Wanmu Xinyang, Henan award winning black tea

 

I just finished a great interview post with background on this tea producer, which I'll post not too long after this review, given how editing issues work out.  So I won't say much more about them; it's there.

I've tried really good, seemingly type-typical yellow teas from them, and two somewhat unconventional Dong Fang Mei Ren versions (Oriental Beauty, or local interpretations of that style).  In the past I've reviewed Maojian from the same Thai tea contact, that would have been from them, but the posts may or may not have tied the sourcing back to them, and in a sense it doesn't matter.  They were great, even though green tea isn't my favorite type, or really it's my least favorite.  Somehow I've always liked Longjing anyway, and those green teas were fine.

This should be great.  The only background is that the sample said that it won an award (these were provided for free for review; many thanks for that).  I asked Gisele, that friend who works for them, if their teas are grouped by consistent brand versions, and the answer wasn't a clear yes or no.  

As tea enthusiasts familiar with general background would know it's not really easy for producers to make versions of the exact same tea types every year, produced at volume, as companies like Lipton do.  Lipton puts a lot of effort into balancing inputs that vary, so even with year to year variations in quality and style they can adjust for that through a complex blending process.  Some other medium scale tea producers try to do the same, but in general it's the tiny, direct sourcing vendors that describe each tea as a variation related to the same version from the year before.  

I'll try to link to what looks most like this tea online, in the Wanmu site information, but it may or may not be completely identical.  I'm not claiming that they imply that the listing represents this tea; this award-related version may well be a unique one-off.  One listed won an award, but different versions could have won different awards.  Here's a black tea they identify, again which may relate to a higher volume production version, or simply a different batch:

Craftsmanship • Xinyang Black Tea

Craftsmanship Xinyang Black Tea is made from carefully selected tender buds and leaves of top-quality spring tea from high-mountain tea gardens. It is refined through the withering, rolling, fermentation, and baking processes of Xinyang black tea. The tea buds are compact and covered with golden down. The tea soup is bright golden yellow with floating tea hairs. It is smooth and mellow on the palate, with a rich and mellow aroma, and a refreshing and sweet aftertaste!

not so far off, but seemingly not an exact match, related to appearance

This image showing an award certificate and the tea looks more like that one (listed on the site), with more buds content, and that part being redder than the rest of this sample.  

The context is a little different for a producer than a re-sale vendor.  Producers might try to make different batches for sale in different channels, while small-scale vendors, or even medium scale outlets, might try to make branding themes as consistent as possible, carrying one each of a limited number or teas with a distinct theme.

Review:

dry scent:  this is as fragrant as any black tea I've ever smelled, or I suppose any tea.  To me sweet floral and fruit range stands out the most, but there is also a strong cacao note.  The buds and leaves are very fine, very small; this might share some aspect range with Jin Jun Mei as a result.

first infusion:  color is a little golden-amber, versus just being reddish.  Oxidation level should be lower than a most typical range.

Interesting!  Honey sweetness stands out most.  There is a cacao note to this, but there's a lot going on.  Floral range is pronounced, across a rich, sweet, heavy floral scope.  Fruit doesn't stand out as much as that, even though the scent implied that it would.  Warm tone range is very pleasant.  Feel is rich and thick, with a pleasant aftertaste carrying over after.  All of this is from a relatively fast first infusion, just a first look at the tea, not how it will be after full development.  

It's hard to emphasize clearly how that full, rich, thick feel and pervasive sweetness serve as a foundation for the rest.  Black tea mouthfeel range varies, but this is unique.  That sweetness actually tastes like honey was added, even though for sure it's natural.  Mineral range is warm (I've not mentioned that part yet), but the input is limited, helping balance the rest, instead of being a dominant aspect.

second infusion:  mineral intensity bumps up a good bit.  This may peak at a more evolved character range next round; it still may be transitioning to get there.  Sweetness still stands out a lot, with the flavor of honey fading just a little.  Floral range is so pronounced this probably tastes like two or three distinct flower inputs.  One part is rich and intense, like lavender.  Another is warm, smooth, and towards more subtle grain-like range, like chrysanthemum.  A hint of citrus enters in, not so pronounced, but at the same time distinct.  It tastes like tangerine, both the actual fruit and that tangier edge of the peel.  

