shneihem aroomim- naked yiwu

10 cheshvan 5782  

since i mentioned it in my last post, i thought i would talk about the naked yiwu from teas we like.

this is a well liked and well known tea in the western puer scene. it is made by a Taiwanese boutique brand called Xi Zi Hao (XZH) and it was my first Taiwanese boutique tea. like the love forever, i am not going to have any hot takes or new insights on this tea. off the bat i will say it is a very good tea but for $168/cake plus shipping, i am a touch let down. my one problem with it is that i don’t get many steeps out of it and i wish it had more stamina. i made this point on discord and some people also feel this way, but, the rumor is that the cake is blended rather unevenly and there are some real great spots and some just okay spots. i am still waiting to hit that sweet magic spot.

one reason this tea is particularly liked is because the price is a good deal for something coming from XZH. their teas can be quite expensive. one reason it is more affordable is because it comes ‘naked,’ meaning there is no wrapper on it. in my world, that is totally fine, i will take a naked cheaper cake any day (most of my wrappers rip fairly early on and i get rid of them anyway). another reason this tea is highly favored is because of its unique storage.

this tea was sealed and dry stored in Taiwan. oftentimes, ‘dry’ and ‘nartural’ get used interchangeably when talking about storage but there is a marked difference. natural storage is when someone leaves a tea alone in a normal setting (not in a cave, not in a basement, not in a heated box or mylar). they do not make adjustments for seasonal and weather changes. they do not try to make the room where the tea is stored warmer or cooler. they do not monitor and adjust the humidity around the tea. they simple keep a tea somewhere indoors and away from compromising odors. that’s a bare bones definition of natural storage. dry stored means people specifically monitor the conditions to make sure it doesn’t get too humid or too hot (‘too’ is subjective hear depending on who is monitoring the tea). because this tea was sealed and stored ‘dry’ it still tastes fairly young/green. it still has a bit of bitterness to it and could do well with some more age.

one more reason this tea is unique is that it is a yiwu tea that was processed in the more old school way. here, that means that it is a lil smoky (which i like) and wasn’t oxidized much in the processing to retain some of the strength/bitterness. so although this tea may not be the most mind blowing, it is certainly unique and educational, especially so for people like me in amerika who have limited access to puer.

so how is the tea? it’s nice. i really enjoyed it this summer as one of my puers. it has that smokiness and has a dominant floral and perfumed aspect. it is a fairly subtle tea but i do not find it as fruity or sweet as other people do (or maybe i just haven’t hit that part of the cake yet). the qi is stony and relaxing which is also why i like it for a summer tea. it’s to kick back in the shade, read a book, space out, and relax.

ah those sweet summer days

xoxo,

atzei besamim