‘Golden Hour’, may not be the final name I bestow upon this tea, but it’s where my head is at right now. The name must include gold, and must include something to do with a short amount of time. I did a YouTube search of ‘golden hour’ and heard a pretty great song, I listened to it on repeat as I wrote this article, so I’m already kind of partial to calling this tea ‘Golden Hour’ for that reason alone. Maybe listen to it as you read the article? or don’t, your call! The reason the name should include these concepts is the short window of time you’re granted to see this tea at its best. I was staring into the teas golden liquor and imagining seeing myself in a golden mirror, it’s almost as soon as you realize the tea is gold that it goes away — it turns orange and the whole experience changes on you. I’ll elaborate below. Apparently this song is super famous and my wife is making fun of me for being a hermit who doesn’t know anything about pop culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8TvXhLtLa0
Yi Wu Mountain produces the ‘Queens of Pu’Erh tea’. When aged properly until the tea reaches maturity, Yi Wu promises an olfactory experience near the pinnacle of what Pu’Erh can achieve. Generally Yi Wu represents the fruity and mellow side of Pu’Erh compared to the tree rooty, tobacco, and nut driven notes of Bu Lang mountain and the ‘King of Pu’Erh’ Lao Ban Zhang. That being said, Yi Wu is a mountain, and there are many towns on and around it. Guafengzhai in the centre of this image is where this particular tea comes from. It has not been compressed into a cake, and was sold as maocha (loose tea) — I prefer it this way, it makes it easier to be precise and saves me a lot of time when I’m preparing tea for customers. One might argue that it doesn’t age as gracefully as loose tea as it could if it was in cake form, but alas, I am in Calgary; it’s too dry here to age the tea anyway! Better to consider Pu’Erh imported here to be stuck in time, it will remain however old it was when it arrived (unless you’re willing to jump through some hoops). As I said above, given time, Yi Wu develops a characteristic plum flavor, it’s very deep, rich, and fruity style of Pu’Erh tea. 
Well that’s when it’s aged anyway. This product is really still a baby by the metrics of age, and it shall remain as such due to being here with me in Calgary. So if it can’t age, what’s the point? It’s naive to think that every tea needs to be aged, there’s a time and place for aging tea, but some teas taste great right out of the gate (in its current vintage), the Da Xue Shan Pu’Erh I used to sell here was a great example of that. Unlike some other Pu’Erh tea, this one doesn’t need a lot of time to ramp up in the pot, brew 1 starts quite drinkable. The base flavor of Guafengzhai tea famously tastes like tea, according to one of my mentors. For sure, tea has a general flavor, and that general flavor is recognizable, but I don’t like describing tea as tasting like tea, it’s a bit of a cop out, so I’ll give you my opinion a little later. Guafengzhai is a very small town about 20km East of Ma Hei, about 750 people live there, it’s quite remote. There’s 1 tiny, treacherous road that goes there, and in the rainy season it tends to wash out, secluding the village from any potential visitors. To say just a few more words about Yi Wu, it’s one of the 6 historically famous Pu’Erh mountains and part of the birthplace and evolutionary cradle of the tea plant. Much of the lower altitude areas around Yi Wu have been converted to rubber trees farms but the higher elevation areas aren’t suitable for that. You have to keep in mind that money talks, just because Pu’Erh tea is famous doesn’t mean an entire town wont be relocated to build a resort (if it was a lucrative idea), because the higher elevation areas aren’t desired or suitable for other industries they have remained dedicated to tea cultivation (more or less). I had some friends visit me at my shop and we tried this tea together for the first time. Super underwhelming. We had 8 teas before it, perhaps our palates were a little fatigued, but in general, almost everyone agreed it was the worst tea of the bunch, certainly the worst value. It was sad to think of it in that negative light, to think I wasted my money on a mediocre product, but tasting tea with friends is not an environment conducive to assessing quality. So the next day I really dug in my heels (so to speak) and drank this tea until I felt I was going to throw up and had to stop. I went HARD, and I learned a lot.
This is not the Yi Wu I know, and that’s ok. It’s not dark, it’s not plummy, it’s maybe… vaugely fruity, going in the direction of apricot if anything, but it’s certainly not a fruit driven Pu’Erh in the conventional sense.
My standard ‘control’ brewing ratio of 1g:75mL, boiling water, 2 minutes produced a very underwhelming result (this is how I drank it with my friends too). Average aroma, mediocre concentration, slightly astringent, slightly lower than average finish, but slightly above average mouthfeel. It left a lingering oily film comparable to the Darjeeling Oil I made a couple years ago. I noticed a critical thing about this tea that I couldn’t have ever noticed while being with friends — as the tea cooled it drastically changed its appearance and my perception of flavor. Just off the leaves after 2 minutes, the tea liquor is pale yellow. It deepens to a suede yellow, then to gold with brilliance, and then dips into a peachy-orange hue with a matte haze. In all my testing that I’ve done so far, drinking the tea when it’s brilliant gold delivers the best flavor experience (and everything else is underwhelming) — it seems very strange that it’s so specific, but I’m rolling with it.
