2006 Shenzhen market sheng compared with 2007 CNNP 8891

a translation of some of this follows but it doesn't really help

no idea what any of this says

On that trip to Shenzhen and Hong Kong I bought two more types of sheng I've not reviewed here yet, another cake and this 2006 sheng brick.  I've tried both, maybe only once back in a hotel room in China, or twice counting when I tasted them in that market buying them.  I'm not sure if the idea of letting them rest even applies, since they only did a short flight from Hong Kong to here, I've just been busy.

I don't remember what it is, or what the vendor said it is, beyond aged sheng pu'er.  She should have mentioned a source region, but her English use was so limited there's a decent chance we didn't get far through that part.  If memory serves this cost about 240 RMB / yuan, or $35 or so; not much.  It wasn't presented as any specific quality level, or character, again mostly because all conversation was limited. 

Google Translate converted some of the label text:

she seemed nice enough; who knows about all that 90s sheng though

That rough translation could work as a lead for sorting out more about what the tea is but I sort of don't care.  Factory teas aren't always clear about what went into the products, and it may not be what it's labeled as.  The brewed tea character is more of interest in this case.

Western facing pu'er vendors use risk concerns about buying completely random sheng as a marketing tool, claiming that someone would be likely to ingest inappropriate levels of pesticide toxins if they undertake such a practice, but I'm not too worried.  The same concern applies to food, and I haven't switched over to a completely organic diet.  In Thailand that may or may not make a lot of difference anyway, given how controls of all sorts go here.  I buy most teas from vendors and initial producer sources that I'd tend to trust more and rest easy that the rest probably won't kill me.

I think a higher risk comes from buying the cheapest possible substantial quantity of randomly sourced tea you can find, a kilogram of a version that costs almost nothing at some Indian or Chinatown market, then drinking mostly only that for a few months.  Even a moderate dosage of any contaminant in that would really add up.  Obviously enough I'm varying what I drink.

I'm reviewing this in direct comparison with a 2007 CNNP 8891 red label.  That second tea is for evaluation purposes, as a benchmark for my own experience, since I reviewed it not long ago, but it will really work to help communicate what I mean about the other tea to anyone who is familiar with this one.  Often reviewing two teas is more about just getting through a volume of samples but in this case the comparison is more the point.

Review

I went with a slightly longer rinse step than usual, more to get the chunks to open up than related to concerns over toxins, dust, or whatever else (towards 30 seconds).  Then I used a really long first infusion due to not paying attention, writing this intro section and losing track of time.  That first impression will be about the character when over-infused, but at least that will get the initial rounds transition issue cleared away.  These teas aren't going anywhere fast in terms of "brewing out;" wasting a potentially more positive initial infusion or two isn't a concern.

this Shenzhen market tea left, CNNP 8891 right

that CNNP 8891 "red mark" version; a bit compressed

2006 Shenzhen market sheng brick:  it's not quite as rough as I remember.  Overbrewed it's pretty far from optimum but the flavor is still pretty decent.  It tastes a little like coffee and old furniture, but a much cleaner version of those than I'd expect from a too-strong initial round of some random wholesale market 13 year old sheng brick.  It might clean up to be quite decent in a much shorter second infusion.


2007 CNNP 8891 red mark:  brewing it too strong doesn't help this either but it's interesting noting how similar and different these are.  "Clean" isn't necessarily how most people would describe either of these, but I've tried badly stored teas before and the mustiness is different from the normal aging transitions these seem to be showing.


Remembering that Shenzhen version as much rougher than I'm experiencing it could just be due to a shift in expectations, for whatever reason, or maybe the initial guess here of how it will change later when brewed appropriately isn't accurate.  This CNNP version includes a sweeter old-furniture range flavor, a bit towards dried fruit.  Along with that old antiques aspect there's a touch of nail polish range too; it's only "clean" in that one limited sense.  It's smoother, and less intense, but not necessarily in a more positive range, just different.  Both aren't bad, and are interesting, but the next rounds will really tell the story for both.

Second infusion

Shenzhen market tea left, CNNP right

The CNNP chunks seem more stubborn about loosening up and opening, and the quantity seems slightly different (I just eyeball amounts, a carry-over from brewing loose tea for a long time before I ever got more serious about it).  It would be possible to try to compensate with brewing time but this isn't supposed to be an informative direct-parallel comparison of similar types anyway, with the CNNP just giving me a better idea of where this other one stands.


