2002 Aged Wild Liu Bao Tea "803" from Guangxi

This session is dominated by red woods, diaphoretic camphor, black pepppercorn, dried ginger, abandoned concrete building in old humid continental forest, dried-out decayed wood, a little bit of damp cigarette smoke. Spicy-hot prickle. Strong energy floods my vessel from top of crown into trunk and fingertips. Feel tingling as if wearing a chin strap. As if the jaw is made of silly putty and somebody is stretching it from my ears down over the front of my throat. Floored. Sitting required. Do I even have legs? Bob Oblong.

Hm hm hm hm. The wet leaf holds most of the character here; it smells of betel nut, papery brown dried flowers, wet lake sand.

I taste old books more than basement. Some forest floor and petrichor. The aroma and taste don’t quite keep the promise the wet leaf makes — they’re undoubtedly pleasant, a little watery, and leave me wanting. I might try bumping my ratio next time, actually.

Gongfu Sipdown (2058)!

Sipping down the last of this sample that that was gifted to me by Togo. It’s such a deliciously robust tea just packed with so many intense tasting notes I love. Clove cigarettes, incense, cinnamon, petrichor, rain-soaked potting soil, beets, decaying wood, resinous pine sap, and so much camphor. Really just an explosion of forest flavours and spices, and how can you go wrong with that? I haven’t checked if this is still available on Yunnan Sourcing (and I’m trying to order less tea this year overall), but this is the kind of tea I would buy in bulk in a heart beat!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnc0p-zO_nZ/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJG8Rax1PVo

Vastly prefer the 2001 Te Ji grade Chen Xiang. I’ve been spoiled by that one.

But I wasn’t disappointed by this session. It stood in as a sort of ghostly memory of the former’s taste profile and progression, though it lacked the energy. It was enjoyable to discover this.

Beetroots. Mold. Mushrooms. Damp soil.
Bittersweet, spicy/dry finish. Interesting for sure, however I don’t see so much complexity and I’m not a big fan of this flavours. It brings to my mind images of Slovenian forests, dark and wet, with a rusticity difficult to describe. I think “lack of humanity”, “bears and worms”, “grey sky”.
Mild alerting qi.

I thought this tea was a shou puer. I’m glad it isn’t as I now have a new type of tea to explore. Sure heichas and shous are siblings. Some would suggest that all shous are heichas but not all heichas are shous.

This tea is wonderful. I’m going to politely disagree with those that suggest grass as in mowed grass. Mowed grass scent and taste is more of a green tea and this is not a green tea. Now… I’m going to tell you that it does have a grassy scent and taste. When you were a kid, did you ever walk along, come across grass that had grown a really tall stalk with seeds, ripped that stalk from the rest of the grass plant and then sucked/chewed on the end of the grass stem? That’s how the first couple of infusions of this tea are. It so reminds me of a meadow after a quick rain, or the bank of a pond or lake. I’ve had this tea several times since I bought a basket of it. The other times, I’ve gotten more of an earthy flavor from this tea. Hopefully that means I’m getting better at tasting different nuances and will be able to write better reviews.

The taste hits you right square in the middle of the tongue. No preamble, no aftertaste. The taste is just there and then it’s like, where’d it go? Ok maybe it lingers a little while.

Subsequent brewings bring out a little more woodiness in a good way.

stunning cha qi
lubricating

One of my favourites from the Hei Cha sampler is this aged Liu Bao. All Liu Bao teas I’ve had have a somewhat simple profile and this one is no exception. However, it is exceptional in how much of a comforting brew it produces. I have little doubt that it has to do with a successful maturation process over the last 17 years. Moreover, it seems to last longer than similar teas, I got just short of 200ml/g from it.

The dry leaf aroma is distinctively “dungeon-like”. In the wet leaf smell, I further noticed notes of decaying wood, pear, leather, tobacco, cherry, and burnt popcorn. The taste is tart, earthy, bitter and nutty, with notes of pine, wet wood, walnuts, and nutmeg. I find it very hard to place the aftertaste in relation to anything, but it is long-lasting with an interesting character – seems to disappear and reappear over time. Finally, the mouthfeel is very smooth and colloidal with a medium body to the liquor.

Song pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0xlVDLCXGo

This Liu Bao has a muddier, grassier taste and is not as sweet as the 2003 Hei Cha I tried recently. There is the slightest hint of blackberry and birch bark but the mud and earth tones dominate. It’s pleasant to drink and has a beautiful reddish color but it’s not all that complex; good to steep throughout a cold day.

When I had brewed this 16 year old tea what I noticed was that it had a sort of ‘sour’ fruity flavour that I hadn’t experienced with shou pu-erh before. There was also a hint of pine. After several steepings it turned into a sweet licorice kind of smell. The taste was fairly sweet, smooth and creamy. The qi was powerful enough to give me an alert and awake feeling, but it wasn’t over-powering. It was very enjoyable to drink. Aftertaste was the sort of dark chocolaty woody taste that people who are familiar with shou pu-erh will probably recognise.. I could get quite a number of steepings out of this tea, it was only after 12 (large) cups that the strength of the tea started to diminish so much that it wasn’t enjoyable to me anymore (I must say that I like my tea quite strong, so people who enjoy their teas lighter may even get more steepings out of it).

This tea has definately made me interested in trying more tea of this hei cha ‘style’. If you like shou pu-erh you will probably like this tea as well.. Even though this is my first Liu Bao, and therefore I don’t know how this tea holds up to other teas of the same style, I am fairly confident to say that this is a good tea in general for the price and as such I can recommend it to all people who are interested in post-fermented tea, especially those who are interested in older teas of this type.