Organic Wuyi Black Tea

From the depths of the Tea Museum curated by Leafhopper, comes this 2016 Taiwanese Wuyi black tea.

Dry leaf base aroma is earthy-woody and sweet like wood buried within damp humus. The mid- to high notes are of red sweet potatoes baked with honey and nutmeg, a hint of dried and sweetened papaya.

First whiffs of the warmed leaf smell like pure honey soaking with nutmeg and golden raisins. Beneath that is “tea”, nectairine, passionfruit and plums. Overall, It’s a very intense woody-earthy, spicy-sweet aroma.

When I finally get around to drinking the tea instead of burying my nose in the leaf, it comes across first with the impressions of “tea”, a flattened malty-suede effect. Honeyed spring water follows and is chased by nutmeg, leather, plum and rosewood with barky tannins. A decadent apricot-squash-cream aftertaste comes out, dessert-like yet dense and savory. It is quick to present but morphs at the pace of poured molasses. and sticks to every surface before giving way to something more earthy. Infusions beyond the third hit me with sweet nutmeg and allspice top notes, while hanging on to the tea-malt-suede flat character. it takes 7 infusions for the tea to fade into something woody.

This is an incredibly aromatic tea with gorgeous spice and sweet taste and accompanying deeply warming energy. I’m not sure I’ve had a tea with those notes so prominent. Most bug-bitten Taiwanese blacks have a similar profile but this one is truly at another level of spice and sweet. It does suffer from that flat, suedey effect, though. Regardless, this tea is a treat! A tea I could devote to the month of November.

Finished this off yesterday-thank you Leafhopper! It would only last two-three solid steeps each session, 10, 20, 30, and then malty woodiness. The flavors were forward and had heavy honey, malt, some chocolate, dried papaya, a little bit of passion fruits, herbs, wood, nectarine hints, and of course, tea. It tasted like it was a ready boba with the brown sugar already in it, with a little bit of the Taiwanese fructose sweetness.

I liked this one quite a bit, and am glad I tried it.

From the vaults of the tea museum, here’s a Wuyi hongcha from the beginning of the Eco-Cha Tea Club in the spring of 2016. I’ll call it “aged” instead of neglected. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of sweet potatoes, honey, raisins, earth, and medicinal herbs. The first steep has notes of raisins, plums, sweet potato, anise, earth, tannins, malt, sugarcane, wood, and spices, perhaps nutmeg. The plummy stonefruit is more prominent in the next steep, but so are the tannins and the astringency. The next couple steeps add cream and apricot, and I got a floral edge in one of my gongfu sessions. Fortunately, the medicinal character is gone, though there’s still sugarcane and faint anise in the aftertaste. The next few steeps have notes of spiced plum, raisins, squash, honey, cereal, tannins, earth, wood, grass, and minerals, with a nice honey/sugarcane aftertaste.

For such an old tea, this is complex and full of flavour. The honey and spices remind me of other Taiwanese black teas. I wonder if the strong raisins and stonefruit are due to aging, as they’re not noted in the few other reviews of this tea when it was younger. I’m sure Derk and Daylon will be able to add some nuances to this tasting note, as I’ve included it in their swap boxes!