1982 Sun Moon Lake Aged Black Tea, Lot 220

If you take those sun moon lake taiwans I was sampling earlier this morning & age them for 30 years, this is what you get! The flavor is of roasted carrots & beets, sweet, rich, & very very different!

Sooo i’ve been sitting here for a bit. This is more of a story, than a true tasting note. I haven’t had much tea today but after the events of the day, i knew i wanted to end the day with something a little special. I don’t have many teas that i horde – i’ve gotten much better at drinking the things i love, when i want them. So i had to dig a little to find a tea for today. What struck me about this one was that it’s an aged black tea. 30 years in fact.

So tonight, i’m celebrating with a new tea type, that I haven’t had before (that i can recall, so it totally counts) and with something that was aged for 30 years. Here’s hoping that it’s a great beginning to things that will last.

What the heck am i talking about? Well today marks the day that my other half proposed. Yep. Our anniversary happens to fall on international talk like a pirate day (today) and he opted to pick today to celebrate our four years together – looking forward to hopefully, at the very least, another 30 together. I can only hope we’ll age as well together like this tea.

This is earthy but really smooth…and the more i drink it, the more the flavours seem to be opening up. i am much in the moment. drinking this tea and contemplating the future.

Another sample from Sil. This is a pretty interesting aged tea. Much sweeter than I’m used to! Still very earthy, but not fish at all. I’ll make it through a few more steeps, but I still haven’t developed a love for the aged teas yet. Thanks Sil for letting me try it!

Cheap old tea! This 1982 tastes like a liubao and not Sun Moon Lakey anymore. It is musty old water logged books, ash, charcoal, wet stones and more must. Ride this tea a long time and it cleans up to sweet, mineral and camphor.

I really didn’t like the thin body on this one and I was really unimpressed my tea was very twiggy and had a rock in it. But hey, it’s $5 and 1982, what did you expect?

Full review on Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/1982-sun-moon-lake/

This tea elicited a rather odd response from me. Dry leaf aroma was dirt, but the wet leaf aroma and flavor was another kettle of fish. Well, not fish exactly… So here’s what happened: I’m sitting in my office, and I take one sip of this tea, and for some reason I hear myself yelling aloud “BEETROOT!, BEETROOT! BEETROOT!” whereupon a malevolent looking beetcreature dressed in black and white stripes arose from my office floor. Spewing black tea from its giant maw, its head spun around 360 degrees, and it looked me dead in the eye and yelled “IT’S SHOWTIME!” So anyway I gave him the tea and thankfully he went away.

TL;DR: I’ve had black tea about 167 times and it just keeps getting worse every time I drink it. /end pop culture references

From the EU TTB

This tea is actually older than me, so I knew I had to try it when I found it in the EU TTB. It reminds me of a pu’erh in both scent and appearance, having that clumpy leafed look like it’s been broken off a cake, plus a mildly dank scent. I used 1 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 3 minutes in boiling water. The resulting liquor is a medium red brown, and the scent again more reminiscent of a pu’erh than a black tea. It’s kind of woodsy and damp smelling, like a walk through a forest after a rain shower.

To taste, the main flavours are wet wood and damp earth. The initial sip is, again, very reminiscent of a pu’erh, with that almost characteristic note of decay. It’s quite a gentle flavour, though, and very smooth, and ultimately I found myself not noticing its rougher edges as much. A hint of beetroot like sweetness comes out in the mid-sip, which is a pleasant counterpoint to the initially more savoury flavours. It’s a rich tasting tea with a real depth of flavour, very loamy and autumnal, and perfect for this time of year.

I’m not usually a fan of pu’erh or ages teas, but this one’s sitting okay with me. I’ll definitely have to explore Taiwan Tea Crafts a little more once I’ve got my cupboard back under control!

Yay it’s a tea that’s older than me :) Always fun to try mature teas, though I am used to those being in Oolong or PuErh form rather than black.

The raw leaves are small and thin which look sticky and wooden, dark brown in colour and bares a musty, damp, rain, forest sort of smell…or like beetroot. It is rather like a PuErh in scent funnily enough, also getting sweetcorn (like sweetcorn that has been cooked on a bbq and is starting to burn). Perhaps not my favourite smell but I’m still intrigued.

My first few sips reveal an array of flavours, taking particular note of: damp soil, beetroot, damp wood and sweet potato. It’s highly earthy and with some sweetness. As a whole it doesn’t linger in the after taste and nor does it leave me with any dryness. It’s also somewhat refreshing, like clove but just without it’s flavour. A few steeps in my gaiwan reveals more of the sweetcorn flavour.

Honestly….I HATE beetroot! I cannot stand the stuff, never have and never will. This tea tastes just like beetroot, it smells like it too, and that puts me off it a little. I can drink and stomach this tea and tried to find things about it that I found pleasurable such as the sweetness but I am still taken back to the beetroot notes in each sip.

I will reserve my rating for now but I will try it again in the near future.