Certainly:Teaism wrote:The real enjoyment of tea should not be gauge by the price tag...
The green stamp rocks the house, am curious to see how the purple compares. Sample is on order.Zacherywolf7 wrote:2000 Kai Yuan Purple Stamp from Essence of Tea.
Pretty good. Makes since that there are young leaves in the mix basically, but still tasty, thick nice age. On the plus side I don't ever think it'll end.
I got a white 2 tea order in and realized I have a very good amount of shu to get through (about 200 grams), which is nice and a little scary.
+1 Shah, well said. That is the irony of tea, isn't it?shah82 wrote:No, that's an LBZ thing. If you're not expecting the character, it can be pretty easy to think that it's not that good (unless you've got the booming fruit return huigans). Big part of why blind tasting isn't really a good idea.
Also, in any genuine sense, no older LBZ is going to sell for $5k, unless we're talking about early Fujin (00-04) stuff or the '97 cake. That's entirely a bit of bluster. Actual sales of LBZ at high prices are for those teas with a high degree of fame.
That's because anyone with any reasonable budget, would budget for a '97 LanYin, or '96 Purple Dayi (probably not, but...), and if we're talking younger teas, they'd buy plenty of this year's top of the line teas from all areas. $5k is enough to buy a top Yiwu, a top LBZ, a top Lincang, or both Bingdao/Xigui, and then a selection of some other nice stuff, like a little Dahongpao.
And anyone where price is no object, have better tea to buy, of LBZ and other teas. People are certainly willing to pay a lot of money for tea, but there is clearly a hype, either from new and shiny, or constant adulation from reviews online or in magazines, that has to accompany the tea.
Outside of what's being explicitly marketed, tea has little secondary sales value of any note, and much of that liquidity is really in terms or tongs or jians. Tracking prices is worth it in understanding opportunity costs from selecting the tea choices you have in front of you now.
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I didn't but I think I better pay them a visit again to try it. For all you know, it might be true...a $25 tea is better than a $5k tea.bonescwa wrote:Teaism wrote:Enjoying the iconic 2007 LBZ now. Nice and enjoyable tea.
She said she has a better tea than this 2007LBZ at US$25 per bing.
Did you try the $25 tea?
Teaism wrote:Enjoying the iconic 2007 LBZ now. Nice and enjoyable tea.
She said she has a better tea than this 2007LBZ at US$25 per bing.
This is usually the problem. You have to wear the tea down for so many brews before you can really begin to enjoy the aged flavor. This is usually too much work for me. I want to enjoy a tea immediately, not go through hell before heaven.AdmiralKelvinator wrote:Todays Pu: 1990s Hong Kong White label (Sheng) from W2T. Almost 11g in a 120ml yixing.
Today's tea felt like a breakthrough for me since until now I had been sorta mystified by the appeal of traditionally-stored teas like this one. While the aged, dry-stored teas I've drank so far have provided a variety of complex tastes, aromas and body reactions, all I could taste in traditionally stored teas was "wet leaves". They almost felt like two totally separate genres. But today I finally could taste that underlying "aged-ness" that unites both wet and dry stored teas (though it took quite a while for the wet leaf profile to clear and the aged one to emerge). And now its powering on full steam ahead. Think I'll sit on this tea for the rest of the day.
Where is this from?puyuan wrote:Had the incredible XZH taiji black wrapper earlier today. The mixiang is still stuck to my throat. And it made me wish I could drink it fifteen years from now, now. But not even the magical chaqi of this tea goes that far...
Of interest, it's aged proof of how ridiculosly awesome Sanhetang's now standard picking of leaves 1-to-4 (instead of classic 1-to-3) is. Even if the material they use was, on average, a notch inferior, I'd still be seeking out their teas for this alone.
Still green enough that it might prove useful as a benchmark for evaluating the 13 version of an yearly Banzhang (very much Lao, I suspect, but the producer keeps it a secret for various reasons) cake that I'll be trying soon. The 14 version had a higher grade commemorative xiaobing counterpart, for the first and last time. Probably the craziest 14 tea I happened upon other than the xizihao hongyin. Both cost an arm, a leg and soul, and I'll shy away from even sampling this grade of young tea in 2015; it just stops making any and all economic sense when we have fine teas from preceding years still available.
