Friday, January 19, 2024

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.        

2 comments:

Peter said...

Hi Wilson

I visited a teashop in Taiping that had those really big logs. They only sold hei cha. Visited another big shop that had big wheels of Liu Bao from the 1950's and huge old slabs of compressed tea. You may know the place?

wilson said...

Hello Peter. I have not been to Taiping. Now you have given me a good reason. I will visit the teashops there. Thank you.