11 Year Old Tea with over 30 Tasting Notes - BLAZING HEAVENS

Hey teaheads! This is Don from Mei Leaf. It started with Sunfire Ripple. We then moved on to Midsummer Light Show. The last release was Diamond Twilight. For those of you who know, you know what is about to happen next. The fourth in our series of aged Shou Mei is here. That traveler, that unknown person that is always seeking the light, is now climbing up some red rocks and staring at the blazing heavens. This is Blazing Heavens artwork, as always, by Celine. If you don't know this series then this will be new to you, but if you know then you know this character well. Always seeking out these blissful moments where he's staring at the light, either at this light of the sky. In the last one it was the light of a sunset over a city, the Diamond Twilight. This is Blazing Heavens staring at a glorious bonfire in the sky whilst free-climbing some red rocks. We were in the States relatively recently, and we went to Sedona, and we were blown away by those beautiful red rocks, so we wanted to bring that experience into this cover. Blazing Heavens, aged Shou Mei. Let's quickly scope this tea. Season. This is spring 2013, so 11 years old, as I'm speaking to you now in 2024. 11 year old Shou Mei. We keep managing to find these teas. Not easy, and a huge amount do not get selected. There's not that many aged whites out there that are still loose. The ones that are, a lot of them, are not quite good enough. So when we find them we stack them up. We're just like, yes, we actually purchased this I think around the same time as Diamond Twilight. We're like, yes, hold that. That's the next one. Blazing Heavens, spring 2013, cultivar, Da Bai cultivar, the big white cultivar. This is from Fu Ding, Fu Zhen, China, the sort of birthplace of white tea. Picking and processing. This is a Shou Mei, so that means it's mostly medium and large leaves, which has a very distinct character, different to Yin Zhen and Bai Mu Dan when aged. But you'll see there'll be some buds in here as well. Elevation, I don't remember. Not that high. 600 meters? I can't recall. Anyway, we'll find out when we open up this tea cake. I've got another one here, as always. Elevation... elevation... 800 meters. Here we go. Take a look at this cake. As I said, you can see some buds here. It's not exclusively just the larger leaves. You can see these buds here. It's a nice blend, but it is Shou Mei, predominantly. You can see very small, slender little buds. None of these big, thick buds that you'd get from a Yin Zhen, or a well-picked Mu Dan. So these are very thin buds. Just the little, wispy buds, but they're going to contribute as well to the taste. Beautiful color, the combination of coppers, browns, plummy colors, dark, aged gorgeousness. It was pressed in 2024, so aged loose for 11 years. Right. Let's open this up. As always with Shou Mei, you don't really need a pick. You could literally just sort of wiggle and break off. A lot of people might see me do this and go, you're just ripping leaves. But I assure you, I'm wiggling and letting it start to sort of just come apart itself. I'm not ripping too much. But it doesn't really matter if you break leaves, especially with white teas, because these large leaves like this take a lot of infusing. So just snapping and breaking is actually going to contribute to a better, balanced infusion, I would say. Enough? Yeah, probably enough. We'll see. Right. Brewing in a pink Gai Wan here. I felt like the pink skies, I felt like the more purple-y shirt all sort of matches with the cover a little bit. That was my ridiculous tea wear, but hey, there's got to be some logic involved, right? Even if it's only just in my own head, although I've just shared it with the world. So it wasn't only in my head. I'm rambling, aren't I? Yep. It's that kind of day, a rambly kind of day. I'm going to go with it. Right. What have we got here, temperature-wise? We're going to crank it up. We're going to go 99. Let's go for it. Bam! Right. Let's have a smell of these dry leaves, but I'll quickly show you that cover again. Painstakingly drawn, but wow! The colors really pop, I think. Or at least the sort of shading really pops well. Yep. Lazy heavens. I wonder who this character is. I don't know. I guess it's, in a way, sort of the depiction of a character that in some ways we would all like to be, this sort of free-traveling character that is finding these moments. These moments that they're going to lock in for the rest of their life, where they're just like... where the word, awesome, actually can apply. Where they are in awe of just the stunning beauty of the moment that they're in, and this freedom, this sense of freedom that comes as well from being alone in that. From just being with it, rather than sharing it with somebody, which obviously has its own, you know, positive aspects. But that moment for yourself where you're just locking in this incredible, incredible majesty of the present moment. Right. Let's throw these leaves in. