First Hit - 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo

Finally we meet, the 1996 XG Butterfly Tuo from Life in a Teacup.  This tea has so bewitched Nick Herman that every time I see a comment by him,  I  half-expect an apparition of his beloved Butterfly.  He says, "it has sent deep, deep energy coursing into my veins which I still felt the next day. Incredible."

Who doesn't want to feel an extra-day extension of "incredible" energy.  You're definitely getting bonus  value there.  Ira brought this for us to try yesterday but I was too tea drunk on the 8582 so she generously left it for me.  When I open the pouch, I'm hit with a curious vegetal mineral nose more like seaweed or dried kale.  It no longer smells like sheng.

I brewed up all the loose leaves and fannings not in the photo as I wanted to save the rest for Ira.  The first brews were still trademark XiaGuan- drying, slightly smoky and astringent.  This sample of tea can proudly proclaim dry-aged storage despite ImmortaliTEA having received a extremely moldy version- the perils of buying aged puerh on-line.   My here example is as dry stored as they come and I was going to use a schoolboy's phrase involving nuns but the censor tells me such crude aphorisms won't do.  I first used my new three-walnut toy pot then moved to a yixing pot to see if it would improve things.   I realize I've gotten to the tenth brew but the magic is simply not happening for me so I postpone the later brews for the afternoon.

I've been thinking much about Ira's first real hit of pu-erh- a 60 year old aged sheng from a casual acquaintance.  She didn't know much about pu-erh then but she did not have to think much about whether or not the tea was good. The tea's greatness simply floored her.  How can one even ever hope to order something from the Internet to measure up to such a first introduction. Everything else must be quite ho-hum - it's a gift and a curse to be sure.  I'm pretty sure she will not be moved by this tea.
(The tea quilt in the photo was hand-made by Ira and adds an extra cozy touch to my tea session.)

Nick Herman has deemed this XG an "excellent tea".  Great for him that he could receive an extraordinary session from this tea but somehow I can't even manage a passably good session from this 300 year old arbor tea.   The tea barely holds my attention, my mind is on some Xiaguan auto-pilot conditioned from all the other XGs that dried my mouth in predictable patterns.  (Sorry sorry Nick. I just am not feeling this tea although it was the only tea I drank all day. Who's ever going to recommend tea to me again after this and Hengli Chang and the corked CGHT...)

I try to force my husband to taste some and I interrogate him Guantanamo style. The prisoner won't talk so I have resort to new gentler tactics.  When I first started drinking sheng, my first beeng was a smoky CNNP production and I loved it.  The beencha was so different from all the other polite greens-  senchas, bilochun, TGY, and their ilk I was drinking back then. Even whatever small amount of complexity the sheng had was enough to send my senses into appreciation.  Too bad I didn't save any of it because I'd love to know if it was any good after all.

When I return to the tea in the afternoon after a hike, I barely quaff two tiny cups and the astringency starts burning my insides. A seventeen year old tea still going this strong!  Tight Xiaguan's definitely benefit from some humid storage early in it's life because this tuo is too dry for me.  But I'm not going to give up on dry storage altogether based on this one data point just yet.  I luckily have a few more provided by Emmett of Cha and Kungfu blog.
 

Here is a behind the scenes look at where this blog is produced.  You can see my first photos of a tidy walnut tea pot set are altogether misleading as you can see a dozen tea paraphernalia cluttering the table.  My husband tore out the ceiling while I was in Dubai and India early this year and he put two skylights so I can enjoy tea and browse my maps in a sunnier setting.