Aged Fuding White from seed-propagated 45-year-old bushes growing around Guanyang village. Fruit nectar, summer forests and creamy desserts in every sip.
Welcome to the 5th in our series of aged Shou Mei featuring the mysterious nomad who finds himself basking in light.
Golden Fable is a masterclass in aged White, evoking the sentimental warmth of sweet summer nights,
I warn the reader, I write this while juiced up on this beautiful bevvy, and so the prose may be overflowing and tangential.
Let's deal with the technicals first, and this tea has some serious pedigree.
Golden Fable is made from pickings of sexually propagated old Da Bai bushes. This means the tea's genetics will be more varied, adding complexity and nuance.
The bushes are around 45 years old, with many decades for the plant to build up memory and character, which you can taste.
The village is Guanyang, which has a long history of making special high-altitude Fuding White.
Finally, the tea has been traditionally sun-withered (for more solar aroma) and charcoal-baked at body temperature (for warmth and ageing potential) before being aged loose in Fuding for ten years.
Drinking this tea is like walking through a dream of nostalgic scenes.
Strolling through a forest sharing stories while feeling the blissful evening breeze in late summer after a burning hot day. Warm and woodsy with a cooling herbaceous finish.
Walking into your nonna's county home with plum tart, blackcurrant jam and apricot palinka sitting on the table.
Lying in the yellowed grass having a summer picnic with a new lover - pannacotta with strawberries that have become soft and aromatic in the sun, mountain breeze and warm skin.
Golden Fable creates a storybook of moments (that may or may not have happened) but all carry that weighty sense of sweet sentmentality - soft, rich and overflowing with such perfection that you already feel their future nostalgia.
The body sensation is a glowing, emotional and poignant drunkenness that soaks you in a sensory paradigm shift - like jumping into a pool for the first time on holiday - shocking, disorientating, otherworldly but resetting and refreshing.
I feel sorry for anyone who does not have this tea.
