My perception of teas changes from two reasons: Aging and experience. Due to the former, I retasted the first pair described teas. Due to the latter, I retasted the second pair.
2006 Haiwan Pa Sha
This one made me particularly happy. It has made a great jump in quality in the last year (even half-year), finally getting where I hoped it could eventually go (i.e., fruit, clay, sweetness,...). It's not fully there yet. But I believe that it needs just a couple of more years to be ready for drinking.
It was interesting to compare it to a sample which a teachum bought recently from Kunming. My cakes are a lot darker already; the Kunming version was still very green, still a young tea. It had some not too pleasant features (smoke, vegetalness) that I never found in my cakes. Anyway, it seems that I can be reasonably happy about my storage conditions...
2010 YS Purple Yiwu
It seems to me that most Yiwu teas tend to fall asleep about 1-2 years from pressing, becoming muted and not that interesting for a couple (5-6?) years. After that, however, they settle down and get good again (if they were good to start with). This Purple Yiwu is no exception. It's not bad, not unpleasant, but it needs some more years to develop stronger qualities.
Comparing it to a sealed sample I had, the sample was easier to comprehend and easier to appreciate, being more simply fruity. My cakes seem to be in a bit of a chaos, there are several tastes developing at once and they do not do so in a real harmony.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that this strange process is rather natural to many Yiwu teas, therefore I'm not disturbed.
1980s Bamboo-wrapped tuocha
I enjoyed this one very much previously and so I ordered some more along my yancha order from EoT to see how I'll perceive it now, as I had some more aged tea from back then.
It is still very good. Maybe not as thrilling as when I first tried it, but it's a lovely tea nevertheless. I like its clean, nutty taste, very good activity in mouth and pleasant, reasonably strong qi. Works very well with stove water.
I'm considering buying a whole tuo... this sounds like a good tea which is intriguing enough to work for my sunday tea sessions... I had to set sundays as completely work-free days in order not to fall apart entirely and so a large part of the day is dedicated to tea. And on the other hand, the tuo is still not prohibitively expensive.
1992 Xiaguan tuo
A teachum asked me about this one recently. He tasted it somewhere in a teahouse and thought it strange, while his friends enjoyed it (it came up that they did not know any other aged tea). I was appaled by this tea when I tried it the last time.
Well, I think it is still incredibly crappy. In a tester, the strange shu/sheng (see the previous post on this tea) mixture of tastes mingles together and it is more acceptable than in gongfu, but it's still bad. The tea is extremely light in color. As I had a lot of overly dry stored teas in the last year, I guess it's possible that this tea is not a fake, but truly from 1992. Tragically stored, I have to say. It features a chaotic mixture of strange tastes, weirdly overripe aggressive fruit, dry wood, some dry storage sourness and unpleasant bitterness.
There is some nice activity in mouth, but zero qi.
The good thing is that the tea has bad stamina and after a couple of initial steepings, it gets bland and weak. It's drinkable then, but I wonder why would anyone want to do so.
100 pounds per 100g ? I would not pay 10.
If you have to have a dry stored Xiaguan tuo, then the 1984 tuo is, I believe, much better. Even though I would not call it a good example of aged tea, it's not as wrong as this 92 awfulness. Even though the 84's qi seemed very weak to me and the stamina was not as good as with normally aged teas, at least the tastes were ok.
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