2009 Guan Zi Zai * Jing Mai Wild Arbor (Qing Jin Lian Yun)

So back in November 2015, I was envisioning how I would spend Christmas holiday drinking good tea and getting back to some steepster reviews .. well, seems like that didn’t happen. I drank all the tea of course, but confusingly steepster is kind of unpractical as a tea log, so I stayed silent about it.

Anyway, it’s not every day I notice a $300+ tea on Yunnan Sourcing, probably because I filter them out for my own safety. This Jingmai caught my attention though. According to description, it hails from mangjing, which I believe is considered more aggressive than “jingmai proper”, in general.

I tasted the rinse and drank the first (flash) infusion thinking “seems a little soft?”, but obviously it was silence before the storm, I had even seen the forecast. Come second infusion, strong mouth-coating bitterness that stayed around ever since, along with astringency. Great mouth-cooling effect and throat feel, makes itself known all the way down, and the buzz is evident. Nice and consistent leaf quality in my sample, crystal clear brew. At about 8g/160ml gaiwan, it’s still potent at about steep 8-10, but it is yielding to become a softer, more balanced drink. Either that, or my palate is completely lost for the day, it’s not clear.

Value-wise, $0.80/g seems in line with todays market for a limited availability high-end tea, but it comes as a big 400g cake, and a $320 entry fee it is a little hard to swallow, but worth considering.

It could become 100 days of pure ecstasy at a shitty retirement home, is that worth $300 less in hand today, plus babysitting it? I will reconsider if it’s still in stock when I get around to finishing the sample – “Limited Quantity”.

Edit: Been brewing this on and off for two more days; it did indeed calm down and has been brewing quite stable sweet/fruity with good texture and a little bite.