3 teas for the day

It's been a long time since I have done a tea evaluation tasting with pictures and notes. When you get swamped by many teas at one time, it's overwhelming to conduct such in dept tasting while entertaining clients.

Three teas on the menu today:
1) 1994 Green Tea
2) 2005 Wu Dong Dan Cong Cha Tou
3) 1986 Honey Orchid Dan Cong

1994 Green Tea:
A classic sample of well roasted tea using charcoal as a heating source. If you are not quite sure what charcoal can do to a tea, this is a profiling tea to have. In order to store and age tea-any tea, the bottom line is low moisture content. If you got that down, any tea can be stored for years. The oldest I have heard and still drinkable (no one died from drinking it) is about 800 years old, buried under the ocean floor for 99.9% of its life time. Believe it or not, it's a powdered green tea brick wrapped in sealed wax paper.

The flavor of this aged green tea comes from transformation of substance via roasting and aging. The color is a glowing clear light amber hue. Sweet with black tea like texture, a sweet dates like flavor which present in charcoal roasted teas. You can not detect any green tea shadow in this tea until everything goes down. After taste clearly unveil the crisp unfermented mouth feel of green teas.

Since this is green tea, using green tea brewing parameters is essential, although slightly higher temperature (95 c) water can bring out the charcoal flavor more than cooler temperature (87 C). Boiling water is not recommended. Some how the sweetness and flavor are trapped inside of the leaves when using boiling water.