An Early 90s Ripe Fangcha Brick

Happy New Year 2015.


I start the new year blog with an old tea. This is the early 90s Fangcha ripe brick. This 100g square brick comes housed in a traditional paper box.


I do not have much experience with these paper boxes, in that I am not sure whether they are generic boxes used by tea factories when they produced these square brick pu erh tea. Raw and ripe square bricks were produced (around the 80s) in this fashion and the famous 1992 raw brick that came in this type of packaging are a favorite with tea connoisseurs. I have yet to lay my hands on this famous brick. There are a few tea factories still producing 100g square bricks packing them in similar boxes.


Back to this brick. The back of the box seem to indicate this tea is produced by Menghai Tea Factory (aka Dayi or Taetea). You will notice that mould press produced a nice 'cha' with 8 '中'  on the tea brick.


Initial brews of this tea gave a very pronounced 'woody' aroma, like wooden antiques. My friends and I call this scent 'old mother hubbard'. This woody aroma is less prominent after I had broken up the brick and stored the tea in a tea caddy for a week. A very pleasant tea to drink and I have only about 30g left after 2 weeks of opening this brick.