1980s Kunming Tea Factory 7581

Highlights:

• Excellent Taiwan dry clean storage
• Thick, sweet, dark taste and yet has a cooling effect
• Strong aftertaste, very satisfying and elegant old puerh taste
• Refined peaceful Qi

Light fermentation shou + excellent batch + Mr Chen’s dry storage = a shou puerh like you’ve (extremely likely) never had before. Aged sheng purists: you will probably like this!

The early light fermentation 7581 is arguably the recipe that made shou puerh famous and the benchmark for old shou, a thick-strong-balanced tea to rival and best most sheng puerh of the same age. This is a particularly good batch of 7581 with strong tasting leaves and stored very well, modern shou is nothing like this (even so called ‘old tree’ shou). It’s also been light fermented, meaning not the full 60 days of traditional shou fermentation, but something more like 30 days.

There’s a reason most connoisseurs (me included) don’t like shou puerh, the quality is just generally not as good as aged sheng. However this tea defies that reason, sitting halfway between a very good sheng and an excellent shou. There’s also a good reason 80s original big factory (Kunming, Menghai and Xiaguan) tea is so expensive and well regarded, quality is usually very high, this tea confirms this reason and is priced much lower than most sheng tea while sharing a lot of the same baseline strength and quality.

The main remarkable thing about this brick is how it has a dark, sweet, full taste profile, and at the same time it has a cooling effect on the body. Actually, this cooling effect should develop in all high-quality, properly stored old shou (surprised? I was too). Aftertaste and huigan are also long lasting and strong.

The Qi is not energising, and only mildly calming, it has more of a general sensation of well being, what’s usually referred to as “refined Qi“.

Authenticated with another senior collector as original Kunming Tea Factory 7581 of 1980s, most probably early 1980s (otherwise mid-80s). Like all old tea with fully aged profile, brew it really thick to experience the true potential of the tea.

Mr Chen’s introduction

There’s actually a lot of old tea in Taiwan at much more reasonable prices than in mainland China, unfortunately most of what is found in Taiwan is too wet stored. Mr Chen, a personal friend of ours, old time collector, bought a few tongs of various teas during the 90s and early 2000s (before prices skyrocketed), and has been storing them in his home (dryly) since.

This kind of tea in China sells for crazy money, it’s very lucky we’ve access to these at all, Mr Chen has sold them to us at a very generous price and we pass the great deal on to you.

250g bricks nominal, weight loss over the years because of aging.