A Tea Addict's Journal

Iwii sample 4

April 16, 2008 · 1 Comment

I tried Iwii’s sample 4 today, despite my earlier statement that I would not drink young stuff in a while….

Pretty normal looking young stuff, a bit of silvery buds, otherwise mostly just green leaves. The liquor (no picture, sorry) is orangy… in line with teas that are probably 2-3 years old. The taste is interesting — when I drank it I thought “Hmmm, tastes slightly, ever so slightly, Yiwu-ish, but I think this is one of those fake Yiwus, maybe a Lincang that sometimes can appear to be like a Yiwu or something”. It’s a little sweet, but has more bitter than a Yiwu, and is a bit more minty in a slightly negative way. It has some qi, not a lot. Aftertaste is a bit on the weak side. Turns out, after I talked to Iwii, that this is a Jiangcheng tea from Wisteria in Taipei. Jiangcheng, as many of you may know, is where a lot of fake Yiwu leaves come from. This is not to say Jiangcheng tea is bad in its own right, but just that Jiangcheng teas are often not that great compared to Yiwu stuff (at least, the best of Jiangcheng don’t compare to the best of Yiwu). Since Jiangcheng teas are far cheaper, using those to fake Yiwu can yield healthy profit margins, and is a well known tactic of unscrupulous merchants.

This is a Jiangcheng tea that is advertised as Jiangcheng, so no problems there. It’s a solid tea, nothing fancy, nothing too bad, but compared to the Longpa that I had a little while ago that’s also from Wisteria — that tea beats this one by a mile. No contest.

I did manage to take a picture of the wet leaves

Good spring leaves. Smallish buds. If given the choice, I don’t think I’d buy this tea — since there are far better teas that are offered under the same roof, not because this tea is bad.

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