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I boiled up a session with this tea for my daughter and her boyfriend this last weekend, 5g tea, 500ml water, boiling in a small pot. I try to keep the boil low so that too much water does not boil away.

This session I boiled the leaf for 10 minutes (the soup was not red enough for me after 5) and poured off 250ml which I replaced with fresh water and reboiled. I repeated this several times, increasing the boiling time like 15, 20, 25 min. Even after the 4th boiling this tea was still making fairly dark soup but we had to knock it off by that point and I was not ashamed to discard the leaves.

Had a second session with this tea yesterday in the late afternoon. I’ve been drinking some pretty earthy-tasting hei cha lately and have started acquiring more tolerance for humid storage tastes. But I still find with teas like this that the humid flavor dominates all through the session, not just the first few steeps. In particular, I don’t get the camphor or fruity notes the vendor description talks about. I have broken up my sample into smaller flakes, and will let it air out for a few more weeks to see if that makes any difference.

If you can get past the humid taste, this is a good solid tea. It easily goes 10 steeps before really starting to fall off, and you’ll get proper red aged soup strong enough to raise a tea sweat. I started off the session wondering how this tea is really better than YS’s considerably cheaper aged Liu An, and by that 10th steep had realized that this Yiwu wins on both strength and longevity.

Got a sample of this a month or so ago, and it’s been airing out for several weeks. Without having read any reviews, I still had the impression from someplace or other that this tea has some potency, and this morning I needed a kick, so I broke it out.

This cake must be pretty loosely compressed: my sample consists mainly of loose leaf, and I was able to just shake 8g out of the bag into my weighing boat. Gave it one minimum-duration rinse and steeped like 5s, 10s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 20s, 25s, … and 5s increments up to 50s.

I was prepared for seriously challenging bitterness based on what I’d heard (hence the relatively restrained steeping schedule) but maybe that was a characteristic of the tea when it was newer. Some of the early steeps had an almost teeth-on-edge astringency but other than that I found the flavors fairly mild. The tea has serious punch though, I can definitely agree with that. I was getting a tea sweat after about the 4th steep. Nice solid mouthfeel, with some perfumey notes in the early steeps and some sweetness later on. I got 10 solid steeps, and 4-5 more to wring it out.

Dry leaf is well-darkened with age, having a generic woody aged smell with no hint of mustiness.

1 short rinse with boiling water, steeps like 5s, 10s, 15s … 50s, and then longer intervals.

Starts with a sort of generic dry-aged medicinal flavor profile, some sweetness developing around the 4th steep. No hint of humid storage. Mouth feel a little thin for tea this expensive IMHO. Very nice floral cup aroma early on. Later steeps develop a fascinating fruity aftertaste reminiscent of Juicy Fruit gum. This becomes pronounced after about 10 steeps, when a pronounced mouth-drying astringency also appears, gradually tapering off over many additional steeps.

I was able to remain interested in this one through 20 or so infusions, which makes it very good AFAIAC, but it is quite pricey.

I think this is a higher tier of leaf than I have previously tried.

Boiling water, 8 grams in “standard gaiwan,” short (maybe 7 sec) rinse. Steeps like 5s, 10s, 15s… 50s. First couple of steeps were pretty meh on flavor and aroma but with promising full mouthfeel. Starting to open up on the 3rd, and by the 4th I was like “holy shit, this is something.” Thick mouthfeel, honey sweetness, tartness of green fruit, floral incense perfume, bitterness, heavy mouth-coating astringency. I just sat back and sucked on the inside of my mouth for a while after that one, and after the 5th I had to walk away and do something else for a while.

I got it up to 10 steeps but by that point the green tart mouth pucker and astringency were so dominant that I could not keep drinking it. Well, I probably could have, but was not enjoying it. Maybe less leaf next time.

Dry leaf smells of aged tea, no dampness, age-darkened but not so much that the tips are not still golden-brown. Well-compressed but not so tightly that I couldn’t pick thin layers off of the main chunk of the sample.

10s rinse is surprisingly dark but then I’d teased the leaf apart to almost being like loose leaf. Vegetal, faintly smoky lid scent.

Since I had no big chunks in the gaiwan I kept the 1st steep at close to 5s, then followed with 9 more with 5s increments, then a half-dozen with 10s increments, then a few with 20s, so, like 5/10/15…45/50/60/70…110/120/140… for a total of 20-some steeps. Though I would not accuse anyone who stopped at 15 of wasting tea: the last half-dozen or so were pretty weak.

Soup starts out deep orange and surprisingly sweet for a few steeps, then develops some medicinal tang, bitterness and astringency with deep copper soup around steep 5. Nice full mouthfeel up through about the 10th, by which time the bitterness and astringency are fading also. Strong enough to produce a tea sweat around the 8th or so. Declines into generic sweet water with a medicinal smell by the 16th or so.

This tea has a nice flavor profile and mouthfeel, good endurance with well > 10 real steeps, no humid taste. I think I like it better than the 2004 Tai Lian I drank yesterday.

Age-blackened dry leaf in warmed gaiwan has a sort of woody(?) aroma, vaguely like some shu. I think it’s a kind of generic aged-tea smell. Infusions like rinse/10s/10s/15s/20s… for the 1st 10, then 60s/70s/80s/90s. Crystal Springs water at 208-212F.

Orange soup, no hint of humid storage, very clean-tasting. First few steeps have sweetness, mellow woody taste. Bitterness and astringency begin to develop by the 5th steep. Medicinal taste in 6th and subsequent infusions. Begin to get a slight tea sweat at 9th. Astringency continues to build through the 10th. 12th beginning to taste thin. Still some sweetness, astringency and medicine at 14 but gave it up at that point.

Spent leaf completely unfurled without creases, brown with olive-drab spots, looks like factory/plantation leaf. Not rubbery, crumbles when rubbed between fingers.

Is it Yiwu? Is it Zheng Shan? No idea, but it’s nice, clean, dry-aged tea with some potency and longevity, not too expensive.