- Production year: 2017
- Storage: Hunan
- Month opened: January 2025
- Original basket weight: 50 kg
- Bag weight: ~150g / bag (+/- 10%)
- Price: USD 10 / bag
- Availability: In stock
Baishaxi (白沙溪) is arguably the most well-known producer of Qianliang tea (and Anhua heicha in general) today, so the company likely needs no introduction.
In 2017, Baishaxi produced 999 50kg baskets of this Tianjian as a homage to a 1953 vintage that became famous in 2005, when it fetched an auction price that at the time was considered very high for an Anhua heicha. Supposedly this reproduction stayed faithful to the style of its model, and if anyone has a basket of the 1953 vintage to spare please feel free to send it to me so that I can verify this claim.
In any case, the basket from which the tea in the bags on sale here comes from was opened in January 2025. I bought some and tried it shortly after, but at the time the tea felt very muted to me. I forgot about it for almost a year before I found it at the bottom of a large sample mylar. Upon revisiting it I was very positively surprised by the awakening it had seen.
I am going to provide a list of taste notes completely useless for anyone but myself for this one: rice-pudding-like, sweet BBQ, a slight hint of gummy-bear-infused babaozhou (八宝粥), and faint smoke. It’s really a thing of its own. The material is probably a bit better than the BSX standard line but in absolute terms “mid” at best, it’s a “three steeps and done” tea for me. Those steeps are really nice though, and this tea is faring very well on the speed test for me.
Note: This tea may contain golden flowers (Jinhua/金花), a perfectly natural occurrence in certain heicha teas. Their development depends on factors like microbial activity, storage conditions, and time. However, individuals with Celiac Disease or severe gluten allergies should exercise caution, as we cannot guarantee that no wheat-based materials were involved at any stage of production.
