A Tea Addict's Journal

The retaste project 12: 2003 Fengqing zodiac minibings

June 19, 2012 · 1 Comment

Sometimes it’s fun to try things that you have written about before, and it’s even more fun when other people have tried the same thing. I was recently reminded by hster‘s post that I have two tongs of this 2003 Fengqing zodiac minibings sitting at home. The last time I tried this stuff was 2007. It’s time to give them another spin.

The storage of this tea was mostly in the United States, actually, and only came back with me to Hong Kong last year. Before that it’s been through Boston, Ohio, and Maine – all cold places, one worse than the next. Visually, the tea hasn’t changed all that much – it’s gotten maybe a little darker in tone when you inspect the dry leaves.

 

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I threw a small chunk in the pot and brewed it up. It did get darker, and it did lose some of the fresh/young notes that I may have found back in 2006. The tea isn’t great by any stretch of the imagination – it’s ok. A boring, bland okness that isn’t broken up by any surprises, up or down.

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I should note that cup depth, more than anything else, provides the greatest variable in liquor colour as you see on blogs. Unless and until we all use the same cups, liquor colour comparisons are pretty much meaningless.

I also poked around Taobao and found that this thing is sold by at least one vendor for a whooping $50 a cake (100g). I ought to go sell these, as I think I paid a total of $50 for the two tongs, totaling 2.4kg of tea. You’ll notice the age of the cake also got inflated to 1997. This just goes to show that if you try your luck on Taobao, you better know what you’re doing. In the meantime, back in the storage this thing goes, and I don’t think I’ll see it again for quite some time.

Categories: Teas
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1 response so far ↓

  • sparris // June 19, 2012 at 4:27 am | Reply

    Great tea or no, I like the bottom photo a lot, the little leaves floating on top of the tea sort of makes the picture for me.
    Have only ever tried one Fengqing tea, same year, didn’t like it much. But I know about as much about pu as I know about quantum physics.

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