Wuyi Mountain is one of the most important places in my life, not because of its beautiful scenery and enchanting cliff tea, but because it is here that I awakened to the meaning and destiny of my life.
For most people, tea is just a kind of drink to quench one’s thirst. But in fact, the real cliff tea in ancient times is recognized as an elixir or magic potion of the immortals. The elders in Wuyi Mountain often say “one mountain one tree (一岩一茶)”, which means there was only one tea tree on each mountain long time ago, and all the nutrition and life force of this whole mountain will be gathered into this single tree. So, the tea made from it contains an immense energy beyond our imagination.
Unfortunately, modern people cannot understand this. Now, driven by profit, almost every corner of Wuyi Mountain with soil, is already planted with tea trees. As a result, today's tea no longer carries that powerful energy it once did. From very long ago, I have had a wish, a wish, to once again recreate that kind of ancient elixir by using cliff tea.
The turning point for this idea came one year while I was roasting tea in Wuyi Mountain. As we know, when roasting upon charcoal fire, the tea needs to be removed and remixed every 1.5 hours. Because the fire source is underneath the tea, the part at the bottom will be burnt if it stays there for too long, and other parts cannot be heated evenly.
The events of that night, I can still vividly recall to this day. That night, I worked very late. When I moved the tea away from the charcoal to remix, I stared at the ash: That shape seemed so familiar to me! Then it hit me: isn’t this exactly the same when we do incense ceremony to heat agarwood? All that was missing, was the agarwood.
As we also know, tea leaves at this stage are at their most receptive status to absorb aromas. For example, in the case of another famous black tea from Wuyi Mountain - Lapsang souchong (正山小種), pine wood is burned for the roasting process, so the scents of pine can be integrated into the tea. The same logic applies here: if we put enough agarwood on the charcoal for roasting, wouldn’t the fragrance of agarwood also be perfectly integrated into the cliff tea too? Then, I was so excited and ready to brew this crazy concoction.
This is a novel concept that no one has ever tried before. Which type of cliff tea would best suit this method? What kind of agarwood should we use, and from which region? How much resin should it contain? What size should it be? What temperature? How long for each round of roasting, and how many times will the agarwood need to be replaced during the process? We didn’t have answers to these questions at the beginning. The only thing we can do is to design as many different experimental plans as possible, and through repeated trials, we can determine the optimal conditions.
Of course, the journey was not easy. Over the past year, we have spent lots of time and effort, burning kilograms upon kilograms of agarwood. From these, I can say that the Sinking or underwater woods achieved the best results, due to their high heat resistance allowing them to withstand long periods of time over the charcoal fire, allowing enough rich aroma substances to be released and to react with cliff tea. From a scientific point of view, we can call this a heat-induced polymerization reaction.
From the view of ancient Taoists, we can also call this process - Chinese Alchemy (炼丹术, elixir-making). This process is very similar to the ancient Taoist practice of alchemy, where the two most precious substances in the world begin to merge over a long period of time upon the charcoal fire, being refined into an even more powerful elixir.
After more than a year of effort, we have finally created the first batch of Agarwood Cliff Tea - Zheng Tai Yang (正太阳). Just like Rou Gui (肉桂), it is also a type of Wuyi cliff tea which means the sun at noon, the strongest Yang (阳). We often say that agarwood is the most positive energy of Heaven and Earth, the new combination of this tea and agarwood created unprecedented Yang energy. What’s even more perfect is that their aromas have also merged seamlessly, as if they were originally one and the same.
The moment I took the first sip, I was completely shocked. It can no longer be simply called cliff tea but can be regarded as a Taoist elixir (丹). Actually, we tried a long time ago to brew agarwood and cliff tea together, but the results were not ideal. The aromas they released in water were separate and even conflicting with each other, so it was not a good experience. However, this Agarwood Cliff Tea we have made is totally another story, as the two really became one. Once it felt as if a nuclear explosion went off inside my body, opening all the meridians and even the tiniest vessels in few seconds. My mind suddenly cleared, my hearing became acute, and my vision brightened. For the first time in my life, I felt such a tremendous surge of Qi which cannot be achieved by any agarwood or cliff tea alone.
The unexpectedly strong effect blew me away and took me back to ancient times. I believe that the elixirs crafted by ancient Taoists must have been even more powerful than this, but I now have an idea of what such a creation could be. I am extremely happy and honored to be able to create something truly exceptional in this modern society andhave the opportunity to share this with you.