This one is a MAD tea that will surprise and delight with its unashamedly wild taste, texture and effects! Super candy aroma with lotus, grapefruit, fermented honey and baked orange.
This tea is a strange, cute and feisty animal (hence the wrapper).
The producers call this a Bai Mu Dan but it doesn't look like one to me - made from a mottled mosaic of medium leaves.
When I saw it on my sampling table, I mentally dismissed it as a weird and rough tea.
And then I smelled the dry leaves and started laughing.
What is happening here?!
On the nose is the brightest candy notes of elderflower, grapefruit, white peach and pine resins.
It is a distinctely wild smell, reminiscent only to the made Zi Ya and the Ye Sheng aromatics from Yunnan.
Wild Slumber is made from pickings of 50 year old Da Bai bushes planted in the 1970's and left to go feral.
People often talk about Wild tea, well this one is unmistakeable. Gone are the soft and powdery floral and vanilla notes of your classic Fuding Da Bai White.
Instead, Wild Slumber hits you with a mad fruit candy cocktail - lemon drops, grapefruit taffy, elderflower cordial are the top notes which then merge with baked orange, fermented honey and woody pine cones.
It is herbaceous and floral with so much zestiness that you can't stop sniffing the leaves.
The minerality from these wild bushes is similarly raucous. Physical and quenching with a Rock Oolong style catch in the throat which releases to a gentle juiciness.
These wild bushes have clearly been partying because the body sensation is powerful with an exhilarating and over-the-top energy. This is a tea to keep you buzzing for hours.
Wild Slumber is crazy White and I could not resist its charms. If you want to taste the definition of WILD then this tea is for you!