Gushu Rare5 ’22

Name: Rare5 ’22
Original name: Kōngshān yōuyùn, 空山幽韵*
Year: 2022, spring
Weight: 250 grams pressed cake
Whereabouts: China, Yunnan province

Details:

since the first brew I know this is older tea than the 2023 spring, the soup is darker and the taste is rich from the start, it is like more oily and bodied, tasting this first brew it could be hard to find similarities to 2023 tea, I will use now this way of comparing to the younger one so that with the 2020 vintage (that at the moment not tasted and written about),

with the next brew is more clear that the fermentation pulls out all the goodies that melts in the tea soup, it is the same tea garden tea leaves, still it has a different feel, like more width and less depth at least at this second brew, with the next brew I wonder how nicely this tea aged in just 3 years, the minerality with a hint spicyness is so good and adding the aftertaste with old tea tree bitterness, a nice vibrating Qi on the tip of the tongue, with next brews I see the clear ageing addition to the tea, it is like eating more ripe fruits where sugar is more concentrated, even longer brews get smooth and just lightly bitter

This tea was stored in Jinghong, Yunnan province till mid 2025.

This is a gushu version of Rare5. This tea is made gushu only not gaogan high pole trees. Gushu are trees that has been trimmed (not cut down but rather ‘adjusted’ to easier picking of leaves) and gaogan are forgotten high pole tea trees in ‘big’ forest. We could say gaogan is also gushu.

Alex puerh blog review here (This is a review of this tea when it was freshly sold)

* poetic rendering of 空山幽韵 in the spirit of classical Chinese poetry:
“Silent peaks, where hidden grace lingers.”
or
“In the empty mountain, a quiet charm abides.”
These translations aim to capture both the stillness (空山) and the subtle, lingering beauty (幽韵) that classical poets often evoke.

source: This is a chatgpt translation