Notes of chestnut honey, grass jelly, and mate de coca.

Aged oolong tea from Taiwan・1995-1997・陳年烏龍・Unsprayed

From Mr. Li’s private collection comes an aged oolong with the flavors and sweetness of classic pu-erh and the texture of heady cream stout. Over two and a half decades, Mr. Li has been carefully monitoring this cache of dark twisted leaf oolong, cupping it as the years pass and using the low heat of open charcoal pits to adjust the varying moisture content and keep the tea ‘alive’.

This process requires a refined hand, and palate. Too little moisture and the tea can become excessively sour, with an off-putting tang. Conversely, kept too dry and the tea will be inert to change as it ages, and it’s these small, incremental metamorphoses that we’re after; the time-honed notes and textures that imbue a tea with character.

Made from three consecutive harvests of the qing xin cultivar (1995-1997) crafted into a dark twisted leaf oolong, Mr. Li is in a unique position of both having crafted and aged this vintage oolong, responding to the changes in the tea over time, and creating a final product that drinks with a nitrogen-infused softness and profound depth of sweet, earthen flavor. Under this roaster’s careful watch, this tea has the complexity and texture of teas twice its age.

Brew: 5 grams・150 ml・210° F・2 min

While we recommend 150 ml as our standard cupping method, we suggest long, gradual steeps in slightly larger teapots. This is a quiet sipping tea, one that needs time to bloom, either in a chawan, or a pot.