Today’s review is some more aged white tea – MEM Tea’s 2013 Aged White Peony, also known as Bai Mu Dan.
Leaf and Steeping Method
Confirmed Bai Mu Dan as you can see both fuzzy buds and leafy chunks. It looks oxidized to a funny colour and the smell is of forgotten linen left on the clothesline.
I just realized MEM tea says to do this aged white at 175F/80c. That is a hard no in my opinion. Most white tea can take 200F/93c+, even more so with aged white teas. However, this tea is also aged. You want to rinse and boil to rid of anything that might have collected in the tea over 6 years.
I used 1 gram of leaf per 20ml of vessel size, steeped in boiling water. I used gongfu style and did a single rinse. The hot wet leaves smell like hot baby wipes, tulips, and grass.
Tasting of MEM Tea’s 2013 Aged White Peony (Bai Mu Dan)
First and Second Infusion: 2013 Aged white peony is sweet. It has a couple angles of sweet – a vanilla smooth, tangy fruity, and mystery floral sweet. The vanilla sweet smooth is the strongest of the three, finishing off the sip. There is some lingering flavour of sweet tangy floral, but it is fleeting. That tangy tastes like some of the storage.
Third, Fourth, and Fifth Infusion: Great colour! Nice dark gold.
Now we are getting into the meat of this aged tea. The flavour is herby, like some autumn leaves that are just starting to turn crunchy, but have plenty of gold and green in them. Some sips are of blanched almonds, others that tangy tart storage flavour.
Sixth and Seventh Infusion: This round I had to steep long to get more flavour out. This infusion brought out the green notes of the aged white. It’s got wheat and green hay flavour, a bit of a juicy stems notes. It lost the vanilla smooth and sweeter notes, leaning more on savory. An extended steep gave a more malty flavour, but it is also on the astringent side. It is certainly stewy here and drying my teeth.
Eighth and Ninth Infusion: We had a comeback and can certainly taste the age of this tea as it has lasted this long. 2013 Aged White is mineral crystal licking sweet, a bit of malt, and a lot of linen cloth flavour. The last infusion was really light for 15 minutes so I think it is dead. I wouldn’t stove boil this tea as it still has that green and an astringent bite to it.
Comments
MEM tea’s 2013 Aged White Peony has a strong start with delicious sweet notes, though later steeps is more green and astringent, but then swing back to malty. It a bit green for its age, but one has to consider it is a Bai Mu Dan, so the more delicate buds are throwing the age off, as well as the storage could be conservative. It still has years on it that is past the awkward stale phase.
The price of 2013 Aged White is fine if you only have access to buy off a US seller. It is also nice this is a bai mu dan instead of the usual shou mei, I’m personally going to lock this one away for a few more years for more optimal flavour.
Overall I’m decently pleased with MEM tea’s offerings. They have some solid traditional teas and an interesting range if you want to get your feet wet into more hardcore tea drinking.
(tea provided for review)