Shenzhen brick:  it's odd how this is a good bit better than I remember it; it seemed really rough tasting it back in that Shenzhen hotel, earthy in a less approachable way.  It's conceivable that it settled or aired out to some extent but I'm guessing that the variation is probably from my judgment.  I never really get as clear an impression when drinking teas with a vendor because they're making it per their own standard approach, and the extra stimulus of being in a different place and either discussing teas or failing to do so due to language issues adds too much else to distract me.  Using different water when tasting in the hotel may have caused a real variation.  It was a bottled water version but who knows what the mineral content in that was like.

The "coffee" range has dropped back but the old-furniture effect is still strong enough.  I suppose some of this flavor is geosmin, or the taste aspect from beets, but it's balanced within other range that's not so earthy.  There's a sweetness to it that's pleasant, in a toffee-like range.  Other flavor range is in between vegetal and earthy, kind of a tree-root sort of general theme, or maybe tree bark instead, or both.  Oddly it's much cleaner in effect than any of that list implies.


CNNP:  so different!  Some of the earthiness overlaps, that antique furniture range, but beyond that it's completely different.  The sweetness that can pair with that aroma is different, extending a bit towards nail polish, but in a mostly good sense.  It's much lighter, and much less earthy.  There really isn't all that much geosmin / beet effect, although in tasting it alone I might see something like that as a dominant aspect range, with this seeming lighter and less earthy in comparison with the other.

It has a woody character (as the other did), but in a much different range, like a very mild version of well-aged dark tropical wood, which works a little better than tree root or bark in the other.  There's a slight musty hint too, like balsa wood, which could be interpreted as cardboard instead, but I don't see it as that.

It's hard to explain or justify why I like these teas, given the flavors I'm describing (beets, cardboard, bark, antiques).  Maybe that's not how personal preference works anyway, that someone can explain why floral range works for them better than fruit, or why they hate grassiness but love earthiness that's much closer to dirt.  It probably helps to have been exposed to a lot of shu, and to like those, to appreciate a lot of variations of more earthy aspect themes.

Tea group discussions, some comments and forms in them, can tend to imply that preference curves tend to follow similar progressions for different people, and that although relatively subjective personal preference is a valid and individual yardstick that somehow more experienced individuals can just be further along the path others are on.  That can be valid, to a limited extent, but I don't completely buy it. 

On the one hand I've experienced some of the transitions I'm "supposed to" have went through, like adjusting to appreciating a balanced level of bitterness in young sheng, when earlier on a lot more of it just tasted like taking an aspirin (but then that example cites a coarse level of preference adjustment, doesn't it?).  On the other hand I don't necessarily see most of my preference for types or individual aspects as having followed such patterns.  Shu pu'er alone throws off the idea that there should be a consensus, since people divide on whether it's a reasonable type preference or not.  It's conventional for more experienced pu'er drinkers to just skip that type altogether, to see it as a pale shadow of well-aged sheng, more one-dimensional and unpleasant in character.  But it's not clear to me that people retaining appreciation for shu is an objectively negative indication of their judgement.

At any rate that's probably enough philosophy of tea for one tangent.

Third infusion

It does look like these are nearly identical quantities of leaf once this CNNP version's chunks opened up, facilitated by stirring the leaves with the gaiwan lid.  These should be relatively close to parallel in terms of proportion, without that much difference from the brick version brewing out faster in the rinse and first two rounds.


Shenzhen 2006 brick:  it's a good bit cleaner; those earthier aspects had been secondary to what I've been describing as an antique furniture effect, with the sweetness also standing out more, and now they're diminished even further, transitioning out.  There's still a coffee-like edge as a main flavor, like French roast, related to the earthy effect coming across similarly to roasting char in coffee beans.  The tea doesn't taste like coffee; that's just part of the complex range.  The tree bark / root effect is transitioning to more of a tropical hardwood range (teak, mahogany, etc.), like the wardrobe (closet-like furniture) that I keep my clothes in.

The feel is interesting, full with a slight hint of dryness, more full in effect than dry really, but not full in the same way younger shengs are.  The aftertaste is persistent; that sweetness and roasted coffee flavor lingers a lot more than the rest, which is milder while you drink the tea as well.

