Tea Of The Year 2024

 

My tea of the year (drumroll) are old Baishaixi tea bricks. But there is a caveat. This tea has to be boiled. 

Place 3g of tea adding a mug of water into a pot.  Let the tea come to a small simmering boil for about 2 minutes. Switch off the heat and let the tea sit for another minute before pouring out the tea. Enjoy.

I had found that boiling Baishaxi tea makes for an extremely nice tea session. The aroma has a sweet dried berry fruit scent.  Using an older Baishaxi that is 10 years old or more makes the tea extremely smooth, sweet and mouthwatering.  Very addictive. 

If you brew this tea using the kung fu method, you would need to use more tea leaves (8g or more) to bring out the taste and aroma. I found out that boiling the tea brought  out the full flavour. 

I decided to name this boiled Baishaxi tea as tea of the year for a few reasons. Baishaxi bricks usually come in 1 to 2 kg sixes. Such a brick, if you brew 3g twice weekly will last you for a very very long time to finish a brick. 

Baishaxi black tea bricks are inexpensive when compared to pu erh and oolongs.   I would recommend that if you intend to buy a Baishaxi brick to start your tea boiling adventures, you should get the higher grade ones as the low grade Baishaxi range has more tea dust in the bricks. 

I am opening an old Baishaxi brick and will put some of this tea in my online store. 

To all my tea friends and readers, Merry Christmas. 

Jin Mu Dan Oolong

Jin Mu Dan Oolong, also known as golden peony oolong are grown in the famed Wuyi region in Fujian China. Wuyi oolongs are very popular among oolong tea drinkers and some of the rarer productions there can be extremely expensive.

There are many small villages that produced oolong in Wuyi China. These villages would want to showcase their tea and giving their oolong a nice sounding or unique name was a marketing strategy to stand out among the many oolong tea producers there.  I had recently opened a 'Golden Key' oolong from the Wuyi region 2 years ago and I was unable to identify this tea from a blind taste test.   In terms of taste and aroma, it is extremely difficult if quite impossible to identify an Wuyi oolong by specific region. The production methods like roast levels and different age of the tea would fool many tea experts in trying to identify a particular oolong. 

This Golden peony oolong is a 2018 production from Sea Dyke tea factory. This is a high roasted tea. It has a long pleasant aftertaste.  Smooth and mellow.  This tea is pleasant to drink when hot and just as nice when it had cooled down.  An enjoyable tea adventure.