Marco Polo had just returned from Cathai, Dante Alighieri was penning the Divine Comedy and the Pope was about to flee Rome for Avignon when some enterprising tea grower from Guangdong, in Southern China, first brewed Zhongshan Baiye, the Phoenix Bird.

The tea bushes it comes from have never been pruned, so pickers need ladders to gather the leaves, which are then oxidized to about 40 percent. I had never tried this historic oolong, so curiosity had the better of me when I came across it on the Special Teas website, and I picked it up.

I tried it today, gongfu style. Pointedly ignoring instructions, I filled the bottom of my gaiwan with leaves, then poured what I hoped was crab’s eye water on top. I let the leaves steep for five breaths before pouring the liquor into the pitcher.

Every description I have read about Zhongshan Baiye wants it delicate, with fruity and toasty notes. I am starting to wonder whether my nose and palate are slightly skewed, because this is most emphatically not what I experienced with this tea. My cup was a rich amber color with a strong, pleasantly vegetal scent. The same quality emerged with clarity in the mouth. It was lightly sweet at first approach, buu a definite vegetaley character came out clearly in the long finish.

It tasted like a cup of awakening countryside and, for once, it didn’t immediately evoke a painting or a painter. I keep wanting to say Constable, because of the country landscape, but the colors are all wrong. This tea is darker, like a faded scroll. Like, now that I think of it, the dark ochre scroll hanging just behind my desk. A delicate portrait of willowy ladies against a barely-there landscape. Beautiful, and gloriously anonymous.