Jingmai Mountain 2012

This tea showed up at my house today…or was it yesterday? Maybe the day before. A Baggie from Doc Yang-chu. He didn’t tell me he was sending me something. You just never know about these medicine doctors, their minds are like a maze, all you can do is say “thank you sir” and swallow your prescription.

Weighed out 4 grams loose, one rinse, and let the water cool as he suggested. 40 ml steep to fit my tasting cup. Lovely smelling leaves, some pepper, some floral, spicy, teensy touch of smoke (barely visible black dots of wok char). He described floral notes in his review. Someplace. I can’t remember. Didn’t taste anything myself except bitter if I let it go too long while unplugging the Yixing with a toothpick.

Ok. Doesn’t taste like much, sat on my bed to research and think what to write. Then my neck wouldn’t support my head. Completely stoned in my eyeballs. I can’t bloody think. The doc put weed in my tea. Checked the Baggie. Hm, nothing. Dug around in the pot, several 1 bud/1 leaf sets of the tea variety.

Back on my bed, tried to do a search to find the cake, other reviews, research before writing. Am incapable. Spelling things wrong. Tried finding images, I don’t what happened.

I did find a link to what is called Brilliant Tea Mountain Jingmai, a luxury spa where you can take a puerh tea vacation called Holy Journey to Brilliant Tea Mountain Jingmai. Brilliant spa.com. You can get your entire body exfoliated with Jingmai tea which you can pick yourself if you want. Got hung up on the photos and the campfire night with Original Performances. Had a fantasy of doing my own Original Performance of a Latin Chant directly followed by “Hey Big Spender” from “Sweet Charity” including the bar chair.

What the vacation write up at the spa leaves out is the paragraph “We plan to keep you pleasantly stoned on puerh the entire time and we swear you won’t remember a thing. And we’ll never tell.”

I will research this cake later. In fact I plan to bottle it and take tablespoons as needed at work when no one is looking. It is pure cha qi and nothing else.

But I can guess why the doc’s wife insisted on ordering this cake immediately.

This is a very, very good tea. This one we tasted before purchasing and my wife was insistent on buying a cake. Sorry I didn’t get the chance to put the picture up, as it has a decent wrapper. Maybe later, I’ll figure that out.

I’ve drunk this several times. Only one time did I errantly steep incorrectly, i.e., too long, which produced a bitter an unremarkable brew.

Now to the brew done right. The times were 15s/15s/15s/15s/30s/1m.

Round #1: The potent cha-qi is evident immediately. Long-jing notes, floral and round in the mouth, hints of black pepper and citrus. Touch of tannin which is a nice compliment.

Round#2: More of the Long-jing taste, less floral immediate taste but more floral huigan.

Round #3: Sweeter and sweeter.

Round #4: Sweeter still.

Round #5: The liquor grows lighter caste, though never is it intense. Don’t let that deceive you. Pleasant citrus aroma, with a taste of lime. Mild tannins. Still floral. The huigan is outstanding. Just waiting a minute or two and you notice your mouth feels full of flowers, polite sweet flowers, not bawdily unctuous like jasmine or tinged with a bitterness like rose. Flowers I can’t place.

Round #6: Blend of sweetness and mellow tannins, floral finish that just stays and stays.