Yi Yuan Long 60

If you are a tea drinker, you would have drank black tea on many occasions.  Really. Those regular tea bags you buy from the supermarkets and as well as the ones you drink at the office pantry are made with black tea.  The tea would most probably come from Sri Lanka, India, Kenya or from China. 

These black tea bags has comforted many tea drinkers round the world and many drinkers add milk and sugar to their tea to make it a tasty beverage. 

Black tea from Anhua, China has a long traditional history. Many serious Chinese tea drinkers would know that such tea are famous and the tea were normally compressed into long tea 'logs' which weigh more than 30kg. Such logs are bought by the public and proudly displayed in their homes for many years before they are cut up and drunk. The taste and aroma of old tea 'logs' are renowned for their sweet herbal taste, like a herbal soup that black tea connoisseurs enjoy.

Anhua Liyuanlong Tea Co Ltd (LYL) was founded by Mr Wu Jian Li.  Mr Wu, in my opinion, was very passionate in the production of black tea. Not only does the tea factory produced tea logs, My Wu was forward looking in introducing black tea with a more scientific and scientific processing standard. He converted many tea farms in his region to go organic and had obtained organic certification for these farms.   Most of his teas are now very popular with the Chinese black tea drinkers.

My Wu celebrated his 60th birthday in 2018 and produced a limited edition tea log for this auspicious occasion. This LYL 60 tea log is a smaller 2.175kg.   Compression is moderate and the tea can be easily broken up for container storage. 

I like this tea. The taste and aroma is unique. There is smoke, a tasty spicy mouthfeel (pepper and ginger) and a long sweet aftertaste.  If you are a pu erh tea drinker, you might mistake it for an old aged pu erh.  There is actually some resemblence to an old camphor-like raw pu erh cake. This tea is a very nice find and I will put it in my online store next month and share this special tea adventure with you.        

2007 Jing Mei Tang Lan Tie Pu erh

This is a Jing Mei Tang pu erh cake.  Produced in 2007, this tea cake is based on an old pu erh tea blend recipe call Lan Tie.  If I am not wrong, this is an interpretation of the blue mark pu erh that was sold in the late 90s. 

Jing Mei Tang had engaged Changtai tea factory to produced this tea. Moreover Jing Mei Tang had also arranged to have a bulk of this tea stored in Malaysia. This Lan Tie cake is from this Malaysian storage. 

With almost 17 years of Malaysia storage, this tea has mellowed well. This tea is strong with a complexity of bitterness, oak wood and a tinge of fresh bread crust. I liked the high oiliness in the tea. Here, I refer to the mouthwatering and smooth finish. Hardly any sweetness but the tea was pleasantly slightly intoxicating. I would not recommend this tea to a pu erh newbie. This tea is strong.

But I digress, many readers and tea friends had been asking what happened to my online store. Well.....I am redoing a new store front. Apparently, many of the 'widgets' used in my present online store had became obsolete. I have to redo the store. It should be operationally ready in a month's time. 

Happy New Year 2024.