’03 Manzhuan Series

’98 Manzhuan, 357g

This Guamg Dong stored Manzhuan treasure went under skillful humid storage that preserves its underlying vivaciousness and sweet apricot features.  Super clarity.  Balanced sweetness and viscosity.  Huigan charms for a decent duration with sassy fruit sour and moderate astringency that transforms to sweet slickness.  This is not doubt one of the heavier stored offering in the collection.  Stored in Los Angeles since Nov ’22, the heavier aspects of humidity now melds more harmoniously with the aged notes.  Classic Yiwu stone-pressing in 2017.  30g sample.

50¢

’03 Xiannong Tea Commission (Korea), Zhongcha 400g

Expressing a classic Yiwu apricot-grapefruit nose, this treasure’s conservative Guangdong storage adds a gentle layer of petrichor to a thread of vanilla.  Before taking residence in Los Angeles Mar ’22, it exhibited first-stage Manzhuan Zen with the dustiness of light-humid storage.  Dust converted to mineral and Zen to fruit.  Then there’s the enveloping vanilla. . . Sassy huigan with cheeky sourness at about a 4 piquing salivation, tongue numbing, bitterness at 1.  Huigan turns glossy sweet, coating vanilla and apricot remembrances.  Balanced astringency keeps things interesting. Qi: heady, not instantaneous but building, totally numbs face, eyelid heaviness.  Balanced sweetness (3.75) and thickness (4), which will completely elude drinker if treasure doesn’t sit in open for at least a week.  Critical! 30g sample.

.57

’09 Forever Zen, Banzhang Zhengshan 357g, pictured above

Stone pressed and processed in a manner consistent with most Yiwu after ’05 or so.  Taste is Zen to the max, essentially sweet water, some vanilla and minerals.  The taste and aroma are one.  There is zero bitterness and the broth possesses a pleasing degree of viscosity.  The huigan comes even before the broth is completely swallowed.  Astringency is about a one, but completely counterintuitively it is cheeky and throaty.  Both last for an extended period of time and about 20 minutes after the session, a second wave of saliva came gushing.  All the while the throatiness remained.  Durable, pleasing sweetness intensifying through the years.  Dry stored, light humidity in taste acquired in Los Angeles since Feb ’21.

25¢