Fujia
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When I tasted this tea, it was by accident. I meant to grab the shou cha cake from the same year and factory, but picked up the sheng cha by mistake. I prepared the tea as I would any other pu-erh, with a quick 3 second rinse, then a 30-45 second first steep.
The aroma was stark and rich. My first sip assaulted me with astringency that I couldn’t help but think was out of place in, what I thought was, a shou pu-erh. I remember thinking that it didn’t taste like it had been cooked at all. I was definitely entertained later when I realized that I had grabbed the wrong cake and had, indeed, just tasted this raw specimen.
In regular fashion, I prepared further infusions and each successive infusion was milder and less abrasive on the sense with astringency. In the end it was a very pleasant experience. Not what I was planning on tasting at the time, but it did end up providing something of a small challenge for someone such as myself, who is still relatively new to the world of really understanding the tea I’m drinking. In my own way, I won a contest I never knew I was a part of, so it was definitely a victory in the end!
Preparation
the flavor is due to the ‘raw’ character of the tea and it will mature and develop complexity with time and storage…thank you for the watch and I look forward to your words as I see many teas in your reveiws that I’m a fan of…namaste
Yeah, it’s very fun to experience that flavor, Kashyap! It’s definitely going to be fun to taste this periodically over (long periods of) time. Looking forward to trying the shou cake, as I had intended to do the other day!
its funny….I don’t know if you are familiar with the zen poet Baisao? He actually mentions this in one of his tribute poems…it was after that when I was first exposed to this tea…it was interesting trying to compare experiences across space/time. If you haven’t heard of Baisao, he was a 16-17th century Japanese monk who left the temple to be a wandering tea seller around the natural wonders of Kyodo.
I have not! Definitely going to do some research now. Thanks!
when your profile mentioned you as “a pretty standard nerdy girl” I wasnt sure what kind of ‘nerd’ that meant…I usually present myself as a tea nerd…but being a martial artist, traditional ‘artist’ and photographer, and once having had the job of writing material for TSR (yea ol D&D before Magic of the Coast)…I figured that maybe a obscure zen wandering tea pimp monk might be a suitable intro :)
Niiiiice. And yes! This is most definitely up my alley!
