28 January 2009

Bacon, tea, potatoes, euro

Two months after my last blog – not counting the one from Monday – Slovakia lost it’s currency, Slovak Crowns, the Euro has a new set of coins with Slovak symbols and we all try to be used to think on much, much lower scale. What was 1000 Crowns before now is 33 Euro. But we will live with it, somehow.

Huo Shan Huang Ya

But let’s tea! I got 50 grams of this fine tea from local vendor, LongFeng (Dragon- Phoenix) maybe a year ago, just after the online store was opened. It’s a yellow tea harvested on spring of 2007 from Huo Shan, Anhui area, hand harvested and hand processed by most traditional methods.

The true yellow tea is quite scarce and hard to find, so I welcomed these charming little tea leaves. As seen on pictures (click to enlarge), the leaves are mostly buds and two-leaves-and-a-bud, some of them are quite hairy. On used leaves signs of slight fermentation are clearly visible. Durability is OK, I can squeeze 10 infusions from this tea with ease.

Huo Shan Huang Ya

I was worried about the potency of the tea, since I have it for more than a year now, but, fortunately, the tea was the same as I remembered.

I haven’t had a chance to drink yellow teas before, so I’m still puzzled about the taste and smell of this tea. I liked it from the first moment, but I was doubtful if it should taste like this. Because in pu-erh, for example, you can find tones of fruits, tobacco, camphor. In this tea – it’s bacon and baked potatoes. Really!!

Huo Shan Huang Ya

I love this tea, drinking it on cold winter nights. Unfortunately, I have leaves enough only for one last session – but there are other tea adventures ahead.

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