2024 Lao Ban Zhang

FatBat Private Pressing Puerh

老班章

Last year (in 2023), we made a statement with some of the best, purest Lao Ban Zhang gushu we could offer.

This year, we offer a Lao Ban Zhang that more puerh lovers can experience – 100% pure LBZ material, a strictly monitored early Spring gushu mixed-picking (medium, big trees and a gushu proportion of ~30%), picked on March 29, 2024 from the gardens managed by the Lao Ban Zhang #4 family (the number designating the family’s “address” in the village). The fresh leaf was then processed by the farmers themselves, under our supervision.

A robust soup, with the texture and zing of ginseng-chicken broth. The enveloping fragrance of roasted herbs and caramelized potato skins, becoming apparent as you swallow. The sweetness floods in with urgency, in perfect counterpoint to the savory umami before, fading to a distinct impression of charred crème brulee crust. The warmed wet leaf hints at charred parsnips, with a sweet pungency of roasted fennel. Initial steeps have a bright hoppy tartness that fades in seconds.

Pure Lao Ban Zhang is not a tea easily captured in tasting notes – it is the sheer cohesiveness of elements and the perfect harmony of sweet, bitter, savory and herbal that coalesce into an almost heartless torrent of umami that few other teas (if any) can approach. But then you realize even more, it is the qi that truly makes a great LBZ. Strong pulsing energy, a soothing yet awakening body feel that sweeps outwards from the core.

In comparison with the pure gushu pressing from 2023, this tea is more immediate, more direct, giving up the rounded smoothness and dark-green tones of the pure gushu, in exchange for an upfront mineral tartness with a bright sweetness of barley-sugar. Make no mistake, it is still a serious tea, demanding full attention and adequate time.

Pressed as 100g mini cakes with 5 to a tong.

TECHNICALS