Today’s tea is Bitterleaf Tea’s 2017 Cloud 9 Fuding White Tea. This white tea is interesting as it is old growth large leaves only, but not the huangpian ugly grade leaves. I purchased this tea as Bitterleaf Tea’s white tea offerings I find economical for aging.
Leaf and Steeping Method
Wow, 2017 Cloud 9 looks fun with the large flat leaves. The cake smells like stale hay and willow sticks, making me think this is rabbit food than tea.
This tea is easy to pry pieces off of, however, it creates a lot of shattered dust if going the usual technique with tea knife. I tried to flake off some whole leaves but that was taking a long time.
I steeped this tea gongfu style with 1 gram of leaf per 20ml of vessel size, using boiling water.
Tasting of Bitterleaf Teas’ 2017 Cloud 9 Fuding White Tea
First and Second Infusion: Despite being a compressed cake, I didn’t rinse I got good colour and flavor right away. The flavor is sweet and young coconut, with a gently lingering sweet coconut water note. The texture is deceptively thick, sipping in creamy but evapourates not leaving any after effects.
Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Infusion: Cloud 9 continues to develop and settling in a dark golden colour. I gotta say, this tea has been so much fun to take photos of!
The white tea has gotten a touch stronger and at a nice flavor intensity. For these infusions, the tea is still tasting of coconut water but bit staler with some linen notes. With each steeping, the linen flavor gets stronger and develops a bit of a stale paperback book taste.
Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Infusion: Bitterleaf Tea’s 2017 Cloud 9 is developing a slight bitterness like the stale books and spinach were overcooked into a medicinal and sour stew. This is showing the awkward stage of aged whites being just at the 3-5 year mark as it young enough to have some excess in stale bitter.
Comments
As of 2020 spring, Bitterleaf Tea’s 2017 Cloud 9 Fuding white tea has flavors of sweet coconut with some lightly aged stale notes. It still has some youth in it which shows off in the later infusions.
I’m not going got touch this tea for at least another year or so. At 3-5 years you can get some great honey notes, and this tea is just not there yet. However, I am predicting this one is going to get real good with age. For $22.50 for a 150g (strange size) cake, that’s not a bad deal if you can hold onto it for another year or two.