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to ramble today, so forgive me if you just want me to get on with the tasting, because I sense that's not just going to happen today. Fish face is here. A little bit of rinse. A little voice in my head is saying, put more leaf in. So I listen to that voice. Right. Here we go. Let's have a smell of the blazing heavens. Huh! There's a certain impact that aged whites give you that no other tea will give you, and it's just straight-up sweet, sugary, fermented, and sugared note that is so instantly appealing. But hard to sort of pick apart, because you're just getting a nose full of sweetness. Okay. Rock sugars. I'm getting lots of rock sugars. Deep, same color as the leaves, sort of dark, amber-orange rock sugars. Some plum liquor. Plum wine. Something like that. Sugared almonds. Kombucha. That's that vinegary, fermented note. So plum wines, kombucha, sugared almonds, nutty, almost marzipan, but not. Dried apples. Dried mint. Specifically dried mint, not fresh mint. A little touch of woods, but it's very, very light. I have a fleck of tea in my eye, and that's going to annoy me, but I'll play through it. A touch of wood. I just want to say like forest, rather than actual like naming any particular wood. Jam. Cherry jam. Oh! So good. So sugared. It's like how we associate black tea with afternoon teas, with the cakes, and all of those conserves and cakes. I associate it with black tea, but I associate that flavor profile of all of those cakes with aged whites. Especially Shou Mei. Different from the buds. Buds have more of a mineral quality, and more of a buddy quality, and a nuttier quality. There's so much more sugars coming through with the larger leaf. The smell just emanating from this liquor has got WOW with capital letters written all over it. Here we go. You see, and it's a stupid flavor note, but I'll say it anyway. It reminds me of very sweetened black tea. Like if you go to Turkish tea. Very concentrated, very sweet, and all of the complexity of black tea in this smell of aged white tea. So it really reminds me of like sweet, Turkish black tea so much. I'm also picking up like pomegranate molasses. So again, in that Middle Eastern territory. Sticky, sweet, slightly sour, fruity, plum jam, apricot jam. Just jam, jam, jam. It's a jammy number. The candied almonds have turned into Fran Ji Pan. Not so much the butteriness of Fran Ji Pan, but that almond, again, kind of close to Mazi Pan, but a little bit closer to Fran Ji Pan. Dried mint. Woods. Again, I just want to say hot, dry, summer forest, rather than picking out any particular wood. It is like stepping into a dreamland of jams and conserves, having all of that sweet, jammy confection, but on a picnic in like a forest, where it's a hot day, but you're just being cooled down by the shade of those trees. Oh! It just brings you places. Wow! Such a lovely smell. Right. With these Zhao Mei's you want to give it some time. I usually sort of err on the shorter times on my brewing guides, because I just don't want people to push too hard. I like to push harder than the brewing guides that I normally put out. So if I write 25 seconds that usually for me is about 35 to 40 seconds, etcetera. But that's why these brewing guidelines are very much a case of explore from here your own preferences. I reckon that's good for a first infusion. Apricot colored liquor. Let's look at the color of the liquor in this. Let's get that little straggler out. Right. Here we go. So much to say about the smell on this wet leaf. It's got like a burnt brownie, but it's not chocolate. Like a little bit of like a pastry quality to it. Not buttery, more like a puff pastry. Puff pastry, but like not butter puff pastry. Baked. In fact, there's also a rising yeasty dough, so a raw dough smell as well. Yeah, that's there. It's also a slightly soapy quality to it. Soap that's got like a foresty, piney note to it. Lots of piney, soapy, lots of Y's at the end of my words today. But it's got a lot going on. Let's just put it that