Farmerleaf’s Jingmai Miyun is a blended cake made from several natural tea gardens close to the village where Farmerleaf is located. This blend has been made for the last few years and it has a good reputation online. It’s one of the more affordable teas from Farmerleaf but they still hand process it rather than using machines.
As noted on all my early looks, please note that this is a freshly pressed cake and will likely be going through rapid changes for the next while. As such, this is not intended to be a fully fledged review, and more just a snapshot of where the tea is currently sitting.
Initial Impressions
The dry leaves have a strong fruity smell, and it’s unique with a distinct blueberry aroma. After a rinse, the wet leaves take on a more familiar sheng scent of apricots, cherries and plums. It’s not too out there or remarkable, but it’s juicy and lively smelling.
For this session I am using 4 grams of leaf in my 55ml gaiwan, 90°C water, and one quick rinse followed by infusions starting at five seconds and increasing by five seconds for each additional steeping.
Infusions 1-3
The first infusion is more floral that I was expecting from the smell. There really isn’t too much of a fruity taste at all. It’s light, sweet, simple and floral. The second infusion is smoother and overall darker in taste, but I can’t really distinguish any specific notes. It’s not dull or muddled and it’s certainly not bad, just simple. The third infusion starts to gain some fruiter notes but still, nothing much jumps out at you. There is a little bit of sourness and astringency, but overall this tea goes down easy.
Infusions 4-6
Infusions four and five are in line with the third infusion – the subtle juicy fruit taste becomes stronger with the only changes being an increase in sour taste. The sixth infusion gains some earthy notes and a bit of clove spice. I only now realize I haven’t mentioned or noticed the aftertaste. It does stay with you for a while, but there isn’t much of a taste, just a faint feeling.
Infusions 7-10
Flavour seems to have peaked at seventh then drops off slowly until the tenth when I call it quits. Through these final steeps there are no new tasting notes.
Final Thoughts
An online tea friend described this as a great tea to drink when you don’t want to think about it and that nails it for me. It’s an easy going, simple daily drinker. Currently I have a few cakes that already fit this category so I won’t be picking up a full cake any time soon, but this is definitely going on my shortlist for when I run out.