Feel is slightly drier, with just a little more structure, but still very positive and full.  An extra touch of fruit may add to overall complexity, along the line of jujube, dried Chinese date, and the prior cacao is also still there, a bit stronger than that fruit note. 

The way it all balances is really something.  None of those aspects are remotely negative, and they come together as a symphony of flavor and tactile experience.  It's good, really exceptional.

Not just to look for any possible negatives, but it might be helpful to describe how this relates to my primary preference for black tea.  I mention here a lot that I love Dian Hong the most, Yunnan black teas, for a number of different reasons, and related to simple preference that I can't explain.  I love the depth and complexity in those, even though they sometimes give up some high end range, the forward floral or brighter fruit this is also expressing, in addition to those deeper tones (cacao, warm dried fruit, supporting mineral tone).  In those it often relates to a roasted sweet potato or yam aspect.  I suppose if someone used their imagination part of that would also relate to this tea; it's really complex.

So does this work as well for me, related to that preference?  It's more complex, more layered, interesting in terms of including more experience scope.  It has good depth.  I think in a sense I also like the simplicity of those teas, that even though they're not as complex and refined that makes them easy to appreciate.  There is less to love but what is there expresses depth.  

I can't conclude that I don't like this as much, because it is such a pleasant and unique experience.  But drinking this tea with food at breakfast wouldn't seem appropriate; you would tend to have it when you focus on the experience.  Which is great, when you are on that page.  But there's something magical about drinking through lots and lots of a more basic favorite black tea version, that includes good balance and great depth, but not those extra themes, not so much complexity and refinement.  It's comforting.  You can drink it for a half an hour or hour and then not really focus on the tea, and let it take you on an inward journey instead, or just relax, and decompress.

third infusion:  cinnamon enters in as a main aspect; it's amazing that it could transition like that.  A high degree of transition is one thing, but the tea adding dominant, positive aspect range like that each round is really something.  Maybe the bud and fine leaf content is releasing compounds more each at different phases (infusion rounds)?  Rich fruit also picks up.  What seemed like a hint of citrus across other deeper tones now comes across more as cooked peach.  Of course cooked peach, cinnamon, and other rich, creamy depth is a lot of the description of a peach pie.

Permit me a tangent.  I was experimenting with different flavor combinations during an extended pie cooking phase in my youth, in my early 20s, and settle on peach and cherry as a favorite (for a time; that kept changing).  I mentioned that to an older co-worker, and he thought it was funny that I described a very traditional Southern pie version, that his mother and grandmother had made (we were in Texas).  If you can make a butter and flour crust and go buy frozen peaches and cherries I highly recommend giving it a try.

Warm tones continue to evolve.  Cinnamon connects to that, but there's a hint of other bark range as well, maybe a cured hardwood bark flavor.  To me it balances well with the rest, the brighter and creamier range, so that I'm not describing that as a flaw or limitation entering in.  It ties to that slightly drier or more substantial mouthfeel I had described.  You can emphasize or limit those kinds of inputs simply by raising or lowering brewing temperature (higher draws out heavier flavors), or by extending the infusion timing.  I'm brewing this relatively fast, for no longer than 15 seconds, because the character and intensity is so pleasant right at that strength.

fourth infusion:  it finally stops the sequence of changing a lot each round; this isn't so far from the last.  It's a nice place for it to level off.  Cinnamon is a dominant aspect now, but cacao also hangs in there.  It would be natural to include roasted sweet potato as a reasonable interpretation.  Rich floral range didn't drop out but cooked fruit tones took over.  I suppose this does taste a bit more like roasted sweet potato than cooked peach, so it is still changing, just not as dramatically, since the total balance doesn't shift as much.  I'll describe one more round and consider it a story fully enough told, infused a little longer to see how that changes it.

