2000 Old Warrior

Sample from my amazing secret Santea (thanks, twinofmunin!), but I’ve also had the pleasure to try it briefly at Floating Leaves Tea with Glen and Lamu. I didn’t take notes then, but this was just as clean and deep forest floor as I remember, with virtually none of that shou funk and all of the lovely thick texture shou tends to give (although that’s compared to sheng, this is actually not super thick on the shou spectrum).

I really dislike shou fermentation funk, so I’m finding I really enjoy aged shou that has cleared, the more completely the better, like this one. I only gave it the one, normal rinse as opposed to my usual two long ones once I get a whiff of the leaf and it still came out nice and clean. I went with around 8g to a 100ml in ruyao gaiwan, boiling water. It’s a little thin at the very start due to my being too lazy to do more than throw a condensed chunk in the gaiwan, but already has a heavy up front flavor of old wood core and forest floor. As it opens up, it gets thicker and sweeter, with a subtle camphor cooling quality throughout (I noticed it by steep 2, but I had also been choking on it from trying to talk and drink at the same time, so I doubt I would have noticed it for a while longer if it hadn’t been numbing the sensitive tissues of my vocal chords, heh). A mineral mossiness takes over the wood flavors towards the end, around steep 6 or 7.

When steeped with a very light hand, this kind of reminds me of coffee in character without the bitterness with the mellow yet prominent wood flavor that lingers. Steeped more to my standard slow flash steeps, it’s predominantly thick and rich and tastes like if I cored an ancient tree and boiled it in water for an hour or two and maybe threw a handful of some of the equally ancient forest floor in for good measure.

There is a certain lingering quality to this tea, however, that I’m hard put to describe. There’s a review on their website of this as having indescribable ‘emotion’ and I would have to agree—there’s a certain taste to it that I can’t put words to, but evokes the smell and memory of my favorite aged (now deceased) grandma, despite the fact that she smelled nothing like this tea. It simply tastes like nostalgic old age to me underneath the very upfront wood, minerals, and sweetness. Coupled with a very relaxing, grounding (as in, it feels like all your muscles are being dragged to the ground) qi that was quite strong for me, I really enjoyed this. I got 11 steeps out of it, but could have probably pushed it for more if we didn’t have another tea lined up for the day.

Drinking more birthday tea! Starting the year off with some shou. Used 10 grams, did two washes and started enjoying this one immediately. It steeps up nice and dark in the first steep, but the darkness of the liquor really shines in steep two.

This is good stuff. Both rhinkle and I enjoy it. It’s nice, deep, earthy, super smooth and has an appreciable hint of creaminess. Very calming qi. Sweetness really starts to emerge over time.

I purchased a sample size of this to try it along with a brick of the 2008 Imperial Bulang, a 220ml gaiwan, and a Basset Hound tea pet.

The dry leaves have a very clean scent. Almost non-existent. After a ten second rinse, the leaves have an earthy fermentation scent often associated with a ripe. There is definitely a wood scent as well.

First steep, the color is a lighter brown. Cinnamon caramel brown, perhaps. The taste is very light. You get just a hint of that woody flavor that relates to the scent of the wet leaves. Smooth too. Slides right down the throat.

Further along, the color deepens a bit. The flavor intensifies as well. I am a man who works with wood often. I cut and chop wood. I burn wood. I walk among the woods. This is very much a woody puerh. Think about walking in the woods and finding a tree that has been downed for a bit. Use a hatchet to split it open along the grain. Lean your nose in to that freshly cut wood. That is what I’m getting here.

Clean, earthy wood. I think that sums this up nicely. I don’t get much that says sweet but it is very smooth.

I received a sample of Old Warrior on one of my previous samples. Shame – that caused my wallet to suffer the expense of buying more of this tea.

At first, I was really surprised that this tea was from the year 2000 because the quality was superb. For a shou, especially such an old shou, this tea was insanely clean and pure. Hell, even most of the leaf and stem from the material was still intact!

This tea lasted multiple steepings and could withstand various temperatures and steeping times. Overall, this has got to be my (new) favorite aged shou.

Bravo Crimson Lotus!

Edit: I wrote a more in-depth review of it here!

https://www.theoolongdrunk.com/single-post/2017/04/12/Old-Warrior-Fights-for-Another-Day

I just loved it! Sadly, I don’t really remember much about it other than a beautiful old books smell and no bitterness at all.

This is excellent tea. It was really quite good. The surprising thing however was it has not cleared completely. I figured a 16 year old ripe puerh would have no traces of it’s fermentation left. This one had a noticeable amount. It had cleared partially but not all the way. The fermentation taste that I noticed was not unpleasant and it certainly wasn’t fishy. The tea was slightly bittersweet at the start. The bitterness steeped out after about two steeps and what was left was a tasty and mildly sweet ripe puerh. I didn’t find either notes of chocolate in this or a fruity taste for what it’s worth. This was still really good puerh. I’m not entirely sure what to call the sweet note that was there. This is a tea I might find myself buying more of. It seems to me that in another year or two of storage all traces of fermentation should be gone. This one was just surprising as I didn’t expect to find any fermentation taste. Not that in my experience ripe puerh ever loses that taste completely in a sense. You always know you are drinking ripe puerh. No matter how many years you age a ripe it does not start to taste like sheng. But overall this was an excellent tea and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes ripe puerh.

I steeped this ten times in a 220ml solid silver teapot with 14.2g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 mini. I could have kept going but at this point I have had something like two liters of tea. I have had enough even of a tea this good.