The intensity is interesting; some sheng fades away a lot more by this age.  It's not a given that any sheng version will "come through" the awkward teen years of 4 to 10 years in age with plenty of intensity, and I have trouble appreciating versions that are either subtle or just don't taste like much, depending on how you interpret that.  If anything this intensity could round off a bit with more age and be fine.  I'm not sure how much the character will keep changing, but then I can't be certain this really is even 13 year old tea.  It definitely seems like it, but rapid aging and then drying back out might lead to a similar place in some regards.  I also wonder if this tea was even drinkable a decade ago.


2007 CNNP 8891:  earthiness picked up in this version; it seemed like limited leaf exposure was causing it to be more subtle than it naturally would be brewed at this proportion for a substantial length of time.  I'll try a fast infusion of both next to see how that changes things, one in between 5 and 10 seconds, more typical of how I brew intense younger sheng.

It's not necessarily "cleaning up" in character as the other is, if anything picking up more of that beet / geosmin range.  An extra bit of stirring might've thrown off the parallel in this round, but it probably drew them closer together in transition cycle since the other started out faster, with more leaf contact earlier.  Everything is slightly different from the aspects in the other tea, but in the same general range, and explaining "different how" may not be worth going back through an aspects list again.  I'll do that next round instead, to the extent I get to it at all.

Fourth infusion

Shenzhen brick:  the effect is different brewed very lightly, probably not optimum for my preference, but interesting for providing a different impression.  A trace of mushroom stands out, which may well have just not be detectable due to earthier aspects overpowering it brewed stronger, versus being a result of aspect transitions across rounds.  It's odd how clean this tastes, given all the specific aspect range present (I guess I'll just keep repeating that).  Even the feel has a pleasant quality to it, and a flavor echoing aftertaste experience is still pronounced, even though this is brewed very lightly.

I might qualify that when I say a tea tastes like "old furniture" to me I'm not talking about the couch from my childhood days in my parent's basement, more like the odd fragrant, sweet, complex scent of old cabinets in dry storage areas in a temple I was a resident in there, ordained for two months as a Buddhist monk.  It's like old, dark wood and the lingering effect of furniture polishes, stains, and clear-coats.

that one aspect is how you would expect this Polish tearoom to smell (Herbaciarnia Czajnik Zabrze)

even teaware is stored and forgotten in those old temple rooms

CNNP 8891:  really the catchiest aspect range in both of these teas is probably escaping identification as a clearly defined concept.  Old sheng versions tend to be described as tasting like camphor, tobacco, or betel nut, or using lots of other standard terms, that surely really would describe similar aspects present.  Maybe this tastes like a mix of all three and I'm just not flagging that.  I see that betel nut for sale every few years in Chinatown but never think to buy it, so I'm not at all familiar with that.

I suppose there could be a faint hint of camphor in this, but tobacco doesn't seem quite right.  Not mentioning specifics beyond a vague complex wood-tone description isn't helpful either.  It seems closest to a lighter and more subtle version of cigar tobacco, versus cigarettes or pipe tobacco, and nothing like chewing tobacco.  Groups of people who regularly taste teas together potentially could agree on terms for impressions, surely informed from some branch of tradition, but for others it doesn't work so well.  To be clearer, what I'm calling dark tropical wood probably does overlap with mild cigar tobacco to some people.

Fifth infusion

Shenzhen tea (left) slightly darker; that makes sense, given storage input

The time flies.  These probably would be at this transition level after 6 or 7 infusions instead without letting that first round really run, or maybe after 8 or 9 if someone preferred drinking aged sheng infused very lightly.  This round is again brewed for 15 seconds or so, more of an optimum per my preference for these losing a little intensity already.


Shenzhen brick:  "catchy" describes it; the sweetness and earthy complexity is a little towards how root beer comes across, drawing closer to a sassafras root infusion.  It's as clean as that sounds, even though there is still dark-wood tone beyond that, and a subtle mineral input that I've just not mentioned since earthy range had stood out more (less subtle this round, with the earthiness fading).  It's odd how this tea really mellowed out while the other became a lot earthier and more intense; that could relate to it being so slow to saturate and unpack.

This tea is better than some random, inexpensive find I'd expect to stumble across.  It's not clearly a higher quality version either but the level of rough edges I see as obvious flaws is relatively limited.  It might appeal to a slightly broader set of people than the CNNP 8891, but then the general range of both is so close that if someone liked one they'd be likely to appreciate the other, or else dislike both.