fifth infusion:  citrus bumps a little more again; interesting.  The rest is starting to combine more, so it's harder to make out as those distinct flavor inputs.  It's surely far from finished, and it will probably make another 5 good infusions, but this round could represent the best of the tea already experienced.  It's interesting how that aftertaste expression works, how citrus really stands out as a distinct note, beyond the warmer tones.  It's almost as if you experience that part along the center and back of your tongue.  I have no idea what that means; I suppose it doesn't really mean anything, it's just interesting.

The feel really balances in an interesting way too.  I think there were subtle transitions in the feel all along these 5 infusions.  And this goes back to explaining how simple, basic, good tea with great depth and moderate complexity can be pleasant in a different way.  This tea demands your full attention, because there is so much going on.  That's great, for a tea review tasting, or a session with friends, when they're all focused on the experience as well.  For a mixed group with some non tea drinkers included sticking to something more basic would be better, to dial down the stimulus level, and not include so much complexity that you'd probably miss related to turning up the background noise.

The neighbors are doing construction here; that works as an example of a less than optimum input.  Drilling into concrete, it sounds like?  It's normal for me, at least, since they're half a year into that construction project.  But in general this tea might be ideal for when you have free time and no construction noise to enable focus.  

Conclusions:

What about that moderate oxidation level; would this have been different, or better, if it was a little higher?  It's not my place to guess, but I don't think so.  I think they've dialed processing into an optimum, landing in the same place the best Jin Jun Mei processing tends to favor.  It could be that a higher than usual proportion of bud content brews to a different color than leaf content, but I'm guessing that oxidation level is a part of it, keeping it slightly lower.  

It doesn't matter; the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and this tea is fantastic.  It's odd that the only potential limitation might be that there is too much to pay attention to, too much complexity, too much round to round transition, so that it would only work best when you give it plenty of focus.  Of course that's not really negative.  It's almost like I'm complaining that it's too good.  It is one of the better teas I've ever tried, not just better black teas.

Related to that quality assessment I mean that some aspects tend to stand out as either individual quality markers (indicating where a tea stands, by just one aspect), or as emergent sets of aspects in relation to overall quality.  This stands out for both.

An individual aspect marking quality might be thickness of mouthfeel, aftertaste range, or unique and distinctive flavor range.  Positive transitions across rounds are a good sign, or an appropriate mineral base flavor matching and grounding the rest especially well.  An emergent range marking quality might be complexity (covering a lot of aspect range), balance (with sweetness balancing with the rest), or refinement, the last relating to how it all comes together.  All of this extends beyond lacking flaws.  This tea version excels in relation to all of that.  

Nobody has a personality anymore

 

This recent article I just ran across, with the same title, seems a good starting point for adding some meandering thoughts here.  I think a lot about how social media and the now-changed forms of human experience shape people in different ways than were familiar in the past.  In general it all works.

So I'll summarize what I take this article to say, highlight what seems to not work, and then extend it a bit.  The general point is that people now overanalyze their personas, especially in relation to identifying disorders, so that instead of seeing themselves as a balanced, good person they identify as a series of gaps, as having anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, and so on.  I see this in younger people, but more in the US than in Thailand.

credit that article source

Let's let the article describe their take on that:

My generation is obsessed with treating every trait as a symptom of a disorder. You’re not shy, you’re autistic. You’re not forgetful, you’ve got ADHD.

Today, every personality trait is seen as a problem to be solved. Anything too human—every habit, every eccentricity, every feeling that’s too strong—has to be labeled and explained. Therapy-speak has taken over our language. It is ruining how we talk about romance and relationships, narrowing how we think about hurt and suffering, and now, we are losing the words for who we are. Nobody has a personality anymore.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Now, we are being taught that our personalities are a disorder. According to a 2024 survey, 72 percent of Gen-Z girls said that “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.” Only 27 percent of boomer men said the same.

