I brought in some tea so that people (maybe you!) can do a taste comparison between low, high, and very high quality tea of the same type and see in a ‘connessieur’s opinion what quality actually means in tea. The tea is one of my favorite phoenix oolongs called mi lan xiang (fragrance of honey orchid). One of my earlier blog posts titled ‘The Aurora’ is based on the very high quality version of this tea, it might give you some expectations. To put the line up simply, the low quality version you can get an idea what this tea type is all about — it’s a little bit fruity but its not refined whatsoever, its a tea that tastes like tea. The high grade version is very impressive, it delivers a powerful and refined peachy-floral flavor like a bomb blast and really pushes the limits on what someone expects when they drink tea. The very high version is on another level, it delivers everything the high grade version does with a lot more finesse and elegance. The first two grades of this tea were made by humans for humans, the highest grade seems reserved for something more divine — but hey, I’ll drink it anyway.
The way the price breaks down is as follows:
Low: $15 for 50g ($1.30ish per pot)
High: $38 for 50g ($3.30ish per pot)
Very high: $100 for 50g ($8.80ish per pot)
In Guangdong province (southern mainland china) if you travel to the far east where it borders another province called Fujian, you would find a city called Chaozhou. Within Chaozhou’s limits, travelling north west (almost to the limits) brings you to the phoenix mountains where this tea is made. North east of the ‘official’ phoenix mountain, there is a town/mountain name called Wudong. Tea farmed on wudong is said to be the best in the region because of its ‘terroir’. The low quality tea in this line up is from the official phoenix mountain, and it is farmed of pretty young trees. The high grade is foraged on wudong . The very high grade is foraged from bushes over 400 years old (you call these teas Lao Cong or ‘old bush’ teas)
I didn’t really bring in a whole lot, I’ll see how this goes first. I can do 6 gift packages. There’s not really a sale price to buy all 3, its just about your interest. I’ll cut back $3 and make the set an even $150. Thats 150g of tea, so for me about 34 pots. I sell the very high version as one of my flagship teas, and have a pretty good amount of it.
You can contact me at josh@sommerier.com if you’re interested!
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