2006 Jinhua Tianjian Wild Heicha

Name of the product: 2006 Jinhua Tianjian Wild Heicha

Year: 2006

Material:  50-80 years old wild tea trees

Harvest: Spring.

Altitude: between 800 to 1100 meters height above sea level

Area: Hunan Province, An Hua County.

(2006 Jinhua Tianjian Wild Heicha)

The tea material of this producer comes from a wild tea garden at a high altitude. 

If you pay attention to the pictures, it certainly looks like an unattended wild tea garden with a good environment. In one of the photos, you can see how insects bit the tea leaves, translated as no pesticides.

 Tianjian are first-grade tea leaves used in Heicha. This tea is fully post-fermented. Therefore, its flavour profile is not like many Tian Jian with smoky tea notes with greener tea leaves.  

I brewed it with 7g/90ml in Gaiwan. It can give ten infusions.

The dry leaves (in a pre-heated Gaiwan) have some earthy, cocoa aroma. 

The aroma of the wet leaves is what they call in Chinese Chen Xiang (age/old fragrance) and also has a hint of Jin Hua to it.

The tea soup is sweet and slightly sour, which is a typical attribute of the Golden Flowers. In subsequent infusions, the tea gets sweeter and remains stable throughout the whole tea session until its charms fade away. 

The Kou Gan (texture in mouth/mouthfeel) is very creamy. You will notice it after the first two infusions when it gets thicker. And the tea also causes one to produce plenty of saliva. Only some good old teas (or young high-quality ones) can have this sensation that the liquid fills the mouth cavity fully. 

The tea gives a warming and relaxing body sensation.

Note: The pictures of the tea bushes/tea trees are not precisely of this tea. But they are from the same tea garden where the raw material was picked. 

In the last picture, the tea soup is light in colour because I brewed the tea a few more times on purpose so that you could see the tea leaves.

Our 2015 Jin Hua Fu Zhuan Wild Heicha is also from this producer.

The Golden Flowers’ scientific name is Eurotium cristatum. It is a fungus with some health benefits. That aside, there is something that you can experiment with while brewing teas with Golden Flowers. They make teas sweeter and smoother due to various chemical reactions produced by them.