Sunday TeaDay 3/01/09 Oldest tea in your house?

[Chip]

March 1st, Spring cannot be too far way.

Welcome TeaFriends to TeaDay. Please stop by and share what is in your cup throughout the day.

Yesterday, MOST responders surprisingly voted for Chinese tea as their favorite tea for the month of January. You can still vote and discuss yesterdays topic.

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic. We have been talking about new harvest teas lately, but today ...what is the oldest tea in your collection, purposely aged tea not included? Why is it your oldest?

I am looking forward to sharing TeaDay with everyone today. Bottoms up.

[kymidwife]

Ooooh I'm first!

I have a small sample of aged oolong from the early 90's, and also a small sample of early 90's Pu. So, I voted more than 10. Of course, now I have gone back and actually READ the poll and see that intentionally aged teas were meant to be excluded... so, it's late, I am sleepy, and I plead ignorance.

Off to bed soon... might have some SLT from the Tenho Sencha leaves I enjoyed earlier.

Sweet TeaDreams,

Sarah

[olivierco]

I guess my oldest tea is a keemun I bought about 18 months ago: I still have about 30 g which should be finished in a month or two.

Yunnan gold with my breakfast.

[omegapd]

A plain jane non-descript China Black I got off Ebay and liked a lot so I bought a couple pounds of it. It makes great iced tea. Probably close to 2 years old now.

[brandon]

1950's Shui Xian

[cherylopal]

My oldest is a tin of Kiwi-Berry Coconut from Tealuxe that I bought about 18 months ago. Still yummy- I have plans to turn the rest into iced tea soon! I also have some loose pu by rishi that I bought at Whole Foods about the same time. Also still good.

My morning cup is my first successful brew of ocha's yutaka midori...

...what a wonderful world this is.

Off for a second steeping.

[Drax]

Heh, here we go again. Great question, Chip, but so easy to respond to incorrectly. We'll probably be able to lop off the 10+ years from the poll, although I am looking forward to the story from the person who talks about finding that canister that fell behind the counter. . .

I think my oldest tea is an oolong from 2007 that I got from Seven Cups. I bought it last year because it was on sale. This being my first year at drinking tea seriously, I'll be interested to see whether I can adequately deplete my stores of 2008 tea. Thank goodness that pu-erh can just wait...!

This morning I am having a go at a 2008 Guoyan Queen of Yi Wu. I was surprised to find the wet leaves with a very mellow *almost* sencha-like aroma. I am interested to see how this one evolves as I drink it today...

[brandon]

[toastedtoads]

I said less than 3 years, because I've now been working at Harney's for close to 2 years. When I first started I was so excited that I bought a lot of tea...most of which is not to my taste anymore. However, I realized that I passed a lot of that along to the rest of my family, so most of my tea is 12-18 months old.

With the exception of a tin of Verveine that someone returned the other day because it didn't have any flavor. It's over 3 years old if I go by the batch number on the tin, so I took it home since it was already open, what else would I do with it?

[GT500Driver]

I voted "less than 3 years" because we've got some tea bags that my mom just can't seem to get around to drinking, and i just don't want them. Not sure if that counts though. At the time we bought them, I used to drink them...

Non tea bag stuff would be Gunpowder Green and Kukicha from Adagio that were my first purchases. Less than six months ago I believe.

Darjeeling #22 in my cup this morning. I really do love the color of this tea when brewed, and the smell is amazing.

Probably some Ginseng Green in a travel mug for the car ride this morning.

[Saifuddin]

Less than one year for me, although if you count teabags you could triple that amount of time.

Yunnan black/gold in my mug right now.

[Intuit]

Down to the last of a 2-lb batch of a pretty good everyday Taiwan oolong, opened about 6 months ago, after having sat in my cupboard for close to a year. Still very tasty.

[kymidwife]

Now that I am awake and coherent, I will answer more accurately... though my oops is permanently etched in the poll results.

Most of my teas are less than one year old, but I have a few that are at least 2 years old. I cleaned out and discarded some older-than-2-years teas this past Fall, but sampled and kept some of the older ones that were still pretty good. My older keepers include some Mate Vana from Teavana which seems to taste the same as it did when I purchased it, a box of Mighty Leaf mesh teabags gifted to me by a butt-head I used to date (but the tea is still not bad), and some various flavored and unflavored black teas.

Come Spring, when I start getting more new stuff, I'll probably have another purging of my cabinets as I re-assess the probability of ever drinking some of those things.

In my cup this morning... first was a 4th infusion of yesterday's Tenho Organic Fukamushi, yummm... and then some gyokuro to kick the caffeine up a notch. Both were sweet and magically delicious.

Sarah

[acdidion]

Wow such a pretty pic!

Most of my teas are less than a year old. I have been working really hard to either drink my old tea or give it away to someone who will drink it.

[gingkoseto]

I have a couple of tiny cans of 2005 melon seeds and mao jian. I even brewed them for a few times this year, and they are not dead, but not very much alive.

I have a Yunnan tea which is big leaves made into knots. The tea is extremely bitter so I have no choice but purposely aging it

There are some very old jasmine green, TGY and long jing a "grandpa" gave me. The long jing is from 2006, and I currently use it to wash any new tea ware. The other two I guess could be 5 years, 10 years or even older. I don't know what I can do with them except throwing them away. I am quite cynical about aged non-puerh, and highly suspect some of them are just left-over instead of purposely aged. So I may keep this cheap TGY and in the future compare it with any commercial aged TGY