BA Red (Trapped In Amber Series)

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8-month-bourbon-barrel-aged red tea

Farm owner: Xie Rong Fu, Xie Rong Wei Brothers

Co-created by Annie Xiang, in collaboration with FEW Spirits

Cultivar: Zhenghe Da Bai

Processed on: March 20, 2023

Region: Songxi, Fujian, China

Weight: 50g

*Please note a typical spirit barrel has a charred interior. Upon retrieval of the tea leaves from the barrel, we conducted two rounds of meticulous sorting. However, small, charred barrel pieces might be expected. Please discard visible pieces before steeping.

Farmer’s Note
In 2002, we took over Longyuan Tea Garden and Factory from the local government. Step by step, we turned this space into a three-dimensional organic tea garden, focusing on biodiversity of trees, tea bushes and grass. We methodically planted and cared for over 30 different species of trees and 5 kinds of grass. Because of this unique environment, the surrounding areas regard our tea garden as a tourist attraction to get close to the nature and learn about tea agriculture. We are happy to accept that new reality, as income from tea-tourism allows us to invest more in the maintenance and enhancement of our organic tea garden.

This red tea uses Zhenghe Dabai variety, picked according to the one-bud-and-two-leaf standard. We intentionally prolonged the withering step to reduce its astringency. After the raw tea is made, it passes through a set of refining machines, cutting the tea leaves, and then screening them for length and weight, to achieve a uniformed appearance. The result is a consistent and flavorful red tea, ideal for Volition to do further experiments with.

Barrel Aging Process
In early December 2023, we poured Zhenghe Red tea leaves into a freshly-emptied FEW Spirits straight bourbon barrel to begin aging the tea. FEW Spirits is a GRAIN-TO-GLASS DISTILLERY since 2011, they produce award-winning spirits with bold flavors in Evanston, IL. Every three days, we rotated the barrel so tea leaves could have an even exposure to the barrel’s bold expressions.

Unlike our previous two barrel experiments (Tipsy Garden and Drunken Dragon), which were able to wrap up their barrel-aging production in about three months, this Trapped in Amber – BA Red took (excruciatingly) six months before we started to notice subtle flavor and aroma change in the tea leaves themselves. After 8 months of aging, we finally opened the barrel to extract the tea leaves. We then go through two rounds of sorting to remove charred barrel pieces, and small broken tea leaves as a result of the frequent rotations. The past eight months felt like years to us; so we drew inspiration from the enduring process of polymerization that forms amber to name this trilogy Trapped in Amber.