SMACHA Ancient Red Tea and Pastries

From now on Ill try to update my blog more often, posting pictures from various tasting events I'm attending. That was the plan originally, but I couldn't keep it up until recently.

Today's post is about my visit to SMACHA ( www.smacha.com ) tea bar yesterday. The specific reason for the trip was compressed ancient arbor red tea which I heard is coming in the recent container from China. Unfortunately, the container is delayed till November 9th, so right now there is only sampling available.

The tasting of Jing Gu Shu Sun-dried Red 357g cake was administered by tea specialist Andrew Goodman.
 

The box package you see above is not the original package coming with this cake, but a prototype of an optional premium packaging. The wrapper of the cake includes the map of the area the tea came from (sorry, no picture) and a brief description of characteristics and process.

The cake itself is not really loose, but you can see that leaves are packed not really compact, probably due to drier material or less steaming during compression process.

 First two steepings has a distinct ancient arbor mineral-foresty tone which you might know by drinking ancient arbor puerh. After that tea becomes more similar to other potent Yunnan red teas without sweetness (there are no tips added).

Three grams of this tea survived five steepings in this special double-stream teapot.

 Another thing worth mentioning is the improved selection of pastries at the shop. Now SMACHA has both traditional American pastries and Japanese tea sweets represented by manju and wagashi from chef Tokara ( www.tokaragashi.com ).