This is part of a deeper instinct in modern life to explain everything—psychologically, scientifically, evolutionarily. Everything about us is caused, categorized, and can be corrected. We talk in theories, frameworks, systems, structures, drives, motivations, and mechanisms. But in exchange for explanation, we lost mystery, romance, and lately, ourselves.

We have lost the sentimental ways we used to describe people.

It adds a lot of depth to that in another page or more of text, but this is their general point.  At a glance this is definitely one trend in self-definition and a general description of reality.  It goes further:

Every heartfelt, annoying, interesting piece of you, categorized. The fond ways your family describe you, medicalized. The pieces of us once written into wedding vows, read out in eulogies, remembered with a smile, now live on doctors’ notes and mental-health assessments and BetterHelp applications. We are not people anymore. We have been products for a long time, and these are our labels.

We can’t talk about character either. There are no generous people anymore, only people pleasers. There are no men or women who wear their hearts on their sleeves, only the anxiously attached or the codependent. There are no hard workers, only the traumatized, the insecure overachievers, the neurotically ambitious...

It's an odd word choice, describing people as products.  That seems to relate to the sense of how we are identified as outcomes of prior conditioning, of trauma, genetic flaws, and distinct cultural factors, but maybe mostly the first two.

An online interest related contact shifted over past several years from seeing himself as normal enough but also quirky, in terms of personality, and then "on the spectrum" related to autism, and most recently he's fully accepted that he is autistic.  Is he?  Who knows, really. 

All of this sounds more judgmental than I intend it.  We all struggle with working around our quirks, and defining what they really mean.  We all have very significant limitations; more of those than our strengths.  The range a person could possibly span is broad, and we can each only cover so much of that.  

This article is about papering over the limitations with labels, that put the blame on others, past events, or genetics, versus accepting that we are responsible for ourselves.  That other example, of someone wanting to be in one generation versus the one prior, is about identifying more with that stereotypical character.  They're different things, but of course they can overlap.

In my youth, and among my generation now, we didn't have an inclination towards so much acceptance of weaknesses, or so much doubt and insecurity.  We weren't self-aware enough to describe ourselves in terms of a long list of gaps, so we just set out to do whatever interested us, typically learning by failing.  If you define yourself as a set of limitations you end up switching the order around, and not trying things that aren't going to work, because you can see how the gaps in your capacity map together to ensure that failure.  But that cuts short the exposure and learning process.

More of the article explains how this basic premise extends further into our experience:

Now our clumsy mothers have always had undiagnosed ADHD; our quiet dads don’t realize they are autistic; our stoic grandfathers are emotionally stunted. We even—helpfully—diagnose the dead. And I think this is why people get so defensive of these diagnoses, so insistent that they explain everything. They are trying to hold onto themselves; every piece of their personality is contained within them.

And it’s not only personality traits we have lost. There are no experiences anymore, no phases or seasons of life, no wonders or mysteries, only clues about what could be wrong with us. Everything that happens can be explained away; nothing is exempt. We can’t accept that we love someone, madly and illogically; no, the enlightened way to think is to see through that, get down to what is really going on, find the hidden motives.

Therapy-speak has taken over our language. It is ruining how we talk about romance and relationships, narrowing how we think about hurt and suffering, and now, we are losing the words for who we are.

This never even seems seems to cross over to what seems to be one main drawback of this kind of perspective:  people end up reaching for drugs as a crutch, and relying on years of therapy to sort out internal issues, instead of working through actual instances of the problems, by experiencing personal relationships.

Of course this is a bit exaggerated.  And this kind of culture and perspective is quite advanced in some places, and lags in others.  I remember visiting an ex-girlfriend living in LA in the 90s, how I was surprised that she was being medicated to deal with social anxiety.  That whole paradigm was brand new to me, that such an issue could seem unusual, and could be treated by drugs.  Of course that treatment is problematic; there are significant side effects, and whenever you take drugs to adjust for any sort of condition over time the effectiveness of the drug wears off, and you need to take more to get the same effect.  Or change drugs later, which involves a new set of problems, new side effects.