way. Cheers everybody. Texture thick, soft, hydrating, and oily. What a combo. Taste. Oh, where are we going? Where to begin? Hmm. All of the notes I was saying before are there. I'm picking up more of the mineral, more of the leaf, more of the mineral, more of that dried forest note at the beginning. But then as the tea develops so much sweetness is coming out. I'm literally walking into a cake shop, and I'm trying to work. I'm trying to like pass the information to figure out which cakes to talk about. I think... Oh, hard. Okay. On the one hand, I'm getting sticky toffee pudding. I'm getting caramels. I'm getting brown sugar. Warm, sweet, slightly dark sweet. So not just sweet, but developed. Dates. Middle Eastern. It's got that Middle Eastern quality date, pomegranate, molasses. I was going to say filo pastry before, but I'm very conscious of the fact that there's a lot of butter on it. So imagine if you took filo pastry and you baked it, but with like a neutral oil. So it's not got that butter. It's not got a huge amount of butter. I'm trying to correct myself, but no, I would say it doesn't. I'm getting a little bit of talcum powder, like a talcum powderiness to it. That combines well with this sort of bookshop quality. I'm getting books, reams of paper. I'm getting those hot summer forests. I'm getting the pomegranate molasses has moved into more grenadine, so brighter, lighter pomegranate juice, pomegranate syrup. It's coming through as well. But then the cakes are there as well. The fruit cakes. Plum cake. Plum tart. That little burnt, not burnt, but cooked crust of a tart. Plums. Frangipane. Light custard. Again, not so much on the buttery, more towards the milky. Yeah, these little bright grenadine notes, and apricot notes, are very distinct, because they dance on top of that brown sugar, foresty, book-depth, and heat. These little spikes of apricot. What was I saying? Grenadine. Little fruit cakes. I want to say wild strawberries as well. Little pops of fruitiness. Aged white teas are always a delight. It's never a boring session with aged whites, if you get good ones. The criticism with aged whites, and I've said it many times before, but I'll say it again, is generally they'll have good aroma, but they won't have that impact in the mouth. Aftertaste. Texture. Dry. Again, I'm sensing that sort of deep summer, hot. It's been a hot heat wave, and the forest is dry. The leaves are dry. It's not autumn, but the leaves are dry. Crackly sort of like feeling. I'm hearing that sort of crunchy qualities. Everything is desiccated and dry, but then you're having beautiful the harvest of that summer. You're getting fruits, and you're getting jams, and you're getting all of that on a platter. So it's this sort of interesting dichotomy. The color has gotten a bit darker, as you can see here. Plum wines, prunes, grenadine. Very, very fruity now. Very, very fruity. Starting to feel a little wooziness happen just now, but we'll talk about that later. I mean, it's just everything that you want in an aged white, in that it's got all of those aromatics of sweetness ferment. But then in the mouth, dry, tingly, fizzy, chewy, lively, juicy. The sweetness takes time to develop. It's not instant. It's not just like sugared sweetness. It's got more subtlety to it than that. It reminds me of the sweetness of if you've ever had fresh Jujube. Again, date, but Chinese red date, but fresh, not dried. I love it. It's the season now as well. Crunchy, juicy, a lighter, more elegant sweetness to it compared to dried. A lot of these dates and pomegranates, if I was going to redo this cover, if I was going to rethink this cover, I might put the character in a different setting, maybe more sort of reminiscent of that part of the world, which we very vaguely term the Middle East. But you know, I'm picking up that sweetened black tea, pomegranate molasses, baklava, that kind of quality to it. Dried mint. It's got that quality to it. I'm spitting on myself. Huge generalizations, right? Get that. Apologies for my cultural bluntness, but I'm just shooting from the hip here. But that's what I'm seeing. Again, very dry. I imagine like I'm sort of in a bazaar where there's these spices, and I'm being offered these sweet black teas and baklava. But anyway, I digress. Fish face can have some of the tea with a bit of the broken leaf. Wow. To those of you who complain when I'm drinking tea and saying, please stop making those slurping noises, I'm sorry, but that's how I taste. Okay? I'm not as bad as a lot of people. Cover