After the rise of rock tea aged tea in the past two years, in addition to being able to drink more and more aged tea, countless controversies accompanied the popularity of aged tea before the official national standard was issued.
Are rock tea and aged tea all passive products? Is rock tea really suitable for storage? How many years of rock tea is considered aged tea? What kind of fire skills and varieties are more suitable for storage? What is the flavor expression of good rock tea aged tea?
Since it is aged tea, time is definitely the most crucial factor, not to mention the ups and downs in taste caused by the tea itself and storage conditions during the transformation process. Just like the age of tea trees, the cost of time is the most valuable, and the year and value are assumed to be positively correlated.
What makes us curious is that in our daily drinking habits, we neither know nor have the conditions to specifically use technological means to detect the specific age of an aged tea. At this point, can we judge the age of a aged rock tea through purely sensory means?
No.1 The year of aged rock tea, Really! of Very well! hard! Judge! Cut it off!
Ultimately, there are too many variables related to rock tea.
When brewing aged tea, the state of the new tea directly affects its future transformation, the speed of transformation, and whether it is good or bad.
For example, from the perspective of roasting, light fire tea preserves more intrinsic substances, and these active substances also give light fire tea a relatively long “shelf life”. I remember drinking a 2017 Mazaidong old bush narcissus, which had been aged for 6 years at the time. The soup had a warm and mellow texture with aged wood, but the orange yellow color and tropical fruit combined with the fragrance of small flowers easily blurred his true age.
If the foot fire tea that has been aged for the same duration is in a completely different state. Interestingly, in people’s understanding, the reason why the foot fire technique was popular in the early days was to stabilize quality, facilitate storage and transportation.
However, compared to light fire tea, foot fire tea is easier and faster to develop aged flavors. Many foot fire teas from the past will have what we often call “old flavors” in the second year. Compared to the return of light fire tea, which is still youthful, foot fire tea has taken on a youthful and mature temperament.
However, yes, he still has a turning point. Zuhuo tea was misunderstood as the “old flavor” of aged tea in the first one to three years. If Zuhuo tea with a good foundation is left to cool down after three to five years, the mature fruit aroma accompanied by the mellow soup will once again make it radiant.
Moreover, the degree of transformation of aged tea and the flavor expression it brings, the state of new tea is like its skeleton and outline, and it is also filled with color by later storage, time, etc.
For example, tea stored in an environment that is not sheltered from light and has high humidity has a faster conversion rate, but often it is converted in a bad direction. For example, storing tea in the south and in the north can taste completely different at the same age.
Even in the brewing process, different brewing techniques can lead to misjudgment of the age of a brewed aged tea.
We know that there are many enzymes in tea, and enzymes are very sensitive to temperature. Sometimes, the oxidized compounds will be resurrected when faced with a certain temperature. So even if the appearance of the tea has become dull, it is still possible to regain its “fresh” flavor at a certain temperature.
So, many people have a wake-up step before brewing aged tea. In addition to using the most common way of steaming a bowl, some even wrap dry tea in specialized paper and grill it slightly over the fire. Some people simply treat the first brewed tea soup as the process of waking up the tea.
These purposes are all achieved through a certain temperature to awaken aged tea leaves from their dormant state, and to reactivate the “umami” substances that have retained certain internal qualities or have been transformed during the storage of the flavor curve.
In addition, aside from the highly variable nature of rock tea itself, there is not much basic data on rock tea aged tea nowadays. During the boom period of the rock tea market, there will be a certain amount of aged tea within 10 years, but good tea in the past 20 or 30 years will be relatively rare, and in the following 50 or 60 years, there will be very little. How can we identify its age from the perspective of taste if we haven’t even tasted it before?
It can only be said that in the future, aged tea may need its own ID card.
No.2 Facing the vintage of aged tea, Is it really helpless?
In fact, the age of aged tea is difficult to determine from a drinking perspective, but it still has some traceable life cycles.
In a suitable temperature and humidity environment, it is now widely recognized that every three years is a watershed in the taste chain. The changes in aroma and taste in the first three years will not be too significant, approaching the state of new tea, and will enter a sour period within 3-9 years.
What needs to be said here is that the acidity of aged tea can also be classified into different types. One is the sour taste caused by improper storage, often accompanied by uncomfortable tastes such as bitterness, numbness, and astringency, manifested as the elimination of odor characteristics.
Another type is Wuyi acid, which normally occurs during the conversion process of rock tea, and often does not bring unpleasant characteristics. After the sour taste passes through the mouth, it immediately transforms into a comfortable sweet aroma and aftertaste. However, we found that tea with Wuyi acid did not make it to the competition venue because the vast majority of judges believed that the presentation period of Wuyi acid was between 3-6 years, and the rules of the competition were for aged tea that was over 10 years old, which was often considered insufficient and eliminated.
10-15 year old tea, commonly known as aged rock tea, exhibits distinct aged aroma characteristics while retaining the basic characteristics of rock bone floral fragrance from the new era of rock tea.
Tea with a higher vintage is usually considered old rock tea, and at this point, it enters the flavor stage that enthusiasts of cross tea old tea groups will love. Chen Xiang and Chen Yun are prominent, and at a higher level, there is also the expression of ginseng aroma and medicinal fragrance.
In the book “Quality Chemistry and Health Code of Wuyi Rock Tea” edited by Liu Zhonghua, a specific analysis was conducted on the aroma components of rock tea from 1 to 21 years. The final analysis results showed that the overall aroma of rock tea from different years can be roughly divided into four groups.
The first group is rock tea stored for one year, which still retains a lot of low boiling point, alcohol based floral substances, and has a strong floral aroma in terms of aroma.
The second group consists of rock tea that has been stored for 4-8 years, during which the total amount of aldehydes reaches its peak, such as citral and vanillin, and the aroma presented by these compounds is that of green lemon. At the same time, there are also substances with distinct floral and fruity characteristics, such as oxidized linalool and ethyl acetate.
This stage is very close to the normal Wuyi acid period we mentioned before.
In the third stage, aldehydes with a green lemon aroma begin to decrease, and low boiling aroma substances also begin to decrease, retaining floral, fruity, and woody substances.
The lifecycle of rock tea stored for 12-16 years is in the stage of aged tea rock tea old tea.
In the fourth stage of 18-20 years, it was thought that he would enter a stable and unaffected old age, but from the perspective of aroma components, this group’s performance is the most complex.
Firstly, the aroma components are very close to the period of 4-8 years with the highest degree of conversion, but at the same time, substances such as benzyl acetate with a light aroma, methyl jasmonate with a jasmine fragrance, and isophorone with camphor and camphor wood aromas will increase.
It’s very complex and charming, experiencing various changes in fate and slowly returning to the mean, as if starting again in youth and walking towards us.
Understanding the flavor of aged rock tea, here are the best samples.