This is a great companion tea to the Old Bush Dian Hong also for sale on this site. Trying both teas can take you to opposite corners of the Yunnan tea map, Fengqing and Xishuangbanna and showcase a world of diversity in black tea.

When I began my ‘official’ tastings with this tea, the Chimera Pretzel, I had already enjoyed several pots off the record. Unusually, with only a glimpse of its flavor set, I formed a goal of what I wanted this to become. I don’t usually do that, mostly because I’m often disappointed when the goal reveals its unobtainable. It’s a better policy to brew a tea, see what it’s capable of, and choose the best expression, rather than running after your fantasy of it. I digress, we should cover it’s name before proceeding, because it’s an interesting play on something. English people (hey, that’s me!) do a funny thing historically. We hear the name of something in another language, and change it to be something we can understand. “What’s that, your name is Zhang? How about John?” … I usually have several good examples of this situation running though my head but I’m drawing blanks as I’m writing this! Perhaps I’ll return here one day and enter those — I guess it doesn’t matter.

Of course you’re familiar with Xochiquetzal, the Aztec goddess of fertility (how could you not be!)

Xochiquetzal, The Aztec deity of erotic love and weaving, Xochiquetzal was an ancient lunar deity adopted from the Classical Mayan pantheon. Xochiquetzal (pronounced Show-chee-ket-zal) was the Aztec deity of fertility, sexuality, pregnancy, and traditional female handicrafts such as weaving. She was also heavily associated with the moon and the various lunar phases. Xochiquetzal’s name was a combination of the Nahuatl words, xochitl, meaning, “flower,” and quetzalli, meaning either “Quetzal bird,” or the highly desirable tail feathers of that bird. Taken altogether, her name was often interpreted as “Flower Quetzal Feather.” — Mythology Storyteller, YouTube

Surely you can see how ones brain might adapt this name into Chimera Pretzel, especially after the label art depicts a Chimera of sorts. A female rabbit, eagle, and leopard hybrid. I’ve wanted to draw a label art like this for a while to represent a jungle tea with chocolatey notes (reminds me of mayan/aztec culture) but never had the creative juices to do it, and now that it’s done, I wanted to apply it to something, and this tea needed a name and label. Right place, right time, the Chimera Pretzel was born.  Enough bullshit, you’re here to learn about tea.

Yunnan is China’s doorway to the worlds birthplace of tea. The jungles of Yunnan host many wild species of the tea bush, generally known as Camellia Sinensis var. Assamica, and Dian Hong is generally a black tea made from such species. Yunnan black teas are among China’s best, and their cost-quality ratio is great. At the time of writing this, this humble little shop has 3 Yunnan black teas for sale, with another one on the way, set to arrive before the new year 2024. This is most comparable to the Yunnan Giant Golden Needles for sale on this site, but there are some major differences. One major difference is rolling strength — the heavily coated orange pekoe black teas are generally not rolled too strongly as to preserve the pekoe covering the outside, if it is agitated too much, it will fall off the bud. Though flavor development in black teas almost requires this ‘rolling damage’, and so an interesting issue arises. If you want to preserve the appearance, you won’t get some of the more preferred black tea characteristics. This is an issue that the Giant Golden Needles has, and this is what it’s feasible to offer the Chimera Pretzel as an alternative. This goes though a slightly deeper amount of rolling, pulling the flavor into the honey, chocolate, pocky sort of window.

The tea is coming from Feng Qing county in Lincang which you can see outlined in the red area below:

Yunnan, China

I had 2 goals with this tea:
1) I wanted a rich black tea to pair with basque cheesecake and creme brulee
2) I wanted it to have little to no negatives

From my official tastings:

6g tea : 330mL, 3 minute steeping, rolling boil temperature
The aroma was like a milk bun covered in a butter + soysauce glaze, it also smelled like a chicken fajita, in the tortilla + chicken meaty + sweet cooked bell peppery way
The flavor was smooth, oily, coating but with little to no active flavors while it was in my mouth. It has a golden color cereal grain bittersweetness that was more noticeable as the tea cooled.
Thoughts: Ok, it’s heavy and oily, the aspects are covering the flavor up. I’ll reduce steeping time to 2m. All of my previous off the record tests were 2m45s or longer.

6g tea : 330mL, 2 minute steeping, rolling boil temperature
The aroma was like a savoury caramel, my coworker Kat makes something called ‘Christmas Crack’ which is a milk chocolate and caramel liquid set over salted crackers. This year will be my 3rd year to enjoy it. This tea smells a lot like it.
The flavor was dry, baked brown, crackers, with a hint of sweetness, I seem to taste cacao, but its in the periphery (which is not where I want it)
Thoughts: The clarity of flavor is much better, it probably needs a bit more potency (+20%?) and more clarity (+10%?). The issue is that with this brew I can feel the astringency is on the edge of perception. Adding clarity by reducing steeping time will make the astringency more noticable I guess.. Anyway let’s try

7.2g tea (+1.2g (20%)) : 330mL, 1m48s (-12s (10%)), rolling boil temperature
The aroma is noticeably sweeter, and the sweetness is obvious. It’s more chocolatey, and more distinctive than any of the previous infusions. Reminds me of pocky or Pretz… somehow especially tomato pretz? it’s somewhat sundried tomato-like.
The flavor was balanced, linear, it had a lot of presence in the mouth, but it runs along a very narrow channel of flavor. It does not unfold or disperse over the palate, therefor it only affects a small area of the tongue.
Thoughts: It was very good, but I’m going to flip the adjustments to the variables I just made.
I have a good pairing in mind for this: A light rye-centric slice of bread is toasted, it is spread with cream cheese and cherry tomatoes.

5.4g (-.6g (10%)) : 330mL, 2m24s (+24s (20%)), rolling boil temperature
The aroma is seemingly more in the direction of the Christmas crack than the previous infusion, the aroma seems to be a bit rounder, smoother, flowy-er
The flavor was smooth, soft, it disperses in a way the previous infusion didn’t, it’s good, it has an almost chewy thick texture but the flavor might be a little light?
Thoughts: The tea is very drinkable like this

I’m not sure I’ve quite dialed this tea in yet, but I’m taking a hiatus from testing it. Tongue is burned, rookie mistakes were made.

I’ve become fond of black tea over the past couple years. I really enjoy my Jin Jun Mei, but my allocation is small, it’s quite expensive, and these years I’m sold out of it before December rolls around. Drinking a strictly bud picked black is a decent alternative when Jin Jun Mei isn’t available. This’ll be my fix for the winter, perhaps it could be yours too.