April 2013 Southeast Tea Affair

Now finally back in the swing of my addiction habit hobby, I decided to risk a caffeine binge and hosted a meeting of our local Southeast tea group.

Unfortunately, a Facebook event snafu created a duplicate posting that made one member get the day wrong. So, there were only three of us.

We drank an unreroasted 1980s baozhong that reminded me why I don't seek out aged baozhong. I have drunk a few good ones, but the other two dozen or so have been like this one, rather bland and single character. Still, with no off flavors and good storage, it could have been worse.

We moved onto a more recent dong ding from Houde, that bryandrinkstea bought the last of, and we could see why. It was punchy, delicious, and didn't want to quit. Beautiful strong leaves with great structure.

We had a 1999 Dayi brand tuo sample given to me by a tea friend who travels regularly to Xishuangbanna. It was dry stored—authentic dry stored, not American dry stored—and quite well on its way. I was sad I waited so many years to finally try the sample.

Then we dug into some liubao, a 1990s liubao I bought in Guangzhou's fangcun market in 2006. The shopkeeper had it in a large tin that said "aged pu'er" on it; one of the older vendor tricks still alive and well! The tea still bit back, but it's definitely mellower than when I first bought it.

We ended with an early 1990s 7542, also authentic dry storage, that still needs a lot of time.

All in all, very good session.

If you're in the Southeast US and would like to join us sometime, leave a comment with your email address and I'll add you to our Facebook group!