Tastings from the Cellar: Aged Yancha Lao Cong Shui Xian 2010 (Tea Trail)

I've been taking my personal stash of oolongs everywhere for a couple of years now. They have moved from city to city and now they are resting in a damp and cool cellar under our house. I have really not paid any attention to the teas and just hoped to forget them until 10 or 15 years has passed.

Then I suddenly realize six years has gone by. A lot of things can happen in six years. I am not the same person as I was back in 2010, and I am sure my teas are not the same also. So it is time to have a taste of these aged teas and see how they have developed.

The first tea I am tasting is a Lao Cong Shui Xian from the expectional Finnish teashop Tea Trail. These are my tasting notes from the year 2010 when I bought the tea:

The scent is roasty and dark at first, but one can also find notes of berries.

The taste is warm, roasty, and thick with clarity, a nice warming and slick mouthfeel, and just the right amount of astringency. In the second and fourth cup I can also notice a flavour of grains.

In six years the tea has changed quite a bit. Just from the dry leaves I can smell the familiar aroma of musty old wood and medicinal herbs that I know from previous tastings of aged oolongs. This scent always reminds me of a setting sun on a summer evening. Maybe this is because it was a hot and humid summer evening in my crammed student flat when I first tasted aged oolong.

Once the leaves are rinsed with hot water, they release notes of liqueur which quickly transforms into a soft woody and berrylike aroma.

There is very little left of the original roasting in the scent of the infused tea. Behind the weak roast, I can find mineral and dark fruity notes. At first the roasting seems to give the fruits and the mineral a bitter twist, but luckily the roast dissipates quite quickly.

As time passes the fragrance develops into a stunningly complex harmony of mineral, herblike, and sweet dark fruity notes. Once in a while I can still detect those intense notes of berries that I know from younger yanchas. In the second infusion the aroma becomes a little bit softer and a bit grainy, but it is nonetheless extremely complex.

The taste of the tea is soft, but not bland, as there still appears some of that freshness and clarity of taste that I miss from younger yancha. At first the taste is very mild and I can mostly notice the mineral taste the tea leaves on my tongue. Because of the weak taste my attention if focused mostly on the fine and strong aftertaste of old wood and tender fruits.

Then slowly the taste starts to become clearer. In the second infusion the taste is already much clearer and balanced. It harmonizes well with the aftertaste, and I can also detect a small amount of bitterness, which gives the body of the tea some structure.

Lao Cong Shui Xian has definitely developed into a fine tea. I would very much like to drink it all up now and not risk that by aging more the tea will start to lose its appeal. But I want to see how the tea will develop if I push it to its limits. When I start to notice the quality deteriorating, that's when I will finish it.