All of this pointed towards a new way of framing reality itself, not just self definition:

Every human experience we have is a data point, and the purpose of our lives is to piece it all perfectly together. This is the healthy way to think that people were so cruelly deprived of in the past.

I’m not sure I believe this anymore—that we are more enlightened now than previous generations, more emotionally intelligent. My grandma sees herself as a grandma, a mother, a wife; young people identify with our disorders. She is selfless and takes things to heart; we have rejection sensitive dysphoria and fawn as a trauma response. They are souls; we are symptoms.

Of course it does go on to accept that in some cases significant and pronounced mental disorders are defined, identified, and treated through a related therapy process.  It's not just about people using new ways to describe themselves and reality, changing the experience some through this redefinition.  But it points out an interesting example of such a broach change:

I think this is why my generation gets stuck on things like relationships and parenthood. The commitments we stumble over, the decisions we endlessly debate, the traditions we find hard to hold onto, are often the ones we can’t easily explain. We are trying to explain the inexplicable. It’s hard to defend romantic love against staying single, because it isn’t safe or controllable or particularly rational. The same with having children. Put these things in a pros-and-cons list and they stop making logical sense.

This reminds me of parts of younger people's experiences I hear of, maybe both in the US and in Thailand.  Almost no one where I work has children, or maybe even ever plans to, because it would be a costly endeavor, trading out both freedom and expense, and it doesn't make it as a goal through the evaluation process.  Just speculation on my part, of course; everyone has their own experiences and perspective.

That article's conclusion circles back to roughly the same place:

We taught a generation that the meaning of life is not found outside in the world but inside their own heads. We underestimate it, this miserable business of understanding ourselves. I feel for the girls forensically analyzing their childhoods while they are still in them, cramming their hope and pain and suffering into categories, reducing themselves down to trauma responses. It hurts to see this heartbreaking awareness we have inflicted on a generation, whose only understanding of the world is this militant searching, this reaching for reasons. God, the life they are missing.

Because we can’t ever explain everything. At some point we have to stop analyzing and seeing through things and accept the unknowable. All we can ever really achieve is faith. And a sense of humor about ourselves, perhaps. It’s impossible to heal from being human, and this is why the mental health industry has infinite demand. Explain anything long enough and you will find a pathology; dig deep enough, and you will disappear.

Maybe a little exaggerated and negative, but for sure plenty of this goes on, and some people must be debilitated by it.  

Younger people today couldn't imagine how far we were from that perspective in the 80s, as Gen X kids.  I had heard of a personality type test, at one point, but I didn't try to do much with it.  I didn't have a single self-description available in relation to a mental health condition or trauma response.  We didn't even have "trauma" then, in the same sense.  People who were severely abused as children were intuitively aware that some related cycle was playing out for them, but not in the same detailed and explicit sense as today, where they are defined by it in a list of distinct ways.

We took so much risk back then that it seemed as if we had a death wish.  I have no idea what all that was about, the drinking, drugs, and high risk behavior.  I only tell my son about it bit by bit, so as not to overwhelm him, or endorse that kind of ridiculous behavior.  He shouldn't be drinking a lot when he is in high school, as I did.  I shouldn't have been.  

The drugs that are around now could easily be deadly, versus us barely having access to weed back then.  Now weed is sold in a booth that looks like a garden shed in the alley we live in, in Honolulu, 15 steps or so from the front door of our apartment complex.  It's not illegal.  Kids can't buy it without ID, but then the drinking age was also 21 when I was 18.

one version of those booths (photo credit)

In one sense it's great that greater awareness of real risks narrow down kids' range of behavior today.  That's very appropriate.  In another sense they really might be averse to the potentially awkward parts of a normal life, like getting rejected when you ask someone out.  That was my first "romantic" experience, rejection, and I guess at the time it did seem rough.  I think that I was 13 then, and it probably delayed my participation in that scope by a few more years.

