It’s nearing midday, though it’s hard to tell. Any time you look up through the trees to the gray skies above, you’re greeted with a face full of the fine mist that’s been falling all morning. You’re telling time not through the sun or your half-dead phone with no signal but with the rumble of your stomach. Breakfast feels a long way off after half an hour of hiking through the foothills. 

Your footsteps are quiet against the damp earth, muffled by the springy undergrowth. The light sweatshirt you wore to ward off the chill of the rain is clinging lightly to your skin– not too wet as to be uncomfortable, but heavy enough with moisture that it sags under the weight. There are few sounds but the drip-drip-dripping of condensation building and falling through the leaves and the footsteps of your hiking partner behind you. The loudest is your breath, hot and slightly raspy with exertion, echoing in your ears. You stop for a moment at a switchback and take a swig from your water bottle, breathing in the encompassing scent of growth and decay.

The path looks brighter ahead. You push forward, knowing the lookout point can’t be too much farther. Sure enough, as you hop up a set of rocks at the end of the trail, you see it: the access road. You head up the road at a half-jog, the tools hanging from your backpack jangling against each other. Behind you, your partner calls out in half-hearted betrayal, but you can’t be stopped now. You’re nearly at the top. 

The path widens, flattens, and you’re standing at the top of the ridge next to the legs of an electric pylon that may as well be the Eiffel Tower. The air tingles with electricity as you pant, recovering from the jog up the road, leaving a metallic taste at the back of your throat. The mist has stopped. The clouds that rained on you are now around you instead, cloaking the mountaintops in watery gray shrouds. You spin around, taking in the view, catching glimpses of peaks and valleys as the clouds shift and slither through the mountain range. It’s not the vista you’d hoped for, but it’s beautiful nonetheless. 

Your hiking partner has arrived and found a boulder made for sitting, its surface worn smooth from hundreds of other butts looking for a place to rest and enjoy the view. You join them, swinging the pack off your shoulder and unzipping it as it rests next to your muddy shoes. From inside you pull a loaf of carefully wrapped bread. Your partner digs for the cream and jam. Under the hum of the pylon, you both slather the bread thick with cream, adding a dollop of your favorite fresh berry jam on top. With heavy, humid air in your lungs and the tingle of electricity on your teeth, you take a bite and close your eyes. Relish it. Relax. You’ve reached the top– it’s time to breathe it all in. 

Tea is a very sense-oriented hobby. Every tea I try reminds me of some food, some scent that’s familiar in the same way dreams are half-remembered when you wake. When it comes to aged or fermented teas that elude normal tasting notes, I don’t rely on basic tastes or smells. Instead, I rely on memory and imagination. 

In my White2Tea Demon Slayer reflection, I pulled upon my imagination for how the tea made me feel. In this reflection for 2018 Mojun Fu Cha “Fu Shen”, I’m pulling on memory. But, like all memories, I’d say it’s closer to a movie that’s “Based on a True Story” than a factual account. I did hike up the Heybrook Ridge Trailhead outside of Index, Washington in a light rain with my husband. I didn’t have a backpack full of warm bread, cream, and jam. In fact, I didn’t have my backpack at all– we hadn’t planned on hiking that day and only spotted the trail while driving out of town. Idiotic as it was, we took on the hike somewhat blind and unprepared, taking a risk to live in the moment. On a much smaller scale, it’s the same kind of exhilarating dive into the unknown that often accompanies trying a new type of tea.

The 2018 Mojun Fu Cha wasn’t my first fuzhuan cha. That honor goes to a sample I’d received in a monthly tea subscription that sat unused in my tea cabinet for months. After all, I didn’t know what fu cha was or what to expect. But then, one day, much like the Heybrook Ridge Trailhead, I saw it while going for something else. What the hell, I thought. No reason to not try something new. Thus began an incredible journey into the world of fu.

