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From the vaults of the tea museum, here’s a Wuyi hongcha from the beginning of the Eco-Cha Tea Club in the spring of 2016. I’ll call it “aged” instead of neglected. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of sweet potatoes, honey, raisins, earth, and medicinal herbs. The first steep has notes of raisins, plums, sweet potato, anise, earth, tannins, malt, sugarcane, wood, and spices, perhaps nutmeg. The plummy stonefruit is more prominent in the next steep, but so are the tannins and the astringency. The next couple steeps add cream and apricot, and I got a floral edge in one of my gongfu sessions. Fortunately, the medicinal character is gone, though there’s still sugarcane and faint anise in the aftertaste. The next few steeps have notes of spiced plum, raisins, squash, honey, cereal, tannins, earth, wood, grass, and minerals, with a nice honey/sugarcane aftertaste.

For such an old tea, this is complex and full of flavour. The honey and spices remind me of other Taiwanese black teas. I wonder if the strong raisins and stonefruit are due to aging, as they’re not noted in the few other reviews of this tea when it was younger. I’m sure Derk and Daylon will be able to add some nuances to this tasting note, as I’ve included it in their swap boxes!