Probably after a lot of exposure to even better aged sheng versions the novelty of these two just being aged sheng wouldn't have the same effect, as occurs with a progression of preference across any tea type. In the beginning any general-type-range medium quality versions are interesting and pleasant, and later one narrows that preference down, as experiencing better versions becomes normal and preferences become more specific.


CNNP 8891:  this is still evolving too, moving a bit towards clove.  I was kind of thinking of letting the notes go, saying they'd both transition some but that was already the main story, but another round's description seems in order.  To some the difference in feel and aftertaste might be what separates these but that's a complicated range to pin down.  They're quite comparable across that scope, just different.

Sixth infusion

I let this round go closer to 20 seconds since these are losing some intensity.

Shenzhen brick:  range of aspects keeps narrowing slightly but what comes across is still quite pleasant, as described in the last round.

CNNP:  both of these could be regarded as the best they've been, since both have settled into two different spice ranges, sassafras root versus clove, with mild earth and warm mineral supporting that.  Dropping out intensity and a lot of aspect range diminishes both in one different sense, so preference for a character type would come into play in judgment. 

Obviously enough tweaking brewing approach for the first few rounds to match preference better, or just not losing track of timing in one, would go a long way towards optimizing the experience of both.

Conclusion

A couple more rounds were uneventful; they just tapered off.

To me they're both nice.  But then even among people who like aged sheng the 2007 CNNP 8891 seemed to draw out two completely different responses in online discussion about it.  It could seem a little rough.  It's hard to be clear if moving past that character in preference progression makes sense or if it's just too earthy for many.

Some of the same applies not only to shu pu'er but also to hei cha; not everyone is into that set of tea types, Liu Bao and the rest.  I've got a couple of samples of them from Yunnan Sourcing from that last order to go through, and an online pen-pal friend just sent me a lot more of a Liu Bao version from KL, maybe similar to this one, so I'll be cycling back to say more about that.  It seems normal for some people to only like Liu Bao after 20 or so years of aging; although as with shu transitions aren't so dramatic after a few years longer term aging does seem to lend both a mellow character, and a limited degree of additional depth.

It's been nice sticking mostly to sheng, across lots of different ages, and then alternating with considering other types.  It's all a bit much but within another dozen or so reviews I'll be mostly through this wave of orders, market purchases, and samples.  I'll be ready to do less with this process and write a couple of research or interview posts instead, or just let this blog go quieter.

2007 CNNP 8891 sheng from Yunnan Sourcing

cool looking, nice color, a bit tight as compression goes

same photo with a light turned on; funny how background lighting shifts color

This is the last in a hectic series of review posts I started while I had a few days off with my kids visiting family back in the US, without my wife and I.  I'll go quiet again here for another week or two due to being out of town this weekend, but a TChing post I wrote on tea evangelism should post in that time, so I may add that in this blog too.

This is another interesting tea from a Yunnan Sourcing order.  I never did list what I bought or post a purchase photo anywhere.  I'll let a partial citation of their description serve as an intro (with the rest really worth a read; there's a bit more of an origin story there):


...this tea is incredibly good tasting and has a very unique flavor profile. It's been stored in Guangdong since 2007 in a dry-wet storage condition (wet stored but on the dry side of the wet storage spectrum). The raw material is from Nan Jian area of Yunnan which is technically part of Dali prefecture...

The tea brews up an orange-red tea soup with a pungent aroma of flowers, mushrooms and earth. The taste is clean with no musty wet storage notes, but does have some some earthy notes. There is a kind of pronounced spice and cloves taste and aroma with a strong viscous sweetness throughout...


No rambling from me this time.  I've tried teas of this age but I won't go through comparing them since starting point character and storage differences would cause that to not be meaningful.

Review

The first impression won't tell a lot of the story but it is interesting.  There's a pronounced dry wood tone to the flavor, which could be described as mushroom and earth.  It strikes me more as the scent of an old barn.  Oddly my impression is positive though; that earthiness isn't where it will be in another infusion or two but it's paired well with general warmth and sweetness.  The aftertaste is pleasant, mineral intensive, even a bit towards natural spring scent or long-rusted metal, with a hint of the clove showing through already.  That's why I don't read descriptions before tasting though; that last part really could be suggestion.

