Has anyone bought a brick of this tea and put humidity on it for a while? I’m half tempted to do this and would have at the old price of $70 but am leery of the gamble at $125 as the qi is stellar but the taste is so so.
I bought a 10 gram sample and stored in a humidified crock for a week, did 2 rinses and rested it about 20 mins. Early on I’m greeted with sour flavors telling of a tea that was stored too dry for too long. I also get flavors reminiscent of Skoal chewing snuff which to me is the signature flavor of fairly young dry stored 7542. After the 5th steep, the sourness is gone and the cheap tobacco flavors give way to notes of good cigar tobacco, raisins and figs. After 12 steeps I’m totally glued to the couch blasting Leonard Cohen tea drunk as anything I’ve had that’s under 30 yrs old. Judging from the qi and the thick stems I have little doubt of the claim that this is old tree from LBZ (or a surrounding village like BaKaNan). I also suspect that another 10 yrs of somewhat damper storage will transform this tea into a real monster. At $1.25g I’m almost willing to gamble.
Well… I took a gamble on a brick and steeped 4g straight outta the mail and it had none of the sour dry storage taste. Tasted similar to the other Mengku LBZ teas I’ve had but seemed to be a little more generous and better qi…