I picked these up to age, hopefully close to the great success of the1997 Shui Xian brick. I should note that from the vendor I picked these up from I have not been entirely happy. If it weren't for the tea of his I tried last night and this tea being nearly air tightly packed in what looks like some sort of factory packageing, I'd almost believe that they had been stored in a place where many people smoked. Otherwise I have to just guess that the roasting was done to a such an extreme on these such that a 2 year wait on this, and more than that on the other tea from him, that for the first couple of infusions the predominate flavor is ash.
This is servering as a note for further aging. The brick is very very hard to break apart, harder than the '97 SX brick. and The cake is thicker even in the thin parts which makes it hard to break off a stick, so you sort of need to chip it from the brick.
But I think this tea has promise, and hopefully the really heavy roast deminishes. It has a rather spicy aroma to it otherwise, with hints of chocolate and malt.
I'm surprized at the durability of this tea in the later infusions already, and while the initial infusions might be very strong, the later ones are of good quality.
I look forward to tasting this again in a year.
2 comments:
Call me a twit but the fact that it looks like kit-kat wins me over straight away! How about a pack of tea revels? Eat one is a different tea and you don't know what it is until you brew it and like real revels you can through a coffee one in there as the booby prize.
Yeah, they also look like a lineup of cigars, though I imagine the smoked-out flavor as seeming more like from a roomful of chain-smokers of cigarettes. --Spirituality of Tea
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