Aged Baojong Tea
For a long time, I had believed (because I was told, naturally!) that pu-er was the only aged tea, and that other teas should be finished within 6 months to a year at most. I now know that, like English grammar, in tea there are more exceptions than there are rules. Case in point, this aged baojong we had last Sunday.
We made the baojong in my wife’s white porcelain teapot. As you can see from the photo above, the leaves are rolled long, and are only slightly twisted. This creates a lot of volume (air space), and so the pot should be filled to around 2/3 full. When the leaves get wet, they compress down, but after several steeps when they are fully opened the pot should be almost full (see photo below).
This particular oolong was a gift from a student’s parents, so I don’t have too much background on it except that it comes from a guy in Pin Lin (a small town in southeastern Taipei county famous for baojong tea and a very nice tea museum), is certified organic, and was very expensive. It has a very light and smooth taste, and was less astringent than most baojongs I’ve tried. I’m not sure how long it has been aged, but it didn’t have a strong ’bite’, and I didn’t detect any earthy, loamy (’fermented’?) taste like pu-ers get as they age, so I’m guessing it is only a few years old at most. I’m wishing I had a bit more of it to enjoy.
This photo shows the 2nd steep. The tea is green with a slight orange tint. Although I’m under-steeping the tea by 10-15 seconds, the flavor still comes through very clearly. We were able to get 9 or 10 rounds on this pot, so I’d say that this tea would be a pretty good value, and if I can track down the producer I’d likely buy it myself.
Here you can see the used leaf. We really didn’t use very much at all, maybe 4 grams or so. You can tell by the uniform leaf color that the picking and processing was handled very well, and that this wasn’t ‘blended’ with a cheaper tea to bulk it up. The leaves were very strong and relatively thick for the Pin Lin area, which also indicates a high quality harvest. All in all, it was an excellent choice for our opening round.
June 8th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Trey Winston Says:
That was a new one to me. One of the things I love about tea is that there is always something new to learn. Great entry and good pictures.
June 8th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
teaguy Says:
Hey, Trey, thanks for coming in for a look! Things have been pretty quiet on the teaforum lately, haven’t they (although I finally made it to ‘groupie’ - congratulations to me!).
You’re right about ’something new to learn’ - that fact is kind of love/hate with me. Every 1 thing I learn points me to 100 things I haven’t learned, but I keep pluggin away at it!
June 15th, 2008 at 5:04 am
doggone Says:
Hi teaguy,
I was searching for those ‘flower’(more flower means better ranking) awarded for competition grade high mountain taiwanese oolong when I chance upon your informative site. Any idea?
You’re right about the calm in most tea forum lately. Maybe the extraordinary hike in oil prices has put a damper on this healthy past time of ours.
I tried some Li-shan oolong in a tea shop in Kuala Lumpur and was amazed with the aroma and sweetness. Loved it immediately. My usual foray back home is to tinker with those puerh I have after a days work. Brew those young sheng till I’m impervious to their astringencies. Not a good thing, but what do I know?
Anyway, I fell in love with chinese tea more than a year back and regretted going into it half a century into my life. On reflection, I wonder what a chinese would be like without their tea. I have the notion that China might be seriously lacking in arts and creativity throughout history without this poetic liquor.
Thanks for a great site. I WILL BE BACK !!!
June 18th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
teaguy Says:
Thanks for the support doggone! The flower ranking is 1-5 stars, but I’m not sure how accurate it is. My co-worker brought in some oolong with a 3-flower rating, and it was pretty sub-par by my analysis. I’ll investigate it more and put up a post.
How could drinking lots of pu-er be a bad thing? Go, dude, go!
No regrets please - think positive! You’ve still got half your life to catch up! I totally agree with you regarding tea and it’s ability to enhance creativity, having experienced it’s wonderful effects personally for many years now.
I look forward to hearing from you again.