your ears. We'll do this. When you go to tea tastings, because it does change the flavor quite a lot, but I'm not going to... I'm going to focus on taste. So apologies. Maybe I'm going to have to do different versions where I notch out all of the slurps. But I do get that comment a lot, please stop the slurping. It's like, I'm sorry, but if you want me to give you my tasting notes I need to do this. Right. Smell of the empty Guang Da Bei. Oh! Oh! Sticky, toffee pudding, with a rum. It's got so much rum. Like it's a fermented sugar, rum, toffee sauce, and dates, and palm sugar. I mean, it is just the stickiest, toffee-est pudding, with tons of dates. Like, imagine you've made that sticky, toffee pudding, not just with brown sugar, but with like, is it canella? Like properly dark sugar, or palm sugar. Like if you make sticky, toffee pudding in Malaysia, or Thailand, with that particular brown sugar there, and date, and rum. I mean, wow! If I could just encapsulate that smell and put it out there you would all be sniffing your screen like crazy. One more infusion of this before we settle into it a little bit. Body sensation is starting to rise. It's starting to feel a little bit like I want to be a little bit cheeky, whatever that means. I feel like I need to check the sound. Yes, I am recording. Recently I've been forgetting to hit record on that, so sorry. Again, I told you this is going to be bare-bones waffle this session. This is the waffle session. Bare-bones waffle session. Sometimes I listen to myself and think, man, what are you on? Right. Cheers everybody. Oh, a touch of eastern beauty, oriental beauty. Muscat grape popping out there. Definitely honeyed, grapey. Again, putting the Y on everything. Muscat grapey, though. Sweet, complex. That phyllo baklava note is coming through as well. Pastry, biscuity note. Okay. I'm going to go away, settle into this, and I'll come back with my final thoughts on Blazing Heavens. Rolling through the infusions. I don't know. Sixth infusion. You can brew this. I think I'll put like 12 infusions on the wrapper. Obviously, you can do the classic case. For those of you who know, put these leaves into some water on a saucepan, and simmer it for about 15 minutes, and brew up a powerhouse brew, if you can. That will like just launch you into another dimension with this body sensation. You can also add like some peel, some orange peel. You can start to play around with it. The body sensation on this is definitely strong, definitely cheeky, definitely got that... Sorry. My stomach is doing somersaults a bit. It's definitely got that kick back, relax, you ain't doing anymore work today, Friday feeling. That's the feeling that I'm getting from this. Again, I feel like I just want to like let the world do what it's doing, and just enjoy that moment, and take it all in. But it's got a cheeky, social vibe to it as well. I can imagine having a lot of fun with this tea with friends. It's got that, I don't know, cheeky. It's got a cheeky vibe. It makes you want to like get up to some mischief, maybe. Maybe that's just me. Taste? Solid. Stays. Jammy. Apricot jams, cherry jams, dates, phyllo, sugars, rock sugars, more of the woods coming through. But it's just all adding structure to all of that sweetness. So much sweetness. So much of that rum-toffee sauce, in the smell, breathing out through the mouth, that Jujube sweetness. I don't have any more tasting notes for you, but I've probably got a fair amount around me. Anyway, just a great, great sequel to all the other three before. Different, but I can't. It would be an interesting video, actually, to taste all four together. It would be a very tea-drunk video, but to taste all four together and see if there's how I could discern the differences. But like, for me, an aged Shou Mei has to have impact and aroma, a lot of sweetness, and a lot of indulgence, and a good body sensation, and a really good, juicy... what was the word I was looking for?... effervescent sort of feeling, and fizzy feeling in the mouth. This has all of that. Blazing Heavens, winner, winner, chicken dinner. I hope that you enjoy it, if you pick it up. That's it teaheads. Check out our other videos, taste our teas wherever you are in the world, by browsing Mei Leaf.com, and come visit us if you're ever in London. On that, I'm Don from Mei Leaf. Thank you for being part of the revelation of true tea. Stay away from those teabags, keep drinking the sublime stuff, and spread the word, why don't you, because nobody deserves bad tea. See you.