Push open the wooden door of Tongxinshe Teahouse, and warm yellow lamplight spills over the tea table, where an old gilded tea caddy rests quietly. This is our treasured Jiuqu-brand Rou Gui Rock Tea from Wuyi Mountain, aged for more than two decades, with the production date clearly marked June 1998—a witness to the golden age of Wuyi rock tea.
The gilded patterns on the old caddy have mellowed into a soft luster with the passage of time, and the four bold characters "Wuyi Rou Gui" on its surface exude a profound brush power. The two characters "Jiuqu" on the right reveal its origin: the Jiuqu Tea Factory in Wuyishan City, a renowned old mill famous for its traditional craftsmanship back in the 1990s. The inscriptions "Premium Rou Gui Rock Tea", "Semi-fermented Oolong Tea" and "Net Weight 50g" on the caddy are the simple quality promises of rock tea in that era; while the long-expired label "Shelf Life: 2 Years" has become a vivid testament to the old rock tea's charm—the longer it ages, the more aromatic it becomes.
To let more tea lovers savor this taste aged by time, we have specially split the whole 50g caddy into 10g tins for tasting and sharing. Place the tea leaves into a gaiwan, and you will see the dry leaves are brown, moist and glossy, with a honeyed sweetness and woody aroma from aging. The moment boiling water pours in, the tea fragrance unfolds in the steam like a revived memory—first a mellow cinnamon-like scent, then turning into a gentle plum tartness, swirling with herbal and aged notes at the tip of the nose.
This plum tartness is not a harsh, sharp acidity, but a gift from the slow transformation of tea polyphenols and organic acids during the dry storage of the 1998 Rou Gui Rock Tea. It is a marker that the old rock tea has entered its optimal drinking period, and a unique flavor bestowed by natural aging. If you prefer the pure cinnamon-like aroma and the distinctive mineral finish of Wuyi rock tea, and are sensitive to this gentle tartness, please choose with caution; only those tea lovers who embrace these traces of time can truly taste its rich mellow flavor.
The tea liquor is bright orange-red. On the palate, the tartness unfolds first on the tip of the tongue, then melts into a dense, sweet smoothness. The mineral rock rhyme spreads over the base of the tongue like an undercurrent, and the salivation lingers on both cheeks for a long time. The tea leaves at the bottom are reddish-brown, flexible and tough, and a fresh fruity aroma still lingers when sniffed gently—proving the fine quality of the raw materials back then and the careful storage over the years.
At Tongxinshe, this cup of aged Rou Gui Rock Tea is more than just tea; it is a sip of time itself. Carrying the mist and mineral rock rhyme of Wuyi Mountain tea areas in the 1990s, it has lost the sharpness of young tea after 28 years of aging, and precipitated a temperament of mildness and tolerance. Today, the plum tartness and aged aroma in the tea liquor are exactly the flavors crafted by time and craftsmanship, a private gustatory romance cherished by veteran tea connoisseurs.