Tea: Mother Bush Eight Immortals
Type: Baxian Mushu Dancong Oolong (八仙母树单丛乌龙)
Style: Classic Dancong
Roast: Nongxiang (Classic Heavy)
Harvest: Spring 2024
Region: Wudong Village, Phoenix Mountains, Chaozhou
Producers: Wen Zitong
Tasting Notes: Melted Butter, Caramel, Fresh Ground Coffee,
This tea is extremely limited in stock, we were only able to acquire 500 grams, and since we would prefer to sell these primarily in the sample boxes, there are only 20 of the 12 gram pouches available on this listing. Read more about why this tea is so difficult to source and why it is so expensive in the text below the tasting notes.
The smell off the dry leaves in a warmed gaiwan are divine. Like melted butter in fresh ground coffee, with a huge amount of caramel sitting in the background. All these fragrances get swept aside with the hot water, only to resurface later as the tea cools. There is a strong vegetal fragrance of pine sap and sweet majoram on the wet leaves themsleves.
The rinse is a sweet-tongue tingling sensation (yes, we always drink the rinse of these mother bush teas), we also enjoy setting aside a cup from the first infusion to drink at the end of the session to remind us where we started. The texture of this tea is incredibly soft, gentle on the mouth despite the recent heavy roast. This is something that should only intensify as this tea settles and ages. As mentioned earlier, this tea has that characteristic old-bush or lao-cong flavor, meaning it creates an interesting tingle on our tongue and is deeply mineral.
The mother bush teas from Wen Zitong are teas not commonly available. Only thought strong connections and deep relationships with the growers as well as makers can we source these teas. We are honored that Wen Zitong agreed to reserve a pound of this tea for us from the very limited amount of leaves picked this spring (each year there are only a few kilograms of final tea from this tree). This is Danzhu, Single Tree, Mother Bush, true Dan Cong, aka Single Bush. Teas like this are a rare treat and indeed the nuances tend to be subtle and profound for those learned in the leaf.
While these teas usually don't have the rollercoaster of flavors and aromas, their true magic comes in their incredible vitality, the sweetness in the later infusions, and of course the Cha Qi. Wen Zitong knew how much we loved his Ba Xian last year, so this year he saved just 500 grams of this Mother-Bush production for us to try and offer here.
