2012 Jin Hua Fu Zhuan – Raw Puer tea material

Year: 2012

Material:  Arbor tree Raw Puer tea

Harvest: Autumn

Area: Menghai County

Weight: The tea comes as broken bricks pieces since we purchased it like this.  

This tea is not the typical 金花 （Golden Flowers）Heicha compared to the classic An Hua Jin Hua Heicha. Since the tea material it uses is high-quality sun-dried Raw Puer from Menghai County so it is rarer.

This is small factory in Hunan founded in 2010. They processed their teas in the traditional manner and have high-quality standards of production.

This tea was fermented using the wet-piling special techniques that are used to make Heicha in Hunan, then compressed into bricks where the golden flowers flourished.

I used 6.7 grams of tea in a 100 ml Gaiwan and did 11 infusions.

What I found interesting about this tea is that the Golden Flowers character and the Sheng Puer character coexists harmoniously. The Jin Hua character is not dominant so you can taste the Puer tea character. 

The Puer tea leaves show themselves with some cooling honey-like aroma/taste, sweet huigan and thick mouthfeel of proper tea. With some astringency and mild bitterness. Which at the same time, are counterbalanced by the Golden Flowers.

 The first brew after the rinse is a bit light but already shows an astoundingly sweet huigan.

 The tea gets a much stronger taste in the following infusions as it opens up. Dominant honey, cooling tasting notes can be felt in the mouth/aroma along with the golden flowers ones.

The soup remains very sweet with an umami taste and causes one to produce profuse salivation at the sides of the tongue until the last infusion.   

 The mouthfeel is very thick and creamy. The aftertaste remains for an acceptable amount of time in the mouth and throat. The astringency is low-med, also to get more bitterness, the tea needs to be pushed a little.

Moderate body sensation, more soothing than stimulating and warming too.

Note: 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. 

Brewing tip: You can brew the usual way in a ceramic, porcelain, clay teapot or gaiwan. If you want a more pungent flavour (bitterness will be stronger this way), you can boil it in one of those kettles designed for Heicha or just boil it in a cooking pot or any other kind of setup.