Chen Yuan Hao 2022 and aged tea set

Highlights:

• True ancient tree Yiwu, a real contrast with what’s usually sold as ‘ancient tree’!
• Four 100% pure ancient tree teas in 2022 and a different vintage (total of 8 teas)
• + 2016 CYH ChaWangSu (T5)
• Experience how CYH tea ages in CYH’s own dry storage

Everybody claims to sell ‘ancient tree’/gushu, now we’re going to put it to the test and let the cup deliver the truth !

Brew these tea hard (90-100c, 30 seconds+ steepings, full gaiwan) and brew them against other teas claiming to be gushu, the result is so unmistakeable you likely won’t be able to drink the “normal” gushu tea anymore 🙂 The CYH are sweet, a bit bitter, rich – most other ‘gushu’ comes out very astringent when brewed so strong. This is harder to see in aged tea (which becomes better just by aging), but the difference when the tea is young is so obvious!

Dry storage in the west

While talking with Mr Chen we were discussing how to show westerners how pure ancient tree puerh will age in dry storage similar to what is found in their homes, so we came up with the idea of providing this set of total 8 teas (4 teas, each in 2 vintages).

My impression is that both the 2022 and the older tea are really seriously good yiwu tea, and that they can be aged in the west as well with similar results to what is in this sample set. The 2013 Yiwu ChaWang has been stored by a taiwanese collector, the other teas have all been stored by CYH themselves. These are some of my notes on storing and aging puerh in the west.

The idea being that very high quality puerh actually is pretty good when fresh because pure old tree material produces a sweet and somewhat bitter (but not very astringent) brew even when fresh, and slow dry storage (as provided by most western home environments) is actually the best way to keep this tea.

Note that I said “sweet and bitter“, not “sweet and light”, which is the case with most producers of young puerh: they process the tea a bit like an oolong and in that way make it drinkable immediately. These teas are not like this, they have plenty of strength, sweetness, bitterness and character to provide to become even sweeter and thicker with aging (unlike the puerh-oolong teas, which won’t become much better).

Finally, there’s a bonus tea of an elite single estate Chen Yuan Hao: the 2016 Cha Wang Su, a tier 5 rated cake, imho the best CWS available in the market, and that’s saying quite a lot.

Warning: there is probably no going back from this kind of quality, choose the red pill or blue pill 🙂

The teas:

• Yiwu ChaWang 2022 and 2013: the original yearly CYH Yiwu cake kwown with honey taste (25+25 grams)
• Yiwu ZhengShan 2022 and 2015: the second classic yearly CYH cake (25+25 grams)
• Man Xiu 2022 and 2020: a Yiwu village I particularly like (25+25 grams)
• Yun Tian Hao 2022 and 2020: a great autumn blend of various yiwu villages (25+25 grams)
• Bonus tea: 2016 Cha Wang Su (T5) 10 grams

25g x 8 = 200g +10g of CYH 2016 ChaWangSu (T5) = 210g total.