Highlights:
- Amazing uplifting/mind-stopping energy
- Strong sweetness, huigan and aftertaste
- Complex refined floral aromas and good mouthfeel too
- 100% pure ancient tree
- 100% pure bingdao lao zhai (old village) – not wider bingdao as usual!
Do you know all the fuss about bingdao? And then maybe you try one of the good ones (not the ‘obvious’ fakes) and you think “yeah it’s nice but what was the fuss all about? why is it so expensive?!”
Well even the ‘good’ ones are either not 100% bingdao old village (but from the wider bingdao areas, including a few satellite villages and sometimes even wider than that) and/or not 100% ancient tree – this is 100% pure in both ways. We have offered two pretty good Bingdaos that were not 100% pure in both ways ourselves (but at very moderate prices), both sold out.
The guanxi (“relationships”) to obtain this tea is so much that even CYH can’t produce it anymore (2018 was the last year they made this tea), it’s extremely unlikely to find tea like this online or even in the right places in Asia. Since many have been asking and even sending me samples of supposed “Bingdao” we asked CYH for availability of a few cakes, so you can taste the real thing and make your mind up (it’s pretty obvious once you compare this to other “Bingdao”).
Nick M. –
Rinse is Immediately sweet, and at once obvious that there’s extraordinary harmony. Notable thickness and sweet floral and fruit aromatics. The faintest background leaf mulch from the bowl, whereas powerful aromas from the pot in the spectrum of passion fruit. Not a hint of structural components (polyphenols) at this early stage of the session: a sweet silkiness that’s still refreshing. Very balanced tea. By the fourth steep I pushed brew times up to around 40 seconds and took the temperature down to around 80C from 90C. That gave the tea shape with a strong point of intensity, a twist of liquorice root (that wonderful balance of acidulous and sweet), and mouth-coating thickness. At this point the tea transformed into impressions, a numbing effect back of palate and throat, and extraordinary persistence lasting an hour. Qi builds on the bridge of the nose, behind the eyes and back of neck. Breathing is clear like mountain air. It’s characteristically very stable once leaves are hydrated and the long steeps keep delivering. The only drawback is that there is a cumulative effect that made it difficult to finish the session – in effect there’s a latent power underpinning this tea that creeps up on you (especially on an empty stomach) and makes you realise it’s something of an iceberg. Most suitable steep times for me I think will be 20-30 seconds for steeps 4-8 to enable a whole session to be completed comfortably. Less in the early steeps for the aromatics, longer for double digit brews. This is the greatest young tea I’ve experienced. That from someone who loves mid aged and mature shengs. Thanks a lot to Paolo for opening my eyes to what elite young tea can offer. A must have experience.