If social media had existed back then there might be an awkward photo trail of lots of it, or at least we would've had a chance to evaluate such patterns as experienced by others, before we blindly did foolish things.  We would've heard stories of lots of people dying doing them, and it was just dumb luck that none of my friends did.  Or maybe it's just that one in thousands would die, and I had less than 10 close friends; the odds were in our favor.

I've not really critiqued this article's content much.  To a large extent it seems to work.  It may be a little overstated, but I think that's in part because I can't fully relate to a young person's perspective today, even though I talk to people at different stages essentially every day.  If I were out there actually living it I'd be more familiar with a few dozen other examples, and the patterns would seem all the clearer, and more pervasive.  

Tea China 7572 Dayi (Taetea) shou / shu pu'er

 

I'm trying the last sample from a small Tea China vendor's set (sent at no cost for review; many thanks!).  

The posts need to have some sort of story that they tell, and often that's about something completely novel, a new style or origin.  This isn't that; this is a very standard type.  But it could be interesting referencing back to what that standard is.  I was still looking into types and background back in 2014 when I wrote a bit on what Dayi / Taetea 7572 is, in 2014, and on storage issues with tasting notes on multiple versions in this post.  I can't directly compare back to experiences 11 years ago, but I can try to look at this experience based on trying dozens of versions of shou / shu since.  

I'll just call it shou here, but I have trouble deciding which is more correct.  If whichever version matches the best standard Romanization practice is less conventional then it would be hard to say.

Their site listing:

Yunnan DaYi Pu’er Tea 7572 Classic Ripe Pu’er Tea  ($18.53, for 250 grams)

Pu’Er ripe tea from the famous Yunnan Menghai Pu’Er Tea Factory (Dayi). 7572 is a classic formula for Pu’Er tea and a benchmark for Pu’Er ripe tea.  We purchased these Pu’Er teas in 2022.

Dayi 7572 is a bulk Pu’er ripe tea from Menghai Tea Factory, which has been produced since the mid-1970s. It undergoes moderate fermentation, featuring the iconic reddish-brown and thick liquor color as well as a mellow taste.

Taste Profile:

In the new tea stage, it has a rich caramel aroma with a sweet scent, and after brewing, the lingering sugar aroma at the bottom of the cup is rich and full-bodied.

As the storage time increases, its aroma gradually changes. For example, after 3 years of storage, the aged aroma and sugar aroma begin to emerge and become more prominent, while the pile fermentation smell and woody aroma fade away. For ripe teas aged over 7 years, the aroma is mainly dominated by the aged scent.

I suppose that works.  One part of the sales listing says it's 250 grams, and the other 150, so I take that to be a typo / accidental mistake.  It's 150; that's listed on the packaging they show.

Review:

First infusion:  brewed a bit strong, using maybe 4-5 grams of tea to brew over 250 ml, maybe nearer to 12 ounces instead.  I did use a quick rinse this time; that's relatively standard, and it could cut back mustiness or funk a little.

Level of funk stands out most.  Shou often has a damp cardboard sort of scent to it, which others could associate as still within the range of peat.  It's pronounced in this.  Moychay shou versions, which are typically pretty good, tend to have a characteristic form of that, which I guess someone could love or else dislike.  Storage conditions input would enter in.  I think that aspect is mainly coming from the original tea character, which transitions over time, but storage would change how it is expressed, especially if a tea is stored very dry or very wet (diminishing that range, if quite dry, and changing it and increasing it, if stored wet or damp).

