Tea: Lux 2024 Spring Xigui Gushu & Qiaomu Raw Puer Blend Type: Raw Puer (生普洱） Harvest: April 2024 Spring Qiaomu, September 2023 Autumn Gushu Press Date: April 2024 Region: Xigui, Lincang, Yunnan 2024 Tasting Notes: Orange Juice, Gardenias, Fresh Banana Bread, Waxberries, Champaign Mangos This item is a small 7 gram single-session pressing of the larger similarly named 200 gram cake: same material, same maker, same press date. We offer them individually or in sets of three. Xigui is a name that carries a lot of weight in the world of puer tea. It's often awarded a place in the top three most coveted production regions: Xigui, Bingdao, and Laobanzhang. As a result, there is a huge amount of fake Xigui tea out on the market in China and in the West. The reasons these teas are fake is because they are not made of tea that was grown in the rather small core region of the Xigui village out East of Lincang. Similar to the 2023 Sweet Memories, the leaves in the warmed gaiwan exude a juicy aroma of oranges and other citrus fruits. While the leaves steal the fragrance show on the first few infusions, this is one of the rather rare and special teas where a majority of the fragrances are stored in the tea soup itself, thus we spend less time smelling the leaves, and more time drinking the tea. Each mouthful is truly a bouquet of flavors. The brew is a bright gold and very full in the mouth. It is surprisingly thick and heavy for such a light broth, and seems to coat the whole mouth during each infusion. When drinking the Qiaomu alone, the tea was on the tip of the tongue, when drinking the gushu alone, it went straight to the back of the throat, together, this blend represents a well-balanced mouth-feel and very satisfying drinking sensation. While the brews start off thick and meaty with the pleasant swift bitterness associated with Xigui, it quickly begins turning sweeter and sweeter with each infusion. We are very pleased with how this blend turned out, as after a few sessions we started to sweat, felt our digestive track moving, and had a lovely sensation in the mouth, in short, the Chaqi was on point. We sourced this tea directly from the mountain. We first visited the Li brothers Afang and Acai in Spring of 2023 and helped them make a late-season batch of Xigui in their mountain processing household. Next spring in 2024, we visited them again and shot a video on the full production process of this Xigui tea. We are honored and excited to work with such a dedicated pair of tea makers, and truly believe that their attention to detail shines through in the final teas. If you're interested in sampling this year's full flight of puer pressings, check out the Yunnan Flight, a set of 6 dragon balls from different regions each pressed in 7 gram balls for convenient brewing. We recommend brewing this tea gongfu style in a gaiwan or Chinese teapot. We use 6 grams of tea in a 100ml brewing vessel with boiling water, steeping 5 second for the first few infusions and adding 5 seconds after ever subsequent infusion. Most of these puer teas can be re-infused over 15 times, when brewing in this gongfu style. Curious about these Chinese puer tea terms, check out our growing appendix of Chinese - pinyin - English translated terms here.
