2008 Huangshan Maofeng
Posted on 25 January 2012
Found this green tea upon unpacking my tea boxes in the new flat. This Huang Shan Mao Feng is from the 2008 vintage (ouch!). But I’m not going to bore you with another ‘this-tea’-should-be-dead-but-instead-it’s-fine’ post. The tea is plain fine, and advocates my opinion that whole-leaf, artisanal green tea from China can actually age two or three years, and sometimes even develop some complexity.
Top quality early spring leaves.
A collection of bud&leaf or bud&2 leaves, tiny and very well-processed tea, this responds well to higher temperatures, always remaining a rather elegant, transparent tea. With age, it has lost of a bit of crystalline purity and depth, but remains more than interesting. It has little if any umami, and so there’s no point pumping up the dosage – brew at 80–85C with just 3–4g of leaf per 100ml water and enjoy that understated green pay, dry hay, thyme register. Although Huang Sheng Mao Feng is not China’s most prestigious green tea, this batch is firmly in the top league.
Three years old, yet so fresh.
Why I mention this at all is that this tea is amazingly inexpensive. I paid $13 per 100g back in 2009 when I purchased it from Jing Tea, and the 2011 vintage currently on offer is only $9.50. Being picked very early in the spring, the new 2012 version is probably just 2 months away. Give it a go.
Disclosure
This tea was my own purchase.