Lew, curiously pulling on a funny looking cord:
> Karsten - are you there?

Yes Lew, I´m just so much focused on gong-fueing these days, found a
secret stash of Oolongs in the cellar, shllllllrppppp, oh my ...
Well yes clonals, when it comes to Darjeelings I´m afraid I don´t
enjoy them that much as I like those old chinese bushes.
IMO tastewise the major problem with clonals is the lack of genetic
diversity among those thousands of plants in (parts of) estates where
those old (up to 150 years - game over) chinese bushes have been
replaced by clonals - in Darjeeling mostly "Tukdah 78". Sorry for the
bad comparison but to me drinking a clonal brew feels like going to a
museum with 100s of copies of the same painting and not much else to
see. However wonderful that painting might be, I´d always prefer
variety. Additionally to me clonals smell and taste somewhat "hollow",
everything is on the surface, on "display". Again that is not meant to
turn anyone off.
Of course there are "exceptions", e.g. Castletons 2005 SF Muscatel cl
(=clonal); that tea is just so damn expressive, bold and playful but
then again it´s from the food synthesizer in the main deck cantine,
sniff ...

Karsten,
with some DJ pouchong in der Yixing Kanne, dreaming of electric leaves