NOTE: The tea reviewed here was from last year's batch of the Upton Water Fairy and may not be representative of their current offering.
Upton clearly states that this is not a true Wu Yi tea, but an affordable alternative grown elsewhere in Fujian province. Let's see how it stacks up.
The long, brown-black dry leaf is pungent with an aroma typical of highly processed Shui Xian. Once wet, you can see that the leaf is a fairly uniform and muted dark brown-green, indicating moderate-to-heavy oxidation and baking.
The tea soup is a deep amber and gives off a fairly rich aroma, with some smoke, some barnyard (cow barn), some sweetness, and a woody resinous quality. The resinous quality, in particular, is quite prominent and reminds me somewhat of creosote and varnish.
The tea soup is gentle and fairly flat on entry, but there is pretty good grip and flavor appearing in the back of the mouth after the swallow. Here the resinous quality shows again along with some of the barnyard. The complex flavors resulting from the fairly heavy processing are nicely balanced by a pleasant sweetness and a hint of floral character.
The aftertaste is marked by a nice smokiness, some sweetness, a woody-resin note, a pleasant zing, and a nice persistence.
This tea can be steeped a few times.
While this tea is a bit too resinous for my taste, it's a good example of traditional Min Bei (North Fujian) Shui Xian oolong at a fair price (100g @ $7.60). It's certainly better than the inexpensive canned Shui Xians available at a Chinese grocery, and the raw leaf used to make it definitely better than that used in many of the cheaper Wu-Yi-area teas I've had.
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