Agarwood Liubao Tea

Aged Liubao tea has a long history in Malaysia, closely connected with the tin-mining communities of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Brought from Guangxi by Chinese workers, Liubao gradually became part of daily life in the mines. Over decades of storage in Malaysia’s warm and humid climate, these teas developed the deep medicinal and ginseng-like character for which aged Liubao is now treasured. 

For this tea, we selected Liubao from the 1990s that had been aged for decades in Malaysia, then brought it more than 3,700 km to the Wuyi Mountains. There, we applied our agarwood-charcoal roasting technique to Liubao tea for the first time.

Over dozens of hours of slow roasting, the aged character of the tea became cleaner, deeper, and more refined, while the fragrance of agarwood gradually infused into the leaves. Its mature medicinal and ginseng-like character remained beautifully intact, while the warm, resinous fragrance of agarwood added another layer of depth and complexity.

The finished dry leaves can smell almost like a dark piece of resin-rich agarwood. Once brewed, the aged depth of Liubao and the fragrance of agarwood unfold together, creating a rich, warm and lingering aroma. Its Cha Qi is equally distinctive. From the first cup, I could feel a strong warmth spreading through the body, followed quickly by a fine layer of sweat and a clear sense of energy and movement. 

Another unexpected result of the charcoal roasting is that it almost completely removes the damp and musty notes often found in decades-old Liubao. Even the first infusion is clean and enjoyable, with the old storage aroma replaced by a gentle agarwood fragrance while the character of the aged tea remains intact. 

This experiment has been the greatest breakthrough we have made in our years of exploring agarwood tea. More importantly, it has given me a deeper appreciation of what lies behind both tea and agarwood. Each is, in its own way, a distillation of nature’s vitality, slowly shaped and refined by time. When the two finally meet in harmony, it feels less like something we have created, and more like something formed by the quiet yet unstoppable forces of nature and time.

For more information, please refer to:

https://dr-incense.com/blogs/dr-incense-blog/the-scent-of-time-agarwood-meets-aged-liubao-tea