Cousin got a box of 2008 Wuyi rock tea from her boss this year as a gift. Since I am visiting China (see my other post in Off Topic) at the moment, I got the chance to taste it with her family.
The trade name of the tea is Golden eyebrow, it is a grade of tea between red and green that is commonly called eyebrow tea because it has 2 sprouts per branch that looks like a pair of eyebrow. It belongs to a family of tea called Wuyi Rock Tea, a dwaft tea plant grown on altitude between 1500-1800m on the Wuyi Mountain (hence rock tea), in the family of Tiaguanyin and Oolong category.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tieguanyin
According to my cousins, it is made with sprouts only and is picked in the late morning after all the fogs are gone, and is hand processed with only 70% yield. In 2008 the total production was 150kg, and is sought after by the entire tea market, and is already sold out. The current market price is above $10k RMB (about $1250 US) per half kg, and is the most sought after tea in the year 2008. To satisfy the demand, there is a 2nd tiered product called Silver Eyebrow using the same process but with a lesser quality tea sprouts sold in the market, for a much lower price.
The tea taste like the Lipton black tea we can find in the Western world with a few exceptions:
1) It has absolutely no aftertaste and is in a much smoother quality, you couldn't find any bitterness that we associate with tea that we grow up with, just the smoothness and the fragrance. If you compare this to the Lipton side by side, you probably would have thought that Lipton is the same tea gone bad.
2) It has a natural honey fragrance and aftertaste that makes me think that some honey is added, but you couldn't find the sweetness to it (similar to the chamomile tea). The intensity is just right unlike the chamomile, and does not overpower the red tea flavor itself.
It's taste is so familiar, yet so impressive. For those of you who could read Chinese, here is an article of the tea:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_538acd9101009978.html
The trade name of the tea is Golden eyebrow, it is a grade of tea between red and green that is commonly called eyebrow tea because it has 2 sprouts per branch that looks like a pair of eyebrow. It belongs to a family of tea called Wuyi Rock Tea, a dwaft tea plant grown on altitude between 1500-1800m on the Wuyi Mountain (hence rock tea), in the family of Tiaguanyin and Oolong category.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tieguanyin
According to my cousins, it is made with sprouts only and is picked in the late morning after all the fogs are gone, and is hand processed with only 70% yield. In 2008 the total production was 150kg, and is sought after by the entire tea market, and is already sold out. The current market price is above $10k RMB (about $1250 US) per half kg, and is the most sought after tea in the year 2008. To satisfy the demand, there is a 2nd tiered product called Silver Eyebrow using the same process but with a lesser quality tea sprouts sold in the market, for a much lower price.
The tea taste like the Lipton black tea we can find in the Western world with a few exceptions:
1) It has absolutely no aftertaste and is in a much smoother quality, you couldn't find any bitterness that we associate with tea that we grow up with, just the smoothness and the fragrance. If you compare this to the Lipton side by side, you probably would have thought that Lipton is the same tea gone bad.
2) It has a natural honey fragrance and aftertaste that makes me think that some honey is added, but you couldn't find the sweetness to it (similar to the chamomile tea). The intensity is just right unlike the chamomile, and does not overpower the red tea flavor itself.
It's taste is so familiar, yet so impressive. For those of you who could read Chinese, here is an article of the tea:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_538acd9101009978.html
Last edited:
