Vintage Tieguanyin 2005

Clean and smokey with a deep bouquet, these tightly-rolled tea leaves resemble the precise pebbles of roasted coffee beans and are reminiscent of their aromas too. A strong roasting before a particular storage for almost twenty years has rounded off most of the fruity and floral notes that distinguish young Tieguanyin, leading more grounded flavors of peated barley, stoney minerality, clove spice, and a slight green apple astringency to the fore. Certainly a tea to mellow down with, as one would with a good Islay whiskey.