Another day, another #tea.

I'm running out of my #庐山云雾茶 (#Lushan #CloudAndMist" tea, a green) at home and decided that for my once-in-a-blue-moon occasion I'd pick up my favourite black: #金丝滇红茶 (golden thread #Dianhong tea). (More specifically it's a 金丝滇红茶云南凤庆野生古树 which is a mouthful translating very roughly to "golden thread #Fengqing #Yunnan old growth uncultivated Dianhong tea".)

This is not that tea.

This is a tea I've heard of before, but never tried, so I picked up 250g of it on a whim as it crossed my screen while searching for the other. This is a #金骏眉红茶 (#JinJunMei black tea, where the name really translates to "golden excellent steed eyebrow" so, you know, it's just a name.) It was being sold at loss leader prices because it's a 2023 tea and the 2024 teas will be coming soon enough that some places are trying to get rid of stock.

This is a very nice tea. Like, almost as nice as my beloved golden thread Dianhong. It's very floral in its bouquet, is very sweet even with only a minuscule wash, and has an aftertaste that I swear reminds me of banana on the greener end that lasts FOREVER¹.

The deep colour of the liquor is also really nice (the photos don't do it justice: in person it's the *perfect* black tea liquor colour!).

Needless to say that this tea is now in my rotation.

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(Note: Mastodon users will have to click through to see all five pictures since by default it will only show four.)
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¹ OK, not forever, but it's still there a good 45 minutes after I finished the last sip of this batch, and only now beginning to fade.

This is #庐山云雾茶 (#LuShan #CloudAndMist #tea) from my first stomping grounds in #China: #江西省九江市 (#Jiujiang, #Jiangxi). It was here that I stumbled over a tea shop run by a guy who owned his own #plantation in #庐山区 (Lushan District) and where I began to find out that everything I thought I knew about tea was a tiny, tiny, tiny tip of a very, very, very tall mountain of information. I'd visit him weekly, taste his teas (both those he produced himself and those he got from elsewhere) and learned a lot about how to prepare and assess teas (mostly greens and wulongs).

I even went up to his plantation a few times and, for a lark, tried to process my own tea from picking to packaging one time. All I got out of that was calloused fingers and a sore back from picking, blistered fingers from the wok, and about a kilogram of tea that was ... not very good. It had a distinct burnt flavour. (I was told it wasn't bad for a first, untrained try—it was at least green and not browned, and the liquor came out the right colour—but it was still a disappointment.)

I still occasionally pick up tea from 庐山 just out of a sense of reminiscence. I'm still currently working through my Emeishan tea; when I crack the seal on this I'll share again with a picture of the dried leaves, the unfurled post-brew leaves and the liquor.

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