Another Zhongcha Peacock Puerh
There are two excellent Peacock productions from ’07 Zhongcha, otherwise the Kunming Tea Factory #1. Today I had the one that reminds me of a perfected Xia Guan offering that I’ve never quite had.
This production isn’t for sale; just thought I’d share that today three people other than myself all remarked positively. It’s damn good. Sweet and minerally. Clean stones and camphor, with a mellowness of age. It’s too damn tasty to be Zen, yet it possesses that Zhongcha Zen.
One perspective was that it was floral. She admitted to lacking the vocabulary for tea. She also noted that it had tastes that she most associated with white tea, but was surprised by what she thought were black tea characteristics later. Astringency. One day I shall write a treatise.
It might be classed as a medicinal root beer. It is herbal without being the least bit herbaceous. Its certitude expresses with each infusion, revealing a darker liquor from decent storage.
Let’s get to the serious matter, however. The wrapper…
Zhongcha’s ’07 Peacock Bada
If you can’t dig this wrapper, then I can’t help you. Then again, maybe I can…
Anyway, I mentioned that this is like the Xia Guan that never was. This brings us to the ’09 Gift Puerh. Much bosser in cover…
The Gift Box is an enticing Xia Guang production that has morphed from a peppermint pitch to mid-note medicinal camphor. Both the Bada and the Gift Box are sticky sweet. Very not Zen. But in the Gift Box there is a slight thread of dank. It’s at such a subtle level that the dank lover won’t notice it, but the dank hater will eventually detect. This one kinda snuck up on me to my indignance. That seems to be a trait among this production because it was evident to a putrid level in the ’10 Small Gift Box, which I tortured till it became a most root beer manufacture. . . sans the dank.
Dank is not necessarily humid. There is a measure of humidity in the Bada, evident in the smell, what one patient noted in the taste. Minerals suggest good humidity. It also suggests a level of liveliness in the leaves, in addition to how they’ve been cared for. These all rank highly here.
I happened upon a vendor of a Blue Mark engaged in a bit of puffery but nonetheless a good price, so I gambled. It’s ridiculous how powerful the qi is on that one, light years better than any Blue Mark I’ve had. Vanilla, mostly. There’s vanilla in the Bada as well. The Bada is delicious but the qi of the “Blue Mark” blows it outta da water. You just never know.
Cheers folks.
