Wu He 1984

Alright y’all, here’s my Birthday Tea (several days ago now). I was born in 1983 — a tea one year off fits the bill well enough. I don’t feel old, even around teenagers but put in the perspective of tea years, I should be tasteless and dry by now. But I am neither! And neither is this tea. It smells a little musty, dusty and sour so in human years, I’d put this around 85 years old :P

The dry leaf smells a little of this, a little of that — sour, musty, dusty, woody, cookie, soy sauce. Warmed, it smells rich and sweet with date syrup-coffee-caramel, aged wood and pepperoni, fire-spicy, complex. The rinsed leaf smells like stale coffee, wet earth and wet vegetation. Once brewed, the tea has a forward note of ash. Its general character is spicy, woody, and mineral with a gentle unrefined palm sugar type sweetness. There’s also kind of an underlying umami-seaweed tone. There’s an awesome black sesame oil high note that pierces through everything for 4 or 5 infusions. That note smells and tastes exactly like the homemade black sesame ice cream the sushi chef gifted me with my pandemic to-go birthday dinner.

Thanks, Leafhopper, for allowing me a sample of the oldest tea I’ve had thus far! It was an interesting sip for sure and not a bad one by any means. It’s still a supple, complex oolong with a bit of an opinionated fiery bite.

This is a queued tasting note.

So, we’ve all had a tea (or teas) that we bought for reasons completely unrelated to the tea itself, right? The art on the wrapper looked super cool? Or the name was really geeky? Well, I bought this one because I was looking for aged oolongs to sample and the year 1984 caught my attention as I’m a pretty big fan of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm novels. I needed 25g of this, stat, for that reason alone. So, buckle up guys, gals, and people inbetween or otherwise ’cause the Orwellian puns in this review are gonna be doubleplusstrong!

Also, this is a stream of consciousness review, meaning I essentially just took jot notes as I was drinking of my immediate thoughts and that’s basically what I’m writing up now. Unfiltered, pretty much. Bonus, unintended Newspeak puns!

- Started with a five second rinse…

Infusion One: Less than five seconds
- Light brown/gold liquor
- Roasty/mineral aroma
- Peppery “tickle” on the forefront of my tongue and back of my throat
- Dank/wet earth and mineral notes
- Woody/vegetal; oak
- LIGHT roast overall

Infusion Two: Seven seconds
- Stronger Plusstrong roast aroma; slightly more nutty plusnutty
- Darker Plusdark brown liquor with a red tinge
- Roasty/peanut top notes
- Brothy; stewed veggie and mineral body
- Cocoa finish?
- Still woody

Infusion Three: Seven seconds
- Leaves look like black velvet w. spare brown/olive hues
- Earthy/roast/nutty aroma and same liquor colour
- Rich top notes: peanut, earth, barley, cocoa
- Very Plusnatural body; wet earth, woody, nuts
- Mushroomy and raisin finish
- Plussweet!

Infusion Four: Ten seconds
- Brothy/meaty umami aroma but still sweet
- Earthy/wet soil, musk, mushroom, peanuts, cocoa
- Slight raisin background taste
- At this point has a bordering salt flavour?
- Still some roast but it’s a little less unstrong

Infusion Five: Twelve seconds
- Liquor is lightening up in hue; it’s plusgolden again and has an unred tinge
- Smells like wet soil/rocks/leather/salt
- Reminds me of a salt lick rock I had as a small child…
- Beginning to taste doubleplussalty
- Salted peanuts and seaweed???
- Uncocoa notes and starting to be unsweet

Infusion Six: Twelve seconds (Last Infusion)
- Seasalt and earth smell
- Doubleplussalty!!! Definitely seasalt and seaweed
- A touch of a peanut taste
- Relatively monotone/flat flavour overall though

So yeah, that’s it! I think my personal sweet spot was the third infusion? I liked infusions two to four a lot though, but after infusion five the experience was definitely declining quickly. Also, a note – when I say I had a salt rock as I kid I literally mean somehow I was given something like this: http://globalendurance.com/store/products/redmond-rock-sea-salt-lick/ and for whatever reason I would carry it around and, like a horse, occasionally lick it. I think I was maybe six? Don’t remember what happened to the bloody rock or how I even got it, but yeah that’s a thing…

Also, maybe a handy reference? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Newspeak_words