A Tea Addict's Journal

What do I drink after I come back from Beijing? I was thinking about that the whole day, which is a terrible sign that I’m rather addicted.

I ended up deciding to drink what I couldn’t find in Beijing – my loose aged puerh. I think the trip has given me a better sense of taste, and a little more perspective. The puerh tastes worse than I remembered it. While it has nice undertones, the body and the overall fragrance of the tea is not that good. It is certainly drinkable, and the tea brews for a long time. It just isn’t of the best quality. I should be glad that I get to drink aged puerh at all.

This puerh is what you may call a “unknown year puerh”. The teashop that sold it to me didn’t know either, because its source is somewhat convoluted. Essentially, the teashop owner was helping someone out because her husband died. Her husband was a small teashop owner in the past, and this was a stash of loose puerh that he had. She obviously had nowhere to sell this stuff, and had no use for all that tea. It seems the man didn’t leave her much money behind, therefore the teashop owner was selling this for her to recoup some money. It was rather cheap, and since it tasted ok, I decided to buy a bunch of it.

Now that I look at the tea more carefully, it’s original tea quality must not have been very high. It has more twigs than is usual, and the leaves are somewhat broken. Nevertheless, a nice variety to have to broaden my experiences.