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I doubt anybody remembers this note: https://steepster.com/derk/posts/403783 but I’m revisiting this lazy experiment. So far, this tea has been subjected to 4 years in its sealed sample bag. 4 years exposed to whatever deathly temps a small compartment in my truck can reach. The only air it has breathed has been at the hand of the annual deep sniff. 4 years of near absolute neglect. Now I think about all the places this tea has gone with me, only for me to leave it behind every time I closed the door.

I wonder if all Wuliang puerh are small-leaf like this. If it was initially medium-hard pressed, it has lost much of whatever force held it together. It wants to be pried from the chunk in beautiful sheets. It’s not that it has given up its life force, but it’s saying, “I’m ready.” It releases an evocative pure scent of raspberries from the bag. It wants to be smelled. The same scent wafts from the warmed leaf in the pot, richer and sharper, piercing my senses. The fawny gold liquor sits with steam, evaporating in trails from the surface like wisps of incense. It begs to be drank. Like a phoenix, it roars to life, it rises and soars to new heights!

No, no, haha. Not that dramatic. But it does have so much more life and character. The taste and feelings are more associations than anything, like walking through a dry, sun-dappled oak forest, little tastes of apple and honey, picking raspberries along the journey. The taste is quite deep, round and mellow. Quiet, like a hot day in the shade. Liquor is full in the mouth; astringency has smoothed. Leafy medicinal bitterness is quiet on the very back of tongue and it travels up into the sinuses, mingling with sweet taste. The raspberry is present in the aftertaste — very raspberry, floral, bright red, tangy sometimes tart.

Maybe before, the tea was vapid. Or maybe it was me, the vapid one. Maybe I was too wound up 4 years ago to appreciate an understated tea. Regardless, both myself and the tea have taken a turn for the better. A tea that exhibits such good qualities after years of neglect should be drank, but I’ve resolved to stash it away again in that little compartment for another unknown length of time. Who will I be then and what will the tea become?