February 2018 White2Tea club came with some incredibly interesting teas – four old Sichuan Heichas!
These teas are mentioned as best/traditionally boiled with some yak butter and salt, maybe cream. You cannot find Yak butter in North America it seems, I am also horribly lactose intolerant these days so the cream is a hard pass. Vanilla soy creamer sounds quite a disgusting pairing too. I will still boil the tea though.
I decided to work youngest to oldest, steeping 1 gram of leaf to 15 ml vessel size. After around 5 or 6 infusions, I took the leaf to the stove, added water to cover, and boiled it for around 5 minutes.
1997 Ya An Kang Zhuan
Leaves were in big sheets and smelled like sweet pumpkin.
The hot leaf smells like burning rubber. Early infusions, the 1997 tastes medicinal, honey, and a little ashy. It is a little thick to sip and leaves a slick sweet coating after each sip. The medicinal tastes like rocks and rubber, like a dirty beach missing the salt. That said, this sounds perfect to add butter and salt.
Later infusions I found the 97 tastes really medicinal and dry, like that flavor you get off a pain medication without that slick coating.
Boiled: I had braced myself for torture, but the boiled 97 came out okay. It is sweet and pumpkin noted, with a background of medicinal. I preferred this one boiled by far. Maybe the storage and weird flavors went away during the gongfu session.
1996 Ying Bin Kang Zhuan
The leaf was loose flakes with the odd big chunk. This looks like a mid-November pile under a tree. The tea smells like a new tennis ball and the hot leaf smells like I melted and burnt said tennis ball.
Early on, the 1996 Heicha is more rich tasting. It tastes like charred sweet pumpkin and a little malty and woodsy. I could see a black tea fan drinking this tea. Each steeping oddly gets more smokey.
Boiled: This tea is smoky, sweet, wet stones, burnt pumpkin, and a little bitter. Some sips are sour too, but not offputting. This I could tell should be a milky latte to improve flavor as this tea was intense.
1995 Dazhuhe Kang Zhuan
The dry leaf doesn’t have much of a smell. I got an impressive large stick with my tea.
As I was rinsing, I could smell that this tea is sour. Sniffing the gaiwan, it smells like a sour church incense, but missing the sandalwood. Despite the strange smell, this tea isn’t sour. It is quite simple tasting just like church incense and a slight honey sweetness. It has some dryness in the back of the throat. The tea is light and sweet and smokey.
This one resteeped for awhile and lost track. It is a good daily, mindless drinker. A good working tea. Let’s boil!
Boiled: Okay, this went badly. The 1995 Heicha is sour and bitter, but also burnt tasting. Maybe I burnt it, combined with the smokey flavor. Booooo!
1986 Ya An Kang Zhuan
There is very little scent from the leaves. This tea looks like the other ones being a pile of broken dried up fallen leaves.
Upon closer inspection, WE STRUCK GOLD! WOOOT GOLD MOLD!
I only got 8 grams of this tea, so I used the whole sample. I am a junkie to the gold mold.
This one tastes the smoothest of the bunch. It is sweet, but otherwise, it tastes strange and I can’t put my finger on what I am tasting. I keep thinking lake water, honey, wet wood. Very little aftertaste, no bitter, dry, or sour. With each steeping it got more smokey and a bit sour.
Boiled: This one comes out dry, tangy, incense, and sweet. The main notes is smoky dry incense, similar to the 1995 Heicha. I didn’t mind this one boiled, but I rather have ridden this one gaiwan style for a while to see what happens.
Comments
This was an educational round of drinking old Heichas. Some are pretty old, and you certainly don’t see teas 1986 Heicha everyday. All these teas were pretty weird. Heichas always seemed to be a weird mixed bag of flavors. Some of these I hated (1997) but I didn’t mind the 95 and 86 for the sweeter and smooth taste. All the teas were smokey and dry but ranged in flavor. I am happy to of tried the teas, despite disliking some. It was fun boiling them and making a mess.
Totally keep tabs on what the White2Tea club has coming out so you don’t miss interesting teas like this.