Earth picked up a good bit in this second round; I'll have to keep these infusions fast since the flavor intensity won't balance well unless this tea is light, given how it's a bit intense.  I was reading some really interesting pu'er storage experiments in a blog by "M Gault" (Late Steeps) in which he describes flavors as geosmin.  I had to look that up; it's basically dirt.  It's not dirt, although some descriptions of the term tie it back to that, but here is Wikipedia's description (partial):


Geosmin is an organic compound with a distinct earthy flavor and aroma produced by certain bacteria, and is responsible for the earthy taste of beets and a contributor to the strong scent (petrichor) that occurs in the air when rain falls after a dry spell of weather or when soil is disturbed.[1] In chemical terms, it is a bicyclic alcohol with formula C12H22O, a derivative of decalin...

Seems likely this tea tastes like that.  Luckily I like that strange flavor aspect in beets.

The tea isn't musty but it is earthy; what could've been mushrooms but reminded me of well-aged wood has shifted a little towards well-aged hay, beyond fully cured into an old version of it.  Again though, it works.  I'm picking up a lot more mineral input than floral, although a little seems to be present, and the spice range isn't as pronounced as it might be, but it's a cool mix.  It wouldn't be for everyone.  It's funny I've taken to saying that lately; it sort of goes without saying, doesn't it?

Either it's the Bangkok-hot season heat getting to me or else I'm really already feeling this tea on the second infusion, which is not how that usually goes.  I'm not all that sensitive to "cha qi" effects but at their strongest I can notice it, but I'm at a pretty low dosage this far in for the head buzz I'm feeling.  Might be both acting together, the heat and the tea.

I lost focus and let this infuse for over 5 seconds, my typical timing range, a bit long.  It'll be nice seeing where that puts it and noticing the contrast with a flash infusion the next time.  The earthiness tie-in to mushroom makes a lot more sense on this infusion; that's what's going on.  The mineral has shifted to taste a good bit like potato skin, although still also a little like beet. 

It's funny how when I consider these terms (dirt, beet, potato skin, mushroom, well-aged hay, rock mineral leaning towards metal) it doesn't sound like a pleasant thing to experience, but it is.  It's still on the soft and approachable side, nothing is too jarring as flavors or other experience range, and a good bit of sweetness helps all that work.  It comes across as "cleaner" than all that would sound; aging-related flavors can be musty, and this isn't.  If anything the feel is pleasant; it intuitively should be edgier and a bit dry given all that flavor range but it's not.

Brewed faster, a quick in and out, the tea doesn't give up nearly as much intensity as you would expect.  It's not even all that different.  Sweetness plays a slightly larger role in the flavor balance, and heavier mineral drops back.  The aftertaste is still intense, and the feel is still an odd mix of hinting towards dryness and tightening across a lot of my mouth with feeling a bit juicy.  It will be really interesting to see how this changes after just a couple of years here, in a nice and hot, consistently humid place.  I'd bet all of Bangkok is firmly in the wet-wet storage condition per that description spectrum postulated.

It's 97 F here right not, around one of those temperatures I can convert back and forth from C to F easily, close to the 37 C of human body temperature.  Relative humidity is 57% right now, much lower than the typical 70% here, but I think that's because the amount of water in the air has probably gone up just a little but the carrying capacity at this hotter temperature is a good bit higher, hence the lower relative percentage.  I went through all that in this post, which cites this related graph:

Since I'm mentioning it I went a lot further with pu'er storage themes in this article I wrote for a vendor, for Moychay, mentioning a reference on how to make do-it-yourself humidity control packs and one on temperature related aging experiments.

Those black boxes (or whatever shapes) in this graph are recommended environments for IT equipment operation; never mind all that.  The other two colored versions were me messing around with where people say pu'er stores well.  I'd probably draw them differently now since that was from 2017 but the idea is the same.  The point here is that even a relatively small step up in temperature from 33 C to 38 (91 F to 100 F) changes how much moisture the air can hold at those levels.  The air I'm sitting in contains about 22 grams water per kilogram of dry air right now, or way above any of those boxes.

Really it's my understanding now (based on input from M Gault's blog, Late Steeps) that tea can age just fine at whatever temperature, even up to 40, which is good since it is almost that now.  That, and the sheng I have around (the limited amount of it) seems to transition well with age, maybe just a little faster than I'd expect.  The character doesn't seem to have been impacted negatively for it being so hot.  To qualify that, I don't have enough other baseline of experience to be a good judge of such a thing; it's more a vague and poorly grounded impression.


