23 September 2009

Alpha - "Yi Wu Gua Feng Zhai"

This is the first of the series of cakes produced by Scott at Yunnan Sourcing LLC. The tea leaves were picked at "Gua Feng Zhai" (The Stockaded Village of Howling Wind) - according to descriptions, one of the remotest and highest regions of Yi Wu. Leaves from the same area were used by Chen Guang He Tang in his 2006 and 2007 Yi Wu beengs.

Yi Wu Gua Feng Zhai

This tea is very fresh. After opening the sample bag I immediately felt the aroma of tea leaves – fruity, slightly grassy. I’m certain this tea will change considerably within next year – it will loose this young feeling and will turn into something different. The tea leaves were quite nice and at least some of them had the wild feeling.

The tea was yellow, clear without any detectable smokiness nor astringency. A very good drink-me-now pu-erh with some kick. For me, it’s more on the drink-now side then the age-me side. And since I have way too much beengs opened for drinking right now, I will not buy a beeng of this. By my opinion, this tea is decent, but lacks the true strength and character to be it exceptional.

Yi Wu Gua Feng Zhai

While this tea was good, it certainly wasn’t the best – at least its cha qi did not make me jump, like one of the other samples. While Hobbes liked this one the most, my favorite will be reviewed later.

2 comments:

Bret said...

That,s pretty much how I felt about it. It,s a good tea but I didnt taste anything that was all that special. But then again, tea is so very subjective.

Anonymous said...

I'm partial to Mattcha's descriptions of these Pu-erhs because he talked at length about the Qi of each. And he agreed with you on how this alpha was not the most spiritually stimulating of all the selections. In this way I've almost felt like I sampled the teas and I'm just learning a lot about their spiritual situation. --Teaternity