Gushu Rare5 ’23

Name: Rare5 ’23
Original name: Kōngshān yōuyùn, 空山幽韵*
Year: 2023, spring
Weight: 250 grams pressed cake
Whereabouts: China, Yunnan province

Details:

a very good authentic forest gushu Yiwu, nice balance of sweetness and bitterness, subtle acidity with deep bitter nutty finish, such forest tea has this wild feel, it is like these earthy, nutty and acid tones are all more pronounced, a clean and pure feel, at this stage it is not fresh either old but it’s fermentation just started, Yiwu is not all about its sweetness but rather sweet tones underlined with its soft and nice bitter coating that lingers in the mouth long after, many further prolonged steeps exhibits minerality of exotic woods

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.

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

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