For the price, you can't go wrong with this tea. A relaxing aged Raw Puer tea to drink in the afternoon. Here is the shortened link to our site. https://bit.ly/3S4CAZJ As usual Instagram doesn't allow to tag our products.

We finally uploaded our new Jian Shui Zitao teacups to our website. They are big, thick and heavy. The teapot in the picture has a volume of 100 ml. The teacup in this picture has a capacity of 109 ml.

Today I drank our Lincang "Yesheng Old Tea Trees Red Tea". And I was reflecting on what quality is in a tea. At the same time, I compared it against other Yesheng Gushu Hongcha I got. As with many high-quality teas, I had this experience with different types of teas. The first infusion starts with a light tea soup colour and light flavour (how pale the tea soup also depends on the processing style). Nonetheless, the first brew already shows a thick mouthfeel and causes one to produce plenty of salivation. The second brew already has a strong flavour. And it gets sweeter and sweeter after each infusion. On the contrary, many cheap teas have a more straightforward, intense flavour and darker tea soup colour from the beginning. However, they lack the good traits of good teas.  To name a few, long aftertaste, thick mouthfeel, etc. This tea has a warm and relaxing body feeling and a long aftertaste in the mouth and throat.  Comfortable body feeling (Chaqi) in Gushu Red teas come after many brews (five or more). The amount (of brews needed) varies depending on the tea you drink, the volume of the teaware and the person.  As a reference, make five or more brews, without a long resting period between them. And use at least 5-6 grams of tea / 90-100 ml Gaiwan/teapot. And no, it is not like the caffeine rush, which gives that nervous body feeling.  Since I haven't been doing much online marketing and many people doesn't know us. I decided to send a free sample of this tea to those interested in having this tea-drinking experience.  ***For this, I will create a giveaway in a separate post.*** To make it more educational, I will send you the other purportedly Yesheng "Gushu" Hongcha. I feel this one is from younger tea trees. Compared with the one on our website, which comes from older ones. This other tea is lower in quality than the one mentioned in this post but is not a low priced tea either.

Our teapots and teacups finally arrived. However, things didn't go so smoothly. Firstly, the studio was quite busy. They had many customers on the waitlist. And they didn't inform us about their delay beforehand. So we had to wait longer than expected. Secondly, some of the teaware pieces cracked during the kiln-firing step. Including some we ordered (my teaware was fired with other teaware too, see the third picture) Then, when they finished the teapots and showed us the pictures. We realized they modified the knob and added a flat bottom base to the teapot. So we asked them to change to knob's shape back to the original one (from a round shape to a flatter one). We left the flat bottom base because it looked good. Lastly, the teapots arrived, but the volume capacity is not what we ordered. We requested a volume of 130 ml, but they have a 225 ml capacity. The exact measure is hard to achieve. However, this difference in size is way too much, so we sent them back. Due to the long studio's delay, we won't take any pre-orders this time. Once we receive the new teapots, we will inform you and upload them to our site. We believe that their work is worth the wait. But after fulfilling this order, we are not sure if we will continue working with this studio due to the long wait. The good news is the teacups are ready. I will upload them to our website and show them to you in another post. Note: the left one is the teapot I use, and to the right is the new one. You can see that the teapot changes a lot after developing patina. That is why I prefer unpolished Zitao teapots.

Today I was invited by a friend to drink tea. We also met with a friend of his at his company. He is also an avid tea drinker. My friend brought an authentic 2022 Lao Ban Zhang. My friend's friend also invited us to drink another Gushu Lao Ban Zhang. This is the sixth time I drink authentic Gushu Lao Ban Zhang. Its quality lives up to its reputation. But whether it's worth its high price is up to one's pocket and desire to pursue such big-name tea. It has all the traits of a good Gushu. Excellent Huigan, mouth feel and Cha Qi. And contrary to the popular understanding of this tea, at least the Gushu material. It is very sweet. If you drank a very bitter one, it was not Gushu or it was tea from another area. These two Ban Zhang were really good. Same aroma and taste. Slightly different in processing style. The one I took the picture of was the one with better processing. But it was only evident in the appearance of the leaves and perhaps the tea soup colour. There were no flaws when drinking it.

I apologized to the customers who placed a pre-order for the delay. But the pots are nearly ready. After attaching the spout and handle, they will go into the kiln. Don't be scared of the size in the picture. Zitao clay has a contraction rate of nearly 20% after firing. Here is a short link of the pre-order: https://bit.ly/3OeENQj Instagram is not allowing me to tag products. Not sure if it is because I'm using a VPN.

A few tongs of old Shengpu, on their way to a local customer. It is decent and inexpensive tea with no storage flavour. It is on a transition from a semi-aged tea to getting that particular old age taste.

After our trip to Jianshui we worked hard with a few studios to offer some nice stuff. Custom ordered a few products that haven't arrived yet, but we already uploaded them to our shop. And also put a lot of effort to write in-depth about Purple Pottery. Here you can check all of that: -New Zitao teapots: https://bit.ly/39cCjSn -Info about Zitao in our blog: https://bit.ly/3NJC29l -Brewing comparison between Zitao, porcelain and Zisha: https://bit.ly/3K7o6nt

F1 brand new Hei Ni （black clay) teapot . Still has the original sticker. It is from 1990. It is for one person only, in my opinion, 42 ml. Not sure if I will upload it to my website so if there is anyone interested please send me a PM. SPECIAL OFFER, LOW PRICE, under 100!!! It has a small firing defect on the lid (check 3rd pic), here they call it 跳砂，like a piece of clay jump out during the firing. It is not that obvious unless you zoom in with your camera.It doesn't affect usage though.