Xiaguan Tea Factory (Taobao MX Tea)

This is excellent tea, one of the best semi aged raw teas I have had. This being an Xiagaun I was expecting some smoke to it. I really didn’t find much, maybe a muted taste of smoke here and there. Being an older tea you would expect it to taste heavily of tobacco and leather, this one not really, maybe a little. Or you would expect a lot of wet storage taste. I thought I detected a hint of it in the first steeping but then nothing. It had a nice semi sweet taste throughout all twelve steeps I gave it. As to the color of the tea, it was a nice amber red color indicating that it really was an aged tea. As to the qi, I am feeling a little but it is not tremendously strong, somewhat relaxing. I am definitely convinced of the storage of MX Tea from Taobao. This is the first of their raw teas from my Taobao Focus order I am trying. The other teas from the order I tried were not from MX Tea but different vendors. The nice thing about Taobao Focus is you can order from multiple vendors in a single order. This tea is definitely something I would consider buying again. I don’t exactly know how to describe the sweet note. It is not the apricot of a young sheng but sweeter than the typical aged sheng. It is sort of a muted sweetness.

I steeped this tea twelve times in a 140ml Yixing Teapot with 10.1g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min. If I wanted to continue the leaves were not finished, I could certainly get a few more steeps out of it.