2017 Gu Ming Xiang "Zheng Zhuan" Bu Lang Mountains Ripe

As many light fermentation ripes, this is an unusual tea that bears a lot of similarities in profile to light roast coffee. It is rough and earthy despite being mildly aged already – wet piled in 2013. The flavours are pretty strong and varied. It could age into a very smooth, complex, and elegant tea, but it might need a decade or two to get there.

The aroma at the moment is quite unique with notes of yellow apple, wood, candlewax, and light smoke. Taste-wise, it is also a mix pulling in various directions. It is bitter, vegetal, sour, savoury, and herbaceous all at once. Flavours are hard to pin down, but I can taste citrus, dry earth, turmeric, mint, wood, and cranberry at times. The aftertaste is a little fishy, sweet, and spicy. There are notes of nuts, coffee, fenugreek (both leaves and seeds), milk, and rock sugar.

The liquor texture is initially very mouth-watering and smooth, but gets more numbing and a little powdery later on. All in all, it’s a unique tea that’s priced well and can offer a specific experience given the right mood – I wouldn’t mind owning a brick of it.

I went for a sample of this tea based on the very red color of the liquer in the pictures and the “lightly fermented” description. Both of those are common attributes of ripes that I like.

It brews a red-brown, though not as red as in the pictures. The brewed tea smells of pumpkins a earth (but not the bad kind of earth), taking me back to the time that I helped some friends from a church unload a semi-truck full of pumpkins for a pumpkin patch. I always found it sort of strange that a Christian church sold pumpkins for what is essentially a pagan holliday. :P

But back to the tea. It tastes mainly of dry earth, pumpkin, and light roast coffee. It’s has more bitterness than I’ve ever encountered in a ripe, but definitely not enough to be unpleasant. No fermentation funk to speak of. There’s a slight herbaceous greenness in the back ground, perhaps like bayleaf. There’s a light brown sugar sweetness and a fruity background. If I had to pick a fruit I would say cranberry. This tea reminds me a lot of “craft” or “third wave” type Central American coffees.

I get some qi feels from this tea, which is unusual for a ripe. Fairly complex, and it goes many infusions. This is a pretty unique tea, and the lowest fermentation ripe that I’ve tried. I’d strongly recommend it if you’re a fan of YS’s Rooster King cake or light roast specialty coffees.