Da Jin Ya black tea – comparing 2 different grades.
Left – grade 1 , Right – grade 2 , price difference 120CNY per kilo.
120ml gai wan, 4g tea leafs. Spring harvest Feng Qing – yun kang shi hao (No.10)
1) The intensive scent of charcoal will hit your nose when u stick it into the hot gai wan before pour first washing infusion on dry leafs.Same scent is inevitable on the lid as well and it will follow down the cup. Said that, the dark yellow-red tea soup will pop out very nice woody notes while you sip in the first cup.
Noticeable “cha qi” with following sweet notes on sides of your tongue after. You need to play around with steeeping time to get the right contrast / ration of sweet and wood-charcoal . In certain stage sweetness is killed by very intensive smokey front and can ruin your overall drinking experience of this tea.
2) This could be probably classified as light version of the previous one. Along with woody scent , which are much lighter, the fruity notes are coming out. But again, it does have very slight potato “thing”. Must say, that it’s not that unpleasant and there are some flowery notes along with it as well, which makes this tea interesting and more complex. Not simple and straight as the first one.
With increasing infusions and time the potato comes out more and more ( or may be I just focus on it too much ) , but sweetness follows the same path, which is very positive.
Overall judgment : Speak of the taste , the price difference wouldn’t have to be that big, since both teas are enjoyable. The fact is , there are different grades of leafs and buds used and processing is just followed by standards of tea factory.