Guangxi Wuzhou Tea Factory (via The Chinese Tea Shop)

I got some of this tea with my order from The Chinese Tea Shop, along with a lovely yixing pot and little carp teacup. Love the pot, love the cup, do not love the tea.

The first Liu Bao tea I ever had was from Chawangshop, a tea that I nicknamed “Liubao Dirt Tea” for its singularly undrinkably feculent flavor and aroma. I donated it to a curious teahead on r/tea, warning them that the tea tasted like dirt, and not surprisingly they too deemed it undrinkable.

I was encouraged to try a better Liu Bao by my fellow Steepsterites, before writing it off entirely. So I got this. Reputable tea company? Check. Aged enough? Perhaps not. Now, some people say a Liu Bao has to age for at least twenty years before it’s any good. And maybe that’s what the problem is. Or maybe I just don’t like Liu Bao. Maybe on my tongue, what is a magical earthy elixir to some is just dirt water to me. Bitter dirt water.

Ever watch the crazy survivalists on the television show Naked & Afraid, deep in the jungles of places like Borneo and This Place Will Kill You, bodies covered in insect bites, bleeding, wracked with malnutrition and dysentery? To fight off dehydration, they dig a hole in the mud and wait for it to fill with water and parched as they are, when their raking thirst is finally quenched by that murky liquid, the look on their faces always looks to me as if they’ve just drank Liu Bao.

Into the crock this goes, and I’ll try to post another review in about nine years.