90's Liu An Tea from Anhui

Definitely humid stored for much of its existence, followed by dry storage. I’d say camphor is the forward note and it’s supported by a good, strong base of dry, earthy forest floor, peat, dark wood, fresh oyster mushrooms, geosmin, caverns and a now-muted dry woodsmoke. Spicy, warming and drying with some tongue-numbing bitterness, though no other remarkable mouth or throat feelings. Smoke becomes strong and ashy in late steeps, where it mixes with floral perfume. Nothing offensive for me; then again, nothing noteworthy. Just a solid aged tea provided by White Antlers <3 Steep this long and hot to awaken the profile.

Tea Swap Session/Brief Notes

Unfortunately, I was mostly focusing on gaming at this point, but I noted that this was a very “nice aged, earthy tea.” I wanted to make a quick note just to make sure I have one…I may forget to make notes on the last of the tea later on…..

I almost finished this packet and never wrote about it. I got a 50g sample of this about 4-5 months ago, and it’s about gone, so this must be the 8th or so session I’ve had with it.

This tea smells and tastes powerfully of dirt, or maybe wet stone. Seriously, drinking this has deeply warped my tastes, so that I no longer consider heavy humid storage to be a deal-breaker defect.

The leaf is dark brown nondescript lumps and bits strongly reminiscent of shu.

I used 5.5 g of leaf with a “standard gaiwan” and near-boiling water. 1 rinse of ~10 sec followed by short infusions, a couple each of 5, 10, 15s. The rinse smells of dirt, the gaiwan lid of wet stone. The taste changes from dirt to wet rocks over the first few infusions, and there is a slight mouth coating that becomes a little fruity. By about the 5th or so steep it’s getting pretty astringent, and soon the dark soup begins to lighten up some. There is some definite pore-opening perspiration-inducing power with this tea. Even at the 10th or 12th steep, each cup raises a fresh sweat. Eventually it becomes light-copper, stone-tasting, slightly sweet astringent water, after maybe 14-15 steeps.

I don’t think this tea has the staying power of some older raw puer, but on the other hand I have not tried brewing 8g of it at once. This tea is probably worth trying just as an example of 20-year-aged tea, but might be too humid for some. I’m interested in finding an example of the type that has drier storage, I think.