Since pressing our 2021 Youle Gaogan cakes, we've had quite a few enquiries about other Youle material, and have been on the hunt for some nicely aged cakes.
These were pressed in 2004 by a tea merchant from Yiwu. He collected the raw material from Youle mountain and pressed the cakes in Chang Da Hao's tea factory, using their wrappers to wrap the cakes. This was quite a common practice at the time for small productions. They were then purchased by a Kunming merchant, who stored them in Kunming until now. The storage has been clean, although relatively dry. Ideally we would have preferred it to be stored somewhere more humid than Kunming, but it has aged nicely & it is priced appropriately. This would be approximately twice the price if stored somewhere like Malaysia.
From tasting it, it appears to be pure old tree material and displays all the character one would expect from this type of tea. It's thick, rich, concentrated, has good depth in the mouth and throat and is very vibrant. It has a nice energy and a long concentrated aftertaste with reassuring bitter note creeping in. This has plenty of room still to evolve in years to come.
I can recommend this tea. It's a bargain at this price and even newly made tea of this quality from this area would be much more expensive.