The tea is shifting a good bit over the next infusion, softening, with those different aspects integrating much better.  Clove really does start to make sense as an interpretation of part of the flavor.  The feel still has good complexity but it's different too.

Again on the infusion after it's still shifting; that's a cool experience, after a lot of young sheng I've been drinking lately staying more consistent.  The warm mushroom / aged wood or hay aspect is now as much like a bark spice.  The mineral is still on the deep and earthier side, still including a touch of "geosmin," but milder, different, and more integrated with the rest.

This lighter range is more familiar, not far off that in a couple of different 2006 Hong Tai Chang versions I compared at one point.  A more recent 2006 find in Chinatown had a really heavy earthy flavor, more on the musty side, which I took to likely be storage condition related (but again, I'm guessing at this level of exposure).  I never did report back that within a couple months of trying that tea I tried it again and it was much improved, probably benefiting from airing out a little.

It's odd that this local environment could count as "airing out" but who knows where that Chinatown tea was stored, or even exactly what it was, given the frequency of gaps in how teas are labeled and what they actually are.  As with those other inexpensive teas I just reviewed if you buy a tea labeled as something not overly desirable that kind of helps (with limiting concern about it being "fake"), because a producer isn't going to fake a tea being a relatively generic, lowly regarded, lower-cost source product.  At a minimum they would fake a tea being an in-demand but moderate cost known-vendor version.  If a tea is sold as a $15 cake of Lao Ban Zhang in one sense it's fake but in another it's more or less what it's presented as; as mis-labeled tea.


This tea might be transitioning to thin in intensity just a little; far from brewed out but fading in intensity.  It would have helped going with flash infusions from the start.  I suspect it has just as long a cycle to go, just either drinking it as moderate strength (which is probably better) or extending infusion time.  The leaves being more chopped than I'm accustomed to must have altered how it brews.  I've drank factory teas since first getting into sheng a half dozen years ago, some so finely broken it's almost as much a ground leaf, but more often I'm drinking more whole-leaf versions.


On the next infusion the last description mentioned still works; the tea is still pleasant (where I'll leave off description, something like 8 to 9 rounds in).  I'm happy with this tea.  I'm guessing that it will benefit quite a bit from another 2 to 4 years of getting a little further through aging here but I could enjoy drinking it like this, and will probably try it a few more times over the next year.

Later observation, some online review

I did brew that tea at least another half dozen rounds later and the flavor held up fine, thinning and changing a little but staying positive.  Even without any further aging or change I would really enjoy that tea, and that just getting used to the novel character a little more would already make it seem even more positive, when I already liked it to begin with. 

To some extent it must be a relatively basic tea compared to refined and highly desirable aged versions that get discussed in tea groups.  Since I'm still on the new side related to exposure to aged sheng it's still novel and probably more positive to me.  The cost is moderate, listing at $67 there on YS now; maybe they just forgot to add the standard per year mark-up in this case.  Then again I tried to look up alternative vendors selling it and saw a reference of the pricing from a couple of years ago; it just started really low.

No alternative sources turned up easily in a Google search but in looking that up I ran across a couple of interesting related references.  Tea DB (James) did a review of it; he liked it, especially related to value, but I didn't watch that video yet to get to the details.  The Steepster entry feedback was generally positive, which is probably as well taken with a grain of salt, listing these aspect in the main header description: 


Sawdust, Tobacco, Vegetal, Musty, Raisins, Whiskey, Sweet, Chestnut, Dried Fruit, Floral, Mineral, Mushrooms, Nutmeg, Rose, Spinach, Wet Earth, Caramel, Sweet, warm grass, Earth, Hay, Spicy, Stonefruits, Straw


Maybe it was like that; I'll have to taste it again a few times and try to sort all that out.  Odd that no one borrowed mentioning "clove" from the vendor description. 

Just to be clear, in tasting a tea that's in a less than familiar style, and a complex tea at that, interpretations could vary quite a bit.  I didn't notice that much fruit but about a third of that list appears by name in this review, and some of the rest overlaps a bit (saying it tastes a little like clove is close to saying it tastes a little like nutmeg, even though they're different, and so on).  Tobacco and whiskey are something else; I'll consider that in re-tasting.

talking to Kalani on video call

those two love messing with the app features