smell. The taste profile leaned toward a faint smoky taste and underlying cocoa, wheat, and bread taste. The sip ended with some bitterness at the tail end.

Infusion 3 (10 seconds): The flavour of the reddish brown liquor was waning. The smell and taste of smoke was much more predominant with an underlying sweet cocoa note interwoven in the sip. The liquor left some dryness at the back of the throat and mouth.

Infusion 4 (15 seconds): The flavour was very faint with some astringency at the end of the sip at the back of the throat.

Infusion 5 (20 seconds): The tea had a watery taste.

I personally really enjoyed this tea and could see it as a nice morning black tea in tandem with my other go-to morning black tea. The Daily Jinjunmei had comforting flavours of the cocoa, chocolate, bread, and malt which I like in black teas. My favourite infusion was the first one. This would be a nice black tea for someone who likes a sweeter smoky black tea or a tea that is fairly easy to brew (4/5 rating).