Zijuan Hong

I prepared this tea gongfu, 5g / 125 ml, 90 °C water, several uncounted steeps.

I did my best trying to focus on this tea after work, but somehow it just didn’t click to me? It was tasty enough, but nothing supreme to me, light and clean taste, but somehow watery; just hard to get any flavour to be honest… I got some flavour after long steeps only.

Yes, the aroma of the wet leaves was nice indeed. Maybe it’s the berry notes that Leafhopper noticed. I will keep it without rating. Because it seems it can be a wonderful tea, but probably something went wrong today. What it is, I dunno. Sad panda grateful to derk.

I ordered a bunch of teas from Daxue Jiadao back in early 2022, and this is the first one I opened. I’ve been keeping it for special occasions, but sadly, I’m near the bottom of the bag and it’s now sold out. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is of jammy raspberries and elderberries, forest floor, and mushrooms. The first steep has notes of strawberry, raspberry, elderberry, forest floor, hay, and mushrooms. Honey, wood, and even headier berries appear in steep two, and the woodiness of the tea makes it feel drying without any astringency. I get hints of eucalyptus and earth in the next couple steeps as the berries recede somewhat, though they’re still very apparent in the aftertaste. A little malt emerges in the next two steeps, and the woodsy notes become stronger. Subsequent rounds achieve a nice balance of soft berries with wood, malt, minerals, honey, and earth. The tea gradually diminishes in flavour over the final long steeps, but is still tasty until the end of the session. I often steep it overnight to get that last bit of jammy goodness.

This is the best purple tea I’ve had so far and is also among the best teas from Yunnan. It has all of the berry and forest notes I associate with purple teas and very little of the funkiness. As Derk mentioned, this is a meditative tea that rewards careful attention.

As stated in a previous note, this a meditative tea.

I’m back from China. Rather than give a complete synopsis in one go, blurbs will find their way into future notes should a tea elicit the desire to write of my experiences. Here I will start with the end of my trip, as with all endings come beginnings.

On the first leg home, the China Southern flight attendant placed some floppy “old man brown” slippers on my first-class feet in Wuhan. As my ankles swelled by the hour, I figured why put my shoes back on. Those ugly, oversized slippers whisked with me through perfumed boutique shops in the Hong Kong airport, swept the (clean) floors of Taipei Taoyuan, shuffled me through U.S. customs in San Francisco and tripped me up as I boarded the bus that brought me back home. Sunday night around midnight I finally made it through the front door in a state of time-travel delirium and searched for my old girl Sophia.

I found Sophia after settling down for a bit, only to lose her less than 24 hours later. Monday was the end of our 22-year companionship. She waited for me to come home from my journey and passed in the comfort of my arms in her favorite chair and blanket. Now she rests under the lemon tree with the other kids, to feed the fruits that bring us happiness. I will be able to see her live on through my bedroom’s back door while I sit with tea. And these stupid China Southern slippers will be worn until they fall apart – little reminders of over half my life, arguably the most formative of my years, spent with a little warm body that made biscuits on my chest, sea foam eyes that softly spoke “You are mine and I am yours” and a vocabulary that always let me know what was on her mind. My little nugget, my little shoulder cat. So many feelings.

So yes, with all endings come beginnings. The end of Sophia’s life – full of patience, tenacity, wisdom and love – will be mirrored in my slippered steps as I stumble forward into this dream of farming tea.

Love you, baby.