10g 1992 Haunted Plum 陳梅占

1992 Haunted Plum (陳梅占, Chén Méi Zhàn, "Old Haunted Plum") is one of our favorite cultivars for making Wuyi Oolong. Originally from Anxi, this breed has an enigmatic name that is difficult to translate - the character Méi 梅 unambiguously means "plum", but the character Zhàn 占 is primitive and elusive - meaning to occupy, possess, stand in the place of, and divination. We've been calling it Haunted Plum for years and the name stuck. Sadly, because of the capricious nature of the Wuyi Rock Tea market, this breed has fallen out of favor and is not being widely produced in the region anymore.  

Our source for Haunted Plum, Xu Zheng Cong, can't get us any more of this remarkable tea without us buying the whole harvest in advance. He does, however, have a batch of this tea from 1992 that his father, Xu Bing Wen, roasted and has been curating for the past 28 years. This immaculately aged oolong retains the distinctive toasted-coconut and bourbon vanilla profile of our classic Haunted Plum, with the additional wood, leather, and spice notes that come with careful aging of a roasted oolong.  

Note: This tea was grown in Anxi, but processed in the Wuyi mountains using Wuyi techniques by a Wuyi tea master. Its high-oxidation, unrolled, heavily-roasted character make it so much more like a Wuyi oolong than an Anxi oolong that we have classified it accordingly.