You Had Me at "Hello"

Ambassador, with your 1970 Jinggu, you are really spoiling us.

Some sessions are destined to be Good Sessions, and this is one such.  When I receive a packet of tea that is quite possibly even older than me (and I really am extraordinarily old), then "that's when you know it's on".

Look upon my crumbled fragments, ye mighty, and despair.  As pictured above, this tea has been around the block a few times, but how can we expect anything else for such a reverend old fellow?  It may be unsurprising to learn that the scent of the dry leaves is that of "old humidity", as I seem to have written in my journal.

I don't know from whom or where this tea derives, but I do know that even the rinse, pictured above, has an instantaneous colour of Burgundy.  So delicious is the look of this tea, that I forget my own rather unpleasant aroma of swimming-pool chlorine, acquired from a morning of playing in the toddlers' pool with my son.  How often does one try a tea that can overcome the stench of pool cleaner?

This is heavy, and very soft - like a brick wrapped in velvet.  There is rounded sweetness aplenty, and hints of the long vanilla that humidity can impart from long exposure.  This isn't "wet", in the extreme sense, just pleasantly, deeply humid.  The duration with which is casually resides in the throat, in no hurry to depart, is notable.

Perhaps even, after all of the time and humidity that this tea has experienced, there is even the edge of kuwei [good bitterness] remaining.  This is one of those pu'ercha that is so dense and sticky that it leaves red stains over the cups, even from the smallest quantity of tea.  "It deserves attention", I concluded.

With special thanks to Peter of Pu-erh.sk for his considerable generosity in providing this comforting session, I would love to know more about this "unknown soldier".