Late 1970s – Lin Cang Yin Hao Puer Tuo – 100g

This will be a “semi-wordless whatever day this is” post. I spent most of my time on the pictures and drinking the tea. Needless to say, this little precious is amazing. The aroma, the taste, the feeling: all spectacular. This leaf is so clean that even the wash was seemingly contaminant-free and tasty; no moldy or chemical flavors detectable.

Supposedly early 1970s

Supposedly early 1980s

Supposedly early 1990s

Supposedly late 2000s

All of these above are labelled ‘Supposedly’ because who can really be sure. Nobody cared until recent years. The wrapper on the tea being reviewed(?) is below. This tea is not for sale anywhere that I know of currently. I acquired it through private channels many years ago. You can see that it is slightly different than the early 80s wrapper in font (the ‘hao’ character is especially identifiable), but not much else. At the time I acquired it I was able to somewhat accurately identify, the wrapper at least, in a Chinese book representing a variety of puer productions from the 70s through the 80s.

I used a yixing pot that has magical properties. I have tasted this tea many times, so feel no remorse in tasting it via my preferred, if slightly altered, method. This pot can make the fishiest, most rotten tire shu/ripe puer taste about 10 times better, so one might imagine, or not, what it does to this tea.

Next is the leaf. I used about 1/5 of the amount shown. I have several of these, so I took pictures of an unopened tuo for the wrapper.

The following are all of the steeps picture in both my drinking cup and in the overturned lid of a white gaiwan. The tea in the cup shows the attitude of the steep, whereas the tea in the overturned lid shows the more subtle color of the meniscus in a more easily enjoyable format. There are 14 steeps pictured. I don’t time my steeps.

I actually steeped it several more times, but it was too late in the day to get any decent pictures with my little 3mp point and shoot. Here are a couple of additional shots of the teaware that I took for fun as I was riding the qi.

This is one of my favorites

My cute little cup and his friend.

Here I have added a few pictures of the pot and the steeped leaves, at the request of some friends and readers.

Thanks for looking (and commenting, if you are feeling up to it).