2004 Chāngtài Chén Hóngchāng Yiwu Jípǐn

Brief Note

While getting ready for work, I’m brewing this up as I get ready…

Notes: Tastes like a lumberyard smells; smells like an old wet basement (mildew?).

I like it though.

I tasted this one a couple of times shortly after we got it, just to check on the mold issue. Mine had a faint humid odor when it arrived, which has since pretty much cleared up. Today I broke off a bigger chunk and brewed up a strong batch.

I think this is my new fave. Starts with a smell of old books and a hint of roasted asparagus and a smooth smooth taste, and just goes on and on. After the umpteenth steep the lid scent gets a little humid, and the old books turn out to have been a bit wet. There’s an astringent mouth-coating effect that turns into floral perfume that lasts and lasts.

I can’t steep this one out today, though I started it at 10 AM and now it’s almost 4:30.

Drinking moldy tea!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BG5CMo_xYAM/

So here’s the deal: I picked this tea out because for its age and material, if everything check out, it was an absolute bargain. Now I’m going into this with absolutely no information other than Dr Jim had mold on his so I checked mine and I had little pieces of gold as well! Before even tasting the cake you can tell it’s dry and old. The leaf is begging to come apart and I helped some of it do just that. The colors are quite nice, somewhat like an off colored white cake that someone let get wet on accident; if you’ve ever seen one.

Steeping this I decided to just do whatever made sense at the time so I rinsed it with 100c water to wake it up hardcore. Let it sit for a bit and then woke it up a second time. Started brewing and taste each cup one by one because I was so curious and being that I just got off work, I wasn’t thinking about pacing myself.

The first few brews were quite syrup like in terms of viscosity. I thought this would last which made me happy, but as I began drinking through this it started to get thinner. The hue stayed about the same though which was nice.

Since I’m working on signing up for my 401k, which takes a billion words to read through and another billion numbers to ponder about, I am going to describe the taste as a whole rather than steep by steep: This tea tasted much like an old autumn plucking of an ‘eh’ material that went through few different types of storage. Throughout my drinking of it, I found this to taste much like what wet autumn leaves would taste like after being thrown from one yard to the other after a storm. Some dry hay, old leaf, traces of dirt, and worn out sun. Whatever all that means to you…

At first this was going to score a solid B with the texture, but then it started to fade out and become more like an aged white cake; being that it was like dried out leaf and wheat that was wet and ate, moist but leaves the mouth dry. By time I was done with drinking through my first tasting of this I found it to die out too quickly for me, but then I remembered how cheap it was and the potential this has for storage. The appearance of the leaf and room between (being that it’s pretty opened up between the leaf) makes it a great candidate to taste throughout the next year. I’m actually kind of happy about this cake. While I might not want to drink it again tomorrow, I’m looking forward to trying it again next month and seeing how humidity can change it.

From Liquid Proust’s MX-King tea group buy.

I unwrapped this tea to find a number of white spots scattered about the surface. Apparently mold. There was no indication of mold on the other side of the cake so I took a sample from that side. The cake flaked apart and seemed extremely dry.

The flavor was unremarkable. I did my usual routine for a puerh tea, but got no fruit, no complexity, no cha qi, and a somewhat bitter finish. It’s probably unfair to give a numerical rating at this point, since it’s been travelling from China to Ohio to Boston with only two days rest, but my first impression is blah.