Autumn 2017 High Grade Anxi Tieguanyin (Green)

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This tieguanyin is from a farm in Anxi that produces very good, and very clean, tieguanyin at altitudes over 1000m elevation. I originally tried their tieguanyin in 2016, and was very surprised by the quality of their tea, as a lot of modern green tieguanyin is flawed in some way. To date, this is the best modern green Anxi TGY I’ve ever tried at this price point!

I recently received new samples of their tea from autumn (fall) 2017 and I feel the quality of their tieguanyin is even better than before! I brewed this tea in one of the 120ml modern hongni/zhuni dragon eggs and it brought the best out of the tea and allowed for full extraction and more body than porcelain would’ve given me.

My pictures really do not do this tea justice. This kind of tieguanyin is very popular on the domestic Chinese market, where freshness is highly prized in green tea and tieguanyin. This tea is dried at low temperature to preserve as much of the fresh flavor as possible. The liquor is clean, smooth and has very little astringency or bitterness, even when pushed. My assistant Ophelia consistently seems to have a better tolerance for astringency and bitterness than I do, so she barely detected any astringency or bitterness at all until I pushed the tea hard.

There is light sweetness with every infusion. Ophelia commented that the tea felt alive in the first few infusions, and given how fresh it is, that is a pretty apt statement!

This tea is packed into 8g packets that both the farm and I keep refrigerated until shipment. These vacuum sealed bags will keep the tea fresh for around a year if the tea is stored in the fridge. Please let the bags warm to room temperature before opening. As a general rule, I wait 24 hours before opening a bag, but 12 hours would probably be more than enough.

This tea went for six infusions and could have gone for more, but we couldn’t handle anymore caffeine or liquid by that point! I found the sixth infusion to be flavorful and sweet. Ophelia felt the sixth wasn’t as ‘fresh tasting,’ but I still got plenty of clean and clear tieguanyin character and I have no doubt I could have pushed on for several more infusions if I wanted to!

The leaf quality is excellent: far fewer broken and torn leaves than you’d find with lower grade material and the leaves are thick and luscious. I wish I could better capture the leaf quality on camera!