In reality its not so amber, good news!
I've been buying a bit from Sampan Teas on Ebay. It's a very small outfit that hasn't even achieved 100 feedbacks yet but they always stock small amounts of unusual tea and quite refreshingly always change what they sell so it keeps me interested to go back once in a while and see what they have.
I'm sure if you had some sort of word randomizer that contained various tea names it wouldn't take it long to come up with 'Yi Wu Old Trees', you just see that sort of a name all the time and I personally don't actually think that the bing actually would be made from much of the stuff. At £28 it's not a very expensive cake but I still thought I'd just pick up a sample and give it a whirl.
Usual parameters, bamboo charcoal water, 5g of leaf, short steeps all in my sheng yixing pot.
It's good to see that the soup on second infusion (pictured above) wasn't too amber (despite my iPhone camera making it look so), hopefully it's not tweaked. On the first sips I felt good energy on my tongue, it went through the surface layer quite quickly, that's a good sign. Further down the road it's a little harsh still at times with a strong ku bitterness, but to me thats a good sign. Even better than that is the sweet and lingering huigan, giving me a rollercoaster ride of bitter and sweet between sips.
I really do like this tea, it's one of those samples that has convinced me enough to go for a couple of bings. The price is right and I am rather curious to see what will happen to it's properties over the next couple of years. Only one way to find out!
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