What Oolong Are You Drinking

Semi-oxidized tea
Andrew S
Posts: 743
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Sat Jan 25, 2025 7:38 pm

Playing again with a small sample of a less-typical yancha cultivar - a 2012 ZhuangYuanHong (having finished a pack of a 2023 version of the same cultivar, but different tea, a few days ago).

There's not much that I can say usefully in terms of comparing the same cultivar across a decade of ageing, especially from different locations and different producers, but it still feels like a learning experience... at the very least, this 2012 version was quite nice to drink. The aged 'perfumed' notes (as I like to call them) were present, but the more primary, 'vegetal' notes came through as well (in a good way).

I've fallen back into the habit of having mostly the same teas every few days, subject to the weather: hongcha on dry, windy, cool days (which have been an atypical outlier this Summer down here), baozhong on hot days to cut through any oppressive humidity (which has felt very oppressive this Summer), and old puer or liubao whenever I wanted that different experience. And yancha for breakfast whenever the mornings have been cool or dry enough for that.

@i_viter: good to see that you're enjoying the aged teas from TheTea. I've had some which I've enjoyed quite a bit, and your post might encourage me to get some of their latest ones, although I'm now in the odd position of having too much aged tea (or tea for ageing), and far less 'fresh' tea... I'll put some of their 1999 baozhong into a bigger pot later today.

Andrew
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Andrew S
Posts: 743
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2021 8:53 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Sat Feb 08, 2025 7:51 pm

And now, finishing that same sample of the 2012 HuiYuanKeng ZhuangYuanHong, and finishing a sample of a 2018 HongJiGuan from GuiYan, which I believe is outside the core area.

I found it interesting how the older tea had both aged notes (similar to, say, the plummy notes you get from a 90s puer that wasn't stored very humidly) and an underlying vegetal character that persisted across the brews (in a pleasant way - like walking through a greengrocer's vegetable section). The younger tea had some of those aged notes as well, but was more nutty, spicy, fruity and cake-y, and not as 'mineral'.

Andrew
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