Yesterday I hosted a gongfu session with my friend Joey. I had my whole six-hour music playlist set up, with my tea table moved to the middle of the rug. We started at 10:30 AM, sitting on little cushions. My mind was clear, I had plenty of water, and I knew this would be a great session. All of the teas were made with unmineralized filtered tap water, except for the Diangu which was made with Lurisia. We burned some nice incense from minorien.
Tea #1: 2001 Zhongcha Huangyin
We started off with this tea in a Novak pot. I used to structure my sessions from younger to older, but I thought this one would be great to start strong. It’s stimulating and heating and really gets straight to the point. Lots of activity in the throat. The sun was shining through the glass kettle making rainbows all over the tea table, so the session started off special.
Tea #2: 2018 Maocha
Joey brought some maocha which he made in my jianshui pot. We got nice bitterness and huigan. It’s fun switching brewers; it demonstrates equanimity and it is nice to experience tea from both sides of the table.
Teas #3 and 4: Tea Masters’ Qing Xin High Mountain Oolong vs. Leaf of the East‘s High Mountain Oolong
Two little gaiwans with two rolled oolongs. We liked the one from Leaf of the East better. They were both good, but the Qing Xin made us feel heavy and sleepy. The one from leaf of the east was a little bit darker. Both were complex and clean. We were ready to move on after four steepings of each.
Tea #5: Hua Yuan 1992 Ripe Tuocha
I told joey that an aged ripe would probably put us all the way to sleep, but we found that it provided a very comfortable feeling. This tea was made in a glazed pot from teawarehouse. This was absolutely delicious.
Tea #6: 2018 Xizihao Diangu
After a lunch and music listening break, we made this in a gaiwan. This tea was purchased from Liquid Proust. We chose this tea because I knew it would be interesting. The furry leaves smelled like red tea to joey but it became apparent when brewing that it was not red tea at all. It’s a raw puer with intense florals (jasmine is most striking to me) and an energy that made us laugh.
Tea #7: Beyond
This tea is no joke. Brewed in a small QSN yixing from tealifehk, one sip of this purportedly vintage loose puer and we were blasted into a new dimension. Joey said at this point that he felt like he was “a different element.” We could not stop cracking up. This is what a tea secrets party should be. We were not comfortable, but not uncomfortable, or maybe we were both. We got stomach aches from this tea and had to stop drinking. Could be because of over-wet storage. This concluded the five hour session.
Tea Secrets Party 0.5 from Tea Secrets on Vimeo.
Tea Secrets 