Tea with the Black Dragon

It's amazing... THREE tea sessions in a row! This is the last of the tea from Box #5 from Old Ways tea, Yu Qilin. The qilin (or kirin) is somewhat of a chimera of Chinese mythological animals. It's part deer/ox/horse/giraffe/dragon and has been equated to be the "Chinese unicorn", but its mythology is a bit more complex than the European unicorn. There are a LOT of depictions of the qilin, and each one of them is a slightly different take. I'm not sure how this particular tea became associated with the qilin, but it's definitely a unique taste among other rock oolongs. Tea Information Type: Wuyi Oolong Vendor: Old Ways Tea Recommendations: n/a Cost per gram: Part of the Tea club Description from Company: This tea is from a friend I met at a university, who is from Wuyishan. Yu Filin is a fairly rare culture said to originate from the Zhengyan area. This tea is known for spice & incense characteristics. She has an info page on Yu Qilin, if you'

It's not often that I get to do TWO tea sessions in a row, much less from the same tea club! I'm trying the second tea from Box #5 from Old Ways tea, this time, Jiu Jiu Shui Xian. I love the shui xian cultivar, and I'm always curious on the different methods of roasting & preparation of it. It was made by her uncle, who had made a huang meu gui that was typical of what I expect of a rock oolong, and a good daily drinker.  So I am very hopeful of this particular tea, having a good roaster is like having a good mechanic that you can count on to produce good results. Tea Information Type: Wuyi Oolong Vendor: Old Ways Tea Recommendations: n/a Cost per gram: Part of the Tea club Description from Company: I got this Shui Xian from my uncle, the source of the Huang Mei Gui A from December 2020. It is is from his garden in Lan Shang, which he has managed for a number of users now, using no pesticide or herbicide; lots of sticky traps and manual weeding.  

I absolutely love getting tea boxes in the mail. There's an element of surprise and delight in seeing what's sent.  This tea is from Old Ways Tea's subscription box. The box arrives every two months, and what's nice about this box is that it includes tea that she normally doesn't carry in her store. She goes out of the way to include teas from family, friends, and family friends from Wuyi to include in the box. I'm particularly fond of this subscription box, because she sources all her teas from her home region, which predominately includes oolongs, which are a favorite. The tea box included: Tai Ping Hou Kiu (50g). Yu Qilin (40g), and Shui Xian (48g).  Tea Information Type: Chinese Green Vendor: Old Ways Tea Recommendations: She recommends " grandpa style " brewing --> 3 grams in a cup of water 90C (194F). Let steep for 2 minutes. Drink 2/3, then refill. If you want thicker soup, use boiling water. Cost per gram: N/A since this is part of a

Tea is like wine. A particular type of tea changes year-to-year, even if grown by the same farmer on the same plantation & roasted by the same person. Environmental factors (such as rain fall) and terroir play a factor, not to mention how the roaster might have felt that day. Then there's the aging factor. Over time (especially with roasted & fermented teas), the flavor profile starts to shift. Sufficed to say, tea is never the same from session to session even if all of your brewing variables are the same.  If one thing is constant, tea always changes. This is a 2006 harvested Da Hong Pao (DHP) that I purchased 2 years ago. It's a very fine specimen of DHP that I've had the pleasure of drinking. I've carefully stored it in the time I've owned it, and it's just gotten better with age.  It's with great sadness that I've now come to the absolute last of this particular tea. I've tried to drink smaller amounts in smaller teaware, but I can't

Back in March 2020, our offices closed down because of COVID-19. I was on vacation on the time and was unable to get back into the office to get my personal belongings, including a teaset and the teas I had brought to drink at my desk. This past week, we were finally allowed to return and retrieve our personal belongings.  The tea set was a cheap travel set I bought off Amazon, so I didn't much care for that. However. I was concerned about my teas. Many had been simply put in plastic bags, or air-permeable containers because I had ever intention of drinking them at work. They simply weren't properly stored for long-term. Sufficed to say, 90% of the teas I was able to retrieve were lost. Unless they were vacuum-sealed, they were all pretty much stale. So, unfortunately, the stale tea used for mulch/compost for some of the plants in our patio. It was a tad bit heartbreaking to "throw" away tea, but at least it was useful. 

I picked up about 10grams of this particular tea from West China Tea Company. This is a sub-cultivar  of the more popular Honey Orchid dancong oolong.  (Read the description below) I like to get anywhere from 10-30grams of a tea to see if I want to order more. Ideally, 25 grams allows me about 3 tea sessions with a tea....enough for me to listen to a tea to see how to brew it well. Sometimes, getting 30 grams isn't possible, for whatever reason. Ten grams is enough for two tea sessions.

For this tea tasting, I chose a Shihmen Tie Guan Yin. Why? Because it's May 1st, it's warm & beautiful outside, and I associate Taiwanese teas with spring. Also, I absolutely love trying new teas that are unusual, rare, or some other characteristic that makes it "different" from other teas, and this one fits the bill very well.  When I was looking through the 2020 harvest of tea from Taiwan Sourcing, this description caught my eye.  This region, Shihmen, is now a fading legend of tea.... First thing you will notice from this tea is the pungent Jackfruit aroma from the boiled water, then after that you will be soaked into its only-found-in-Shihmen taste and body feeling no where else can offer. (See below for full description) I realize that many tea vendors might hype up their descriptions for selling, but I was definitely very curious about this tea.   One of the owners, "Old Dog" called it a "unicorn tea", and had to be somewhat convinced to