After falling in love with the small 15-gram sample, I began researching more fu cha to buy, knowing I needed to feed my newfound addiction. What I settled on was the 2018 Mojun Fu Cha, recommended by another knowledgeable teahead. Since it arrived at my doorstep, this fu has become a near-daily drinker. I’m afraid to weigh the brick it came in– it is much less than the 400 grams it started at. So, with much love and fu in my belly, I figured it was time for another personal tea reflection. 

While I’ve talked about most of the major types of tea on this blog, the broad categories of black, green, white, oolong, and puer don’t encapsulate every tea on the market. Fuzhuan cha falls into a subcategory called heicha or “dark tea”, which undergoes similar processing to shou puer. To be considered a heicha, a tea must undergo a post-fermentation phase after the initial kill green stage, using a number of different fermentation techniques to aid in microbe growth. One of the most popular techniques is “wet-piling”, where the maocha (partially-processed tea leaves) are piled up to a certain height, misted with water, and then covered with linen or similar cloth. Underneath these heavy canopies, the moisture and heat quicken the fermentation process, encouraging the growth of bacteria to enhance the taste of the tea. This lends wet-piled tea a unique taste, mouthfeel, and smell, though each heicha will be processed differently depending on the intended results.

Like shou puer, fuzhuan cha is processed and fermented with the wet-piling technique. How it differs, though, lies in the name. When translated, fuzhuan cha means “Dog-days/summer brick tea”. Traditionally, fu was wet-piled during the summer, when the heat lies heaviest, and instead of the leaves being stacked loosely in a pile while fermenting, the maocha is compressed into a brick first and then fermented. The result is a more densely packed tea brick, capable of cultivating the type of fungal growth it’s most well known for: golden flowers. 

Eurotium cristatum, often called “golden flowers” for its bright yellow appearance, is a type of fungus that became the hallmark of fuzhuan cha. While golden flowers can happen in any post-fermented tea, fuzhuan cha is specifically cultivated and processed to ensure the entire inside of the brick is covered with growth, as the amount of golden flowers present can indicate how well a particular brick was processed. The result is that cracking into a brick of fu cha becomes a visual feast, bright golden specs of light shining against the dark, compressed tea leaves.

All this holds true for the 2018 Mojun Fu Cha “Fu Shen” brick. With a special “Fu Shen” blend of tea leaves picked in the Hunnan and Yunnan provinces and a proprietary processing technique used at one of the oldest fu cha processors in the Shaanxi province, the resulting brick is dense and dark, the inside coated in abundant gold dust. It maintains many of the qualities tea drinkers may expect from a shou or other heicha– an earthy dry-leaf smell, the taste of forest, bark, and dirt– but the Mojun Fu Cha differentiates itself with its golden liquor and lighter taste. While present, it doesn’t lean into the mossy and mineral notes that one typically expects from a post-fermented tea. Instead, it enjoys a sweeter, almost fruity profile with overtones of slightly burnt sourdough, sending the more earthy flavors to the back of the throat. It’s akin to eating berries straight from the bush, the juice light and sweet on your tongue, or breathing deep while bread bakes in the oven. 

The light flavor also translates into a light qi. While the tea does bring an electric buzz to the tip of the tongue throughout the session, at no point does the qi ever overstimulate or throw the drinker into the “tea drunk” state. Instead, I’ve found that the relaxing qi allows me to enjoy the Mojun Fu Cha in the mornings, evenings, and afternoons, without worry of over-caffeination. All in all, the 2018 Mojun Fu Cha “Fu Shen” brick is an airy, refreshing fu that, as it evolves over each session, always takes me back to the sights, sounds, and feelings I experienced at the Heybrook Ridge Trailhead. 

That tea can evoke such emotion from a single cup is part of what I love about this hobby. Even when I struggle to identify specific flavors or notes, I can always rely on the way tea makes me feel to do the talking for me. While the risk of trying a new tea is much lower than that of hiking a mountain trail on a whim, both feed our impulse to try something new just to see what happens. It may not always end in a new favorite tea or a beautiful view, but occasionally the world aligns in exactly the right way to reward us with newfound knowledge or perspective in our everyday lives. So, take a chance on your next cup. Until next time, happy steeping and happy reading, friends.