A traditional way to brew Da Hong Pao

This is a technique that I very seldom use but thought it would be worth sharing. I think it's especially useful if you must be conservative with your stash or are down to the last few grams and have a lot of fragmented leaves and stems. Just to be clear, we are still talking about tea, here...  At least Da Hong Pao isn't know for buds!

First, get a clean piece of paper and fold it in half, In the fold, place a small amount of leaves. You don't need much, just enough to cover the bottom of the pot, um teapot. Now, I can't believe I'm going to say this, it's hurting my fingers just to type it, but gently crush the leaves inside the folded paper (this is where I should reiterate, we're still dealing with tea!) and slide the broken leaves straight into the heated pot. This is way I recommend this technique when your near the end of your leaves and there are already several crumbs. I feels sacrilegious to destroy perfectly whole leaves, especially Da Hong Pao leaves.

Don't expect to squeeze much more than three steeps from the leaves, but for the small amount of leaves used you will get three surprisingly potent servings. The small fragments may clog up and make pouring slow, but I am for a standard 15-10-15-25 second pours, but may leave the forth steep for as long as I feel. As I mentioned, there really isn't much left by this time, anyway.

2009 Medium Roast Wuyi cliff tea, "Da Hong Pao" • 武夷大红袍

2009 Medium Roast Wu Yi cliff tea, "Da Hong Pao" • 武夷大红袍

After going close to a year without Da Hong Pao, I went all out and ordered a 300g package from The Chinese Tea Shop. I recognized the package from Kkik Da Geo, in Seoul, as one of the lower graded imitation Da Hong Pao, but I'd always been pleased with it in the past.

Here are my notes from a session with this tea ❦

For Da Hong Pao leaves, a standard Biao Zhun pot suits the twisted leaves best. For a solo tea session, I have a tiny 25 ml Yixing pot especially for Da Hong Pao. Some may be skeptical of the usefulness of such as small pot, but the smaller the pot, the lesser the margin for error. Besides, it fills my favorite cup perfectly! The stony character of the tea can handle boiling water, and though I'm an advocate of very short steeps, this is one tea that I'll make an acception for. For this session I did stick to a standard 15, 10, 15, 25, 35, 45, 55, 65... second schedule.

After heating the pot and gently nudging in as many leaves as the pot could hold, I close the lid and let the leaves warm for a moment while I heat the cup. I remove the lid to smell the leaves. They are rich, warm smelling with an herbal quality that lingers with sweetness in my throat.

Once the leaves are rinsed & the first steep is poured, the leaf smell is more awakened, with a lively, high-tone sense in the nostrils. The scent of the lid is similar to that of the warm leaves but deeper. It gives me a pleasant impression of what's to come. The tea itself smells rich and chocolaty. The medium roast is full but soft in the mouth. The taste is most evident in the throat as a strong, bitter-sweetness emerges.

The second cup has a more noticeable mouth feel than actual flavour. It's warm, velvety chocolate. Again, the taste emerges on the way down the throat. The scent of the tea oils oxidizing in the cup is amazingly sweat, with a rich, roasted note.

After the third cup, a strong, ashy aftertaste is beginning to develop.

The fourth cup has a slightly woody, chocolate smell. The bitterness is sharp, but pleasant, penetrating the back of my tongue and throat.

In the fifth cup, the chocolate has faded but a deep woodiness continues to build, especially in the throat. The after taste is very strong and enjoyable.

For the sixth infusion, the leaves have been polished down to their stony character. There is actually more of an initial flavour developing in the entire mouth, now, rather than just an aftertaste.

The seven cup has toned down on its bitterness, and I'm surprised to find a rich chocolate taste has returned.

The eighth & ninth cups still have a nice golden brown colour, and a faint sweetness in their scent but the taste is wearing thin, reduced to pure, roasted stone.

Finally, the tenth cup has exhausted the leaves and all there is left to admire is the leaves themselves.

Da Hong Pao • 大红袍

                                              image from Tour-Beijing.com

One of the most intriguing of oolong teas, in taste and legend, is Da Hong Pao, 大红袍 (Big Red Robe), the most sought after of the Wu Yi cliff teas, 武夷岩茶.

Though there are at least a few teas that are claimed to be the first oolong, Da Hong Pao has a bit of history to back it up. I'm not saying that it is the first, but there's a high possibility. In the late 14th Century, Hongwu Emperor, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, announced that only loose leaf tea would be acceptable as tribute, the Wu Yi tea market, know for its Dragon & Phoenix tea cakes, instantly crashed. This prompted the local farmers to create loose leaf oolong teas, the most famous of which eventually came to be known as Da Hong Pao.

The legend of its name (at least the way I've heard it) has two parts. It begins with a young scholar on his way to Beijing to take his examination. Famished, he collapsed along the way, not far from Wu Yi Mountain and was found by a monk. The monk attended to him, nourishing him with tea until his strength returned.

When he arrived in Beijing, the Emperor's mother was ill. He presented he with the tea that he had carried from Wu Yi Mountain, and she, too, regained her health. As thanks, the emperor sent a gift of red cloth to protect the tea trees during the winter months. Eventually, the trees began to be know as Big Red Robe.

A few hundred years later, six of these original trees still cling to the cliff, huddled together, and produce the most expensive tea in the world. the yield is so slight that it mostly goes straight to the president of China and what's left may be auctioned for thousands of dollars per gram.

Considering you'd have to have some pretty fantastic tea karma to ever even catch a sniff of the real Da Hong Pao, there's really no choice but to go for opportunity cost and relegate myself to the lower grades of Da Hong Pao. Surrounding the original trees, several gardens have been developed over the last few decades, grown from clippings of the Da Hong Pao trees. These gardens are graded according to their similarity to the originals. How they compare, I'll never know, but even a fourth grade Da Hong Pao is still among my favorite teas.

Speaking of opportunity cost, once my talent in tea brewing had become more efficient, I'd inquired at the tea shop about purchasing some third grade leaves. The Tea Master actually told me not to bother since there really was very little difference. I thought that was very honest of him, considering the price difference was $20/100g more for the higher grade.

I would, one day soon, like to purchase a sample of high grade leaf to do a proper comparison, but for now, I'll trust my mentor.