It has always been interesting how Hong Kong is considered quite damp storage, with Malaysia also described as such.  From online discussion it sounds like these are two consistent themes, based on conditions in those areas, but in reality vendors could, and probably typically would, adjust humidity level in storage conditions.  Malaysia, and Bangkok, are both much warmer and more humid than Hong Kong.  I've written about that here, and I wrote so much on that subject that I wrote a summary of it all here.  But the second of those was in 2019; I've learned a lot more through experience since.  And I write less now; that's how that tends to go.

Back to the tea, flavor is complex in this.  It's generally positive.  I think these benchmark Dayi / Taetea numbered shou are a great representation of good, basic shou character, and are positive to experience.  Of course they would vary.  Beyond the heavy earth baseline in this some hint of dried fruit and rich spice stands out, or aromatic dark wood.  It all mixes; it's hard to express as a list.  Maybe this does taste a bit like betel nut, the traditional Chinese herb input used for chewing, maybe like how people experience chewing tobacco.

This wouldn't be completely separate from the flavor range of chewing tobacco, just not all that close to it either.  Probably the larger leaf version, with a richer, deeper flavor, than the sharper, lighter, more stinging version of "snuff," the ground version.  I've never experienced much of either, but I did do a tour of vices back in my teens, as was common in the 1980s.  Right, I'm getting old.

That's already describing most of the flavor, but in unusually general terms (like spice, like dried fruit or dark wood).  Maybe I can narrow that down a bit, along with describing transitions, in a next round.  But since I'm brewing this Western style it would typically only make about three strong infusions.  This would also be pleasant to experience brewed Gongfu style, and you would see more transition between rounds.  Not a lot, typically, for this tea type, but some.  

Most people seem to like shou brewed inky black, and there is no limit for astringency or other limitations entering in, so it can be as strong as you like.  It's good for thermos brewing, which is just what it sounds like, using a very low proportion and the longest possible infusion time in a thermos, that you take with you.  It's so gentle on your stomach that it's the only tea I drink when fasting, beyond a little aged white, and I'm on day 1 of a planned 5 day fast today.  It's no problem to have this without breakfast.  Rushing through an extra strong brewed 12 ounce mug to write notes on the next part is a little more questionable.

Second infusion:  lighter, brewed faster.  Some of the peat range drops out.  It wasn't really musty before, kind of clean in effect, but describing a fermentation input like peat is hard to clarify related to that.  I think this may really relate to what people describe as like betel nut, as a main flavor.  I really should try that; it's out there in the local Chinatown (in Bangkok; I'm not in Hawaii now, where I also live sometimes).

The rest is still complex, but still not so distinct.  Warm tones do seem like dark wood, and some supporting range like dried fruit or spice.  Maybe sandalwood?  Dried fruit is perhaps closest to jujube, dried Chinese date.  And then it's hard to make any of that more specific.

Feel is decently rich and full.  Aftertaste expression is limited, but it doesn't clear from your mouth immediately, so those two parts give it some complexity.  It doesn't come across as amazing quality tea, but it's solid, and pleasant.

Conclusions:

On to guessing, limited to age, since I already know what it is.  As I see it shou tends to undergo two main transitions related to aging, related to the early fermentation related off notes clearing, typically over 3 years or so, then within 10 to 15 a version can pick up depth, and a less fermented style--which is more rare now--can transition even more.  I would guess that this is around that 3 year age range, that whatever off notes remained have had time to clear.  That's a bit unreliable, because some shou expresses less of that within the first couple of years.  And some more; some is better after about 4 years, which is really long enough for most of that to settle.

That just leaves placing the quality level, or match to what I like in shou.  It's as good as it's supposed to be, lacking significant flaws, so it's already in the top 50% of the range.  I'm just not sure it's better than 7572 would be from most sources, given it had some age, in appropriate storage conditions.  

All shou seems to resemble all other shou more than for most other tea types, to me, kind of like how there is low, medium, and high quality light Tie Guan Yin, and the versions don't vary as much as you'd expect between examples at the same level.  Of course plenty of people would reject both assertions.

So it's good; it's how it should be.  It's down to pricing and considering aging input, related to where to get it.