Liquid Proust Send Message

Birthday tea #2

Let me just say that I am very grateful to be able to have a tea from my birth year; also, I am very thankful for members on Steepster who organize group purchases which make it more accessible to try/purchase pricey teas that came in larger quantities such as 100g or a whole cake.

Before even drinking this tea I went back to my memory of drinking Butiki’s 1991 oolong. Those thoughts reminded me of the smoothness of a tea that comes about through aging which is true with my experiences with pu’erh as well. This piqued my interested in an aged roasted oolong. Oolongs may be my favorite variant of tea, but many times I grow tired of a roasted taste as it leaves the mouth dry’ish.

Looking at this leaf doesn’t really tell me much to be honest and neither does the smell. I suppose this is to be expected with something that has been aged (in this case 26 years). Since this is in an aluminum bag inside a tin, I decided not to use my hands not a scoop to get the tea out; I simply just tapped the bag gently and let it flow out.

The first steep was quite bizarre in a way I cannot explain fully. It didn’t taste like an oolong at at. What I did taste was a roasted caramello bar. It sounds odd, but I am 100% serious when I say that there is a cocoa note in this which is not separate from the caramel. With that being said, I went online to look this tea up because I was utterly confused by what I was drinking. Tasting notes for this tea are rather low, if any at all.

Second steep, third, fourth, fifth… this tea goes on for quite awhile and it stays smooth and sweet (with such a mild roast taste that gets overpowered by the unusual caramello taste).

Pretty crazy tea, in a good way. This is the kind of stuff I am looking to buy to put together a taste testing group buy in which I will purchase 5 expensive and 5 inexpensive teas that have great reputations (company wise) and just labeling them with numbers. However, I’m holding back on this because I don’t want to have some sort of weird issue with being a tea company myself to promote certain other companies; but lets be honest, for instance: If Butiki was still around I would ask for all my customers to try their teas out since I view tea as a collective type of product. No reason to not support all the other people out there doing it. Everyone who talks to me eventually realizes that I hate the restraints that come about with the concept of fiat currency (aka, money).

I’m quite excited to be able to showcase and share this tea with 12 different people who are coming over for one of my hosted tea events on August 22nd. They are all in for a treat :)