1990s Loose Old Bush Yiwu
Posted on 5 January 2009
A truly wild tea
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This tea was kindly included as a free sample in my last order from Tea Masters. Interestingly, it is not reviewed on their website, and so I have no information whatsoever as to its provenance – perhaps Stéphane can step in and enlighten us.
Brewed in: gaiwan
Dosage: 4g / 120ml
Dry leaf: Long twisted yancha-like leaves. Nothing very special to their appearance but a really unique smell: dirt, dirt, dirt, a bit of dust and dirty stones. I personally find this quite repulsive.
Tasting notes: 20s: Judging by the colour – a medium deep reddish-brown – and aroma this is rather from the end of the 1990s, surely showing younger (and probably drier-stored) than the 1989 Jiang Cheng or 1990 brick from Tea Masters. Aroma is calm and less repulsive than that of the dry leaf, earthy, a little beany. Palate is unaggressive, echoing the nose with a bit of wet earth and some bean-like chewiness. No ku apparent on the finish. Finish is quiet, energy rather calm, not particularly warming (and this was tasted during a wave of –20C temperatures here in Poland). Less dirt-driven in taste than my first attempt (un-TNed) in a clay pot.
30s: Minor shift in aroma, now stonier and dirtier, less earthy, a little more intense. This is really very elemental tea. Flavour is also a little more pungent. No sweetness, no vegetal or spicy notes, this tea is dominated by earth.
30s: Minor shift in aroma, now stonier and dirtier, less earthy, a little more intense. This is really very elemental tea. Flavour is also a little more pungent. No sweetness, no vegetal or spicy notes, this tea is dominated by earth.
Later brewings of 1m, 1m, 2m are very enjoyable (if still aromatically rather challenging), with a calmer and lighter expression.
5m: This is now quite weak, and I finish the session.
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Overall this is – for me – a striking tea. It is about the dirtiest- and earthiest-smelling sample I have ever had, but not in the meaning of wet storage (in fact it shows almost none). There is something quite wild and elemental about this, yet it also manages to show smooth and harmoniously aged. I would be curious to learn more about this one. At 68 € per 100g it is surely not cheap, but then there is the benefit of tasting an aged tea without having to order a whole 357 or 400g cake.