I’d describe the tea as mainly tasting like jackfruit, but a little like a korean beanspout salad (sookju namul), and plantain. Recently I had a variety of sweet plantain, and it really resonated with me. The houyun might have carried a bit of apricot (I was really looking for it) — but I’ll stick with might for now. I doubled the strength and added a minute of steeping time for another test. A weird sensation appeared, phantom like dryness swept across my palate. I could feel the air in my mouth drying out, but it didn’t linger that way because the oil left on my tongue. More importantly, aroma, concentration both became above average, the finish became average, but a lot of astringency was piled on too. When I poured the tea off the leaves there was no straw yellow or suede, it started gold and stayed for a bit, but by the time I could drink it, it was already into the hazy orange (like a New England pale ale). My first sips were good, but when it became orange, it stopped being good! So then I doubled the strength again, and this is where I learned the most. Perhaps it’s common sense, but it appeared to me that the color of the tea was mostly based off of steeping time rather than strength. So I could make it much stronger to compensate for the shorter time (gong fu cha style) and lo and behold, pot 1 was pretty great. I steeped it for 30 seconds and the result was straw yellow, but tasted potent. It lacked a bit of character, but I think I could brew it a bit stronger and overcome that fault. I left the tea to sit and it became a hazy suede, into gold, and then hazy orange just like the teas before it. Infusion 2 for 44 seconds decanted as a hazy suede and progressed as expected, the same as all those before it. Infusion 3 started a bit darker but not gold, infusions 4 and 5 started gold. By this time I felt so sick from the amount of tea I consumed that I had to force myself to stop.
I have a great plan for the next trial! As many of you who follow this blog know, I don’t really like gong fu cha and I’ll avoid that preparation style if I can in favor of something a little more scientific, measured, and consistent. GFC is cool to show people, and there are times where it MIGHT be the only way. BUT, I have a great plan for the next trial, to bridge the gap between worlds. Brew at 1:18.75 with water just off boiling. Doing an initial rinse for 1 minute and tossing it followed by 2 pots of 1 minute 30 second steeps. I’m hopeful that it’ll be great. My reasoning is that the first 2 steeps of the gongfucha I did were both good but seemingly dedicated to getting the teas flavor to what it showed me in infusion #3. I didn’t necessarily think infusions 3, 4, or 5 were perfect, they all had their appealing points, but perhaps combining what each of them contributes (which is what the 1m30s time is about) would work the 3 infusions flavors together in a way I love? It’s worth a shot.
*the following day*
1:18.75 with 1 minute rinse, and 1m30s infusion time
Rinse) Color starts in the suede zone, it’s savory, medicinal-bitter, the flavor is nothing special, it’s weak and filmy
Infusion 1) Starts at near golden color (as expected) but it’s not immediately aromatic, the flavor is full but not very exciting, I think it’s not potent enough. Depending on how infusion 2 goes I should know if the 1m30s time needs adjustment
Infusion 2) The aroma starts more appealing than Infusion 1, it’s fruity right away, it doesn’t have the full texture of Infusion 1 though, that’s disappointing. It’s tannic at the end, perhaps my intuition to steep for 3 minutes was better than 1m30s.
*I’m getting closer*
1:15 strength, 1 minute rinse, 3 minute infusions
Rinse) Has fruity notes that I didnt notice in the 1:18.75 rinse. This pot used 11g of tea for 165mL of water. I would be ok with it if this is how the tea would smell. The aroma is actually better than anything I perceived in the 1:18.75 in any stage. It’s a drinkable rinse, it’s not complex, and the flavor is a bit thin, but it’s well done.
Infusion 1) There is a bit of a stink, a meatiness (something to do with the bitter compounds no doubt) at first, but that disappear a couple minutes after it’s decanted from the leaves. Wow. It’s a very intense, fragrant, bitter, lingering oily tea with an inward pull and hard to describe fruitiness. It doesn’t resemble the fruits I was considering earlier (jackfruit, apricot, etc) — I don’t know how to describe it.
Infusion 2) It sounds a little… simple… “I like the way it smells” I was thinking it is such an ungrounded thought, it’s so opinionated. It’s like someone saying they like how a ferrari looks, or a corvette stingray. What do you say? “I like how it curves…” there is no reason to it, its just a feeling, I like the way it smells in the same fundamental way someone says I like a ferrari. A very simplistic thought. Infusion 2 has nowhere near the potency of bitterness that infusion 1 had. It’s similar and easy drinking, perhaps like the golden hour for the tea had already arrived and came to pass.
I noticed while drinking this, that I have a drinking method that I’ve never explained to people, perhaps it was never a conscious thought until I experienced the lack of it today. The technique that I usually fill my nostrils with the aroma of something first, and only drink it once my nose is saturated. While I was drinking this pot, I thoughtlessly and automatically picked up the cup drank a sip, I immediately came off of autopilot by noticing the sharp decline in my enjoyment. I thought about why it could have happened, how has the tea been so good and then suddenly there was nothing there. I wonder how many people drink that way as a standard? It seems like a significantly important thing to teach new drinkers in any field.
Anyway.. this was great, I feel it could be better (I always think that way until I’m proven wrong) — I guess it’s in the steeping time now. I’m semi-confident I’m already at the 95% completion point. It would be tinkering with a few seconds here and there. If this is the last thing written about this tea, I have accepted that 1:15 with a 1 minute rinse and 3 minute subsequent steeps is the way to go.
