2010 LongFeng Blue Label Single Estate Xiao Beeng Cha

I’m back… The weather was kind enough to stay sunny and calm during my whole short “summer break” and changed just today, with heavy downpours and quick storms alternating with sunshine.

Ideal weather for Puerh, I would say. I have to mention that I don’t drink Shengs and Puerh in general that often – but still, I wanted to share my notes on this wonderful and really special tea.

Some of you may know this tea…

...some may not.

This tea comes from the same collection and producer as the one Bret of Tea Goober wrote about some time ago, though the one he had was the 2009 picking and processing, while Mao Cha for this one was already picked in spring 2010.

There are two different labels so far this year, Green and Blue. Green comes from wild trees which are 100+ years old, while this Blue version is made of semi-wild trees, 80 to 100 years old. Place of origin of this tea is Mang Fei Shan, Yong De, Lin Cang.

Both teas are hand-processed and hand-compressed in stone form, which makes this particular cake quite easy to divide without any need to use rough force.

As soon as I unwrapped the cake, first thing that caught my attention was obviously very high quality of used Mao Cha. Then comes the smell – smell of good fresh Sheng, vivid, fruity, rich and still fresh.

Color of infusion is yellowish-green and seems a bit lighter than in most fresh Shengs.

Taste of this tea is smooth, rich and markedly fruity, with no smoky tobacco-like or other unpleasant tones at all. This taste lasts and interestingly diversifies in countless infusions.

leaves in their full blossom.

As I already said, this is a very special tea and sure has a great potential for aging – sometimes it’s somehow unfortunate that I prefer fresh Shengs and, therefore, will likely consume this tea soon.

P.S.: a bit of advertisement - another degustation, this time of Darjeelings and teas from Nepal, organized by Teatrade.sk will take place this Saturday, 10 July 2010 in same teahouse as all previous degustations. Everyone is welcome!

P.S.2: to avoid a misunderstanding, this tea was prepared in a small porcelain gaiwan, lid of which you can see on the last photo, not the fake-yixing teapot - that's just a decoration.