Lin Ceramics Purion Teaware - Revisit

During my more than 10 years of blogging about tea, I had written that there were many small ways or ideas that may improve a tea session.  

Some of these ideas (you may disagree with me) include: 

a) using a clay teapot than a gaiwan to brew your tea

b) experimenting with water - trying bottled or filtered water and see the impact on the aroma and taste of the tea.  Use boiling 100c water to brew pu erh and high roasted oolong is an exercise I recommend.

c) breaking up a pu erh cake and storing it in a tea caddy for 2 weeks before you try the tea

d) a slightly expensive option is to use clay kettles to boil your water and the possibility of using a Japanese iron tetsubin for boiling water as well.  

The Lin Ceramics purion clay is, to me, an interesting phenomena.  When I brew pu erh in a Lin's purion teapot, the aroma and taste of the tea seem slightly amplified.

I brought over a teapot (3 years ago) to my tea drinking group in Guangzhou, China and my friends there (mainly in their late 40s and 50s and had never seen a purion teapot before) could discern this difference in taste and aroma.  These friends are now owners of  purion tea ware and they would occasionally brew tea in a purion teapot to enjoy this phenomena.

I cannot explain the reason.  My thoughts are that the higher iron content in the clay could have affected the taste and aroma of the tea.  I am still intrigued by this purion teapot after so many years of use.

One local tea buddy considered that using purion teapot would  'artificially' enhanced the tea and does not give a true representation of that tea.  I can understand his argument but many of us do try to make a tea as 'tasty' as possible, and may use those ideas I listed in the beginning of this blog to brew their tea.  I was quietly relieved that he does not know that I occasionally concoct an alcoholic tea session......he would have fainted.  

I would like to add that this difference (using purion) in the tea (taste and aroma) is only discernible by 'hardcore' (close to it anyway) tea drinkers and this difference is ever so slight.   If you consider yourself as  'hardcore', I suggest you should 'beg, borrow or steal' a purion tea ware and try it yourself.