Hi,
no more guessing about yesterday's sample, the solution was "Upper
Namring" - whispered over the counter into my ear.
Let me add some few lines on my first (and probably last) impressions:

Appearance: pretty greenish, silvery tips, a couple more oxidised
leaves, around 20% broken leaves and some fannings

Dry blow: slightly grassy, a wee bit balsamic, pronounced sweetness,
balanced

Prewarmed my 180ml/6 oz Gaiwan, poured out the water, added 2.2g of
leaves.

1st sniff of moistened leaves: fairly sweet and "round" aroma, grassy
notes, slightly woody, a wee bit of vanilla wafting up (maybe I need to
recalibrate my schnotz one day)

Added 180ml of Kingfisher Mineral Water, 92 Deg C.

1. steeping - 2'15" - light amber:
- pretty adstringent, flat spectrum with a wee bit of fruitiness

2. steeping - 2'45" - light to medium amber
- adstringency picking up, some rounder profile showing, some warmer
spices coming through, weak vegetal/grassy notes, dominated by a woody
edge but everything dominated by the adstringency on the edge of
bitterness

3. steeping - 3'15" - slightly coppery amber
- very adstringent / bitter now (as always I do a 3rd "tickling"
steeping for completeness sake), some woody notes making it through,
the profile is pretty "edgy" now - a few oscillating peaks dominate the
flavour, as opposed to round and balanced.

All in all the aroma of all 3 steepings was fairly weak and nothing
special to report on.
The 3rd sniff of the now cold leaves showed a somewhat rounder spectrum
than the first two, dominated by vegetal and bready notes, but the
leaves lost their aroma by the minute, 10 minutes later it felt liked
sniffing wet cardboard.

Bottom line: nothing I'd kill for. This morning I gave it a second try
and found that a bit of sugar helped a lot in bringing up more of the
weak base spectrum.

An interesting side note: I can't remember any Darjeeling that hit my
caffeine-o-meter like this one. Hooweee, in the mid of the sampling
session I noticed a change in my optical perception, similar to the
effects any of those energy drinks used to have on me. That, and the
overwhelming adstringency / bitterness of the 3rd steeping made me ask
if anything in the firing of this tea might have been slightly out of
tune, as so often seen among the first five invoices of DJ FFs.

I sampled one more FF this afternoon, and I definetely liked it a lot
better - but will get to know the name of the estate on Friday.
The guessing goes on - short "review" follows.

PS: Sungma, Rohini and Jungpana have arrived. More in the coming days.

Best,
Karsten / Darjeeling

Thanks for the update Karsten. Had been away for awhile. I noticed you
have mentioned "FTGGFOP DJ #4", the double GG, is it a new grade or is
it some typing error. Just curious you know.

I would love to get more info from you. Thanks! Its helping us a lot. I
will ask my friend to get me the teas which you recommend.

Hi,
silly me, just a typo, it should be FTGFOP instead. Thanks.
I've talked to some vendors in the morning, two invoices of Thurbo are
on their way.
Just let me repeat that some guys in the beezness advise against buying
any first flush invoices prior to #5(6). Leave that stuff to those guys
who prefer numbers to taste and are willing to pay for leaves that have
been used to "warm up" the machines.

PS: one of my most frequented wallahs sits on his fresh bags of FF like
a hen on its nest and calls it maturing. Opposed to the deep blue sky
there's a big cloud of secrecy going on here these days. Just mention
you had a sample of XYZs FF the other day and you have their full
instant attention: "who gave it to you, what garden, how much did you
pay, blah blah".

Let me see if I can snatch some 3g of those matured leaves before any
further fermentation takes place.

Karsten / Darjeeling