tea session BA 040525

This time it was a session that I forgot to bring my tetsubin and almost no one came to have tea. Anyway all things has a reason and we are here to learn from them.

The name of this session would be:

‘water is the key to hidden treasures of gushu sheng puerh tea’

We opened up the tea train with a portugal green tea from NosTea I think they are called. The leaves brought by Marek made a nice green start.

Then we were up to the following teas:

Gushu Banpen 2022
Gushu Bangwei 2010 autumn
Gushu ‘Rainforest no. 2’

Banpen hit the table with its straight and strong bitterness from the very start. We brew the tea first with mountain well water of the tea house which was great. Then the teaman brought us a tap water that went through Brita filter.

I thought why not to try it. It could not be that bad. It was not but with a continuying brews of Banpen I notices some part of flavours gone. I would thought ohh later brews less flavours.

Then we went to Bangwei, the tea got nice sweet and myself missing its true bitterness I am used to. Ohh I thought let’s switch back to my water brought from another mountain well.

And BANG! The bitterness was there and the true Bangwei showed his teeth. I went back to Banpen too which returned with a lot of missing flavours.

In order to realize, to feel, to grasp the ‘complete’ palette of flavours and aromas of a tea you must use low mineralized mountain water.

The third asset of this evening was a gift from Liu friend who is a creator of most young shengs of pu-erh.sk

This tea he named Rainforest n.2. It was a gift that he gave me probably back in 2019. I never touched this cake since and just now made me curious what it was.

This tea I would put on shelf of Rareness series where all is packed and nothing is missing. I made this tea today again with charcoal heating and it got into another higher level. The ‘electric’ water somehow missing the crispyness of tea, its natural overal feeling and touch.