A Tea Addict's Journal

One of the teas acquired on this trip, albeit in a very small quantity, is a little bag of this Jingmai 2010 loose puerh.

Jingmai is a nice area, with teas that are very fragrant and generally having a good body. It’s one of the more pricey teas out there, as regions go, although I very rarely buy it because I prefer teas from other places. Nevertheless, a good Jingmai is a pleasure, and this one is a good one. This is from a friend’s friend whom I met in Taipei this time, who has had a career in tea making/selling and is now semi-retired, as far as I can tell. Nevertheless, he still gets cakes made and sells them, and this Jingmai was one such production.

The tea is really quite nice in that it is full, complex, and long lasting. By now, whether a tea is good or not is usually quite immediately obvious – within a sip or two it is possible to tell between bad, ok, good, and great tea, and this is mostly in the last category. Teas like this are hard to find, whether among vendors online or off, and drinking it at the time and also this time at home, it ignites a sense of excitement in me that I haven’t had for a while, mostly because of the lack of time to drink good tea. Teas like this is why I keep drinking and searching for good tea.

Alas, there isn’t much of this tea left – only a small bag or so, as the man himself has sold the rest and only kept maybe half a kilo for his own consumption. Drinking tea that day with him and his friends, my tea friend, and MadameN, I could sense a calmness and satisfaction that is hard to find in a more commercial setting. That is the other thing about drinking good teas – one can’t be too greedy, for good teas, wherever they’re from, will eventually run out. The point is really to savour the moment and enjoy it, not chasing shadows that shape-shift and prove ever so elusive. Determined attempts in such elusive quests will only end in disappointments.