Shan Lin Xi High Mountain 2025 Winter

Dry leaves touch hot porcelain and give off a warm buttery pastry aroma. Once the leaves are brewed open they release a sharper fruit scent like pineapple. Broth has a bright golden hue, betraying it's more traditional oolong oxidation (roughly 20%). Texture is slippery with a mineral-milky quality, and is more grippy in the mouth than our other high mountains. Bouquet is strong and bold, opening deeper and deeper as the session goes on. At first there is only a slightly citrus-like high note and a pastry base. Then notes of cotton candy start to develop, followed by a heavily sweet floral scent that I recognize as 'Han Xiao Hua', a variety of magnolia that has an almost banana-like aroma. Nice and dense. Strong salivation and long lingering aroma come back after the sip. This tea has an assertive personality. It seizes attention with its tannic stimulation and follows up with a potent aromatic bloom (maybe more explosive than a bloom, but I don't want to call in an explosion!) If you like the complexity of high mountain oolong but wish they were more intense, this is a good choice.