A Tea Addict's Journal

I had the Baoyan 2001 mini cake that Davelcorp sent me today. I didn’t really know what to expect of this thing. Baoyan is a brand that is marketed to Xinjiang/Tibet, as far as I know, and so the tea is usually a little different from other puerh like Dayi brand.

It turned out to be a fairly aged cake, for a 5 year old, which is hard to explain, but nonetheless, that’s what it is. The leaves are quite broken. The brew itself is thick, and a solid brown. The taste, in the mouth, is quite flat, actually — not very flavourful. The flavours show up late, in the aftertaste. This is sort of true for all the infusions. The tea has that metallic taste of young puerh, but also there are some floral tones to the aftertaste. When smelled, you can smell smoked wood from the lid and the cup.

A bit of an oddball, in how aged it is and how it tastes, but quite an interesting tea. Not bad for the price, I think, and might turn out better in a few more years.

Thanks Davelcorp 🙂

I had a dancong from my tea friend Phyll today. It is very interesting because it is much, much lighter than the usual dancong I get from the Best Tea House. Mind you, Best Tea’s stuff tend to be higher fired, and the dancongs are no exception. Phyll’s, on the other hand, are green — they look sort of like how white tea would look if the leaves are big, and they taste a little like that too. The closest in taste though is actually a good, smooth and slightly astringent young puerh. The taste profiles are very similar, with slightly more fruity notes from the dancong. The aftertaste, however, are extremely alike, and quite surprisingly so.

I have some mao cha from Hou De that are from the Nannuo mountain, and I think I’ll taste that tomorrow to see. The dancong really struck me today as tasting like a young puerh, somehow.

Maybe the puerh I’ve been drinking are all using Guangdong leaves!!!

I did something very unorthodox today… and deserve to go to tea hell for it…

I brewed Chaozhou Gongfu tea in a gaiwan.

I suppose it’s not that bad a deal, although I think any Chaozhou native will give me the finger. Since it is basically a very high fire oolong, it is properly made in a fairly small Chaozhou pot, with lots of leaves (1/2 full, or more) and all. More importantly, you crush some leaves first and put it in the bottom of the pot, and then put whole leaves on top. This makes the flavours come out more.

I did that, but it’s not the same. With a pot the leaves don’t really move at all, but the way a gaiwan is shaped some of the crushed leaves moved a bit after my rinse. Maybe my gongfu isn’t good enough.

Anyway, the tea itself tasted great. It’s always a caffeine buzz, and today I found some really nice, subtle aromas in the tea. I can only describe it as 幽香. A slightly melancholic, reserved aroma that has strong character but not overpoweringly so.

Which is sort of the wrong flavour to get from this tea.

But whatever, I’m not a Chaozhou native.

I regret to announce that my favourite drinking cup suffered a fatal wound today during cleaning, and will no longer perform its noble function of letting me drink tea out of it.

Let us observe a moment of silence to remember its three years of service.

I decided to pull out some of the nongxiang tieguanyin from Kung Fung Yung again, and to my surprise, it’s not as sour as the last few times. I’ve left it in its jar for at least a month without touching it, and I’m wondering if perhaps leaving it alone, but letting it interact with a little air, has mellowed it a little and dissipated some of the sourness in the tea. It is still strong, and has that distinct fruity tartness that makes it rather different than your usual nongxiang tieguanyin, but the sourness is not quite there today.

Like I said a few days ago… high fired stuff need a lot more attention, but are also a lot more dynamic than your usual qingxiang fragrance.

Buying tea in China is a crapshoot. A friend of mine just asked me where to get tea in Shanghai. I am ashamed to say that even though I am technically a Shanghainese, I do not know. I’ve been to a few teashops in Shanghai, but none of them really stood out in quality. There was one that sold Fujianese tea, and the people there were nice, but I neither remember the name, not the exact location (I just know it’s near Old City God Temple, or Yuyuan as out-of-towners call it).

The problem with buying tea is not necessarily that there aren’t enough places. If anything, there are too many teashops, and for the most part, they sell the same stuff. In Shanghai, it’s going to be heavy on longjing and biluochun, and light on everything else. Shanghainese drink other teas, but longjing is our first love.

But for someone who’s not necessarily into tea, buying longjing (or anything else, really) is a real risk. Longjing can go from 100 RMB/jin to 5000 RMB/jin (one jin being 500g, silly mainland rationalization of Chinese weights). While even someone who knows nothing about longjing can probably tell that a 100 RMB longjing is no good, there’s no guarantee that they can tell that a 500 RMB longjing is not really worth 2000. Herein lies the danger — teashops are liable to scam you if they figured out that you don’t really know what you’re buying, whether you’re Chinese or foreign. With locals, it’s hard to scam since they figured you know the going rate, but if you look and act foreign, and especially if you look and act like you don’t know all that much about tea, you’re doomed.

Speaking Shanghainese helps, although it doesn’t always make a difference. Besides, many shopkeepers are from out of town, meaning they don’t know a word of Shanghainese, but if you start off with Shanghainese, they’d think you’re local (very few non-Shanghainese know the dialect) so they might be more on guard and less likely to give you ridiculous prices. The way I dress and look though sometimes give me away as a foreign student type, and unfortunately, recently I’ve had a number of people thinking I’m not Chinese at all. And when I’m in Beijing, all bets are off. I’m not much better off than the white guy who comes in speaking Mandarin.

In the end, I didn’t recommend a shop for my friend, since I don’t know any. Even if I do, I’d be afraid of recommending something that doesn’t turn out so well. The only defense against scammers and people trying to sell you overpriced stuff is education and knowledge… you can fake a tea’s brand, but you can’t fake a tea’s taste.

I’m having some 1999 Menghai Yiwu Wildgrowth tea from Hou De. 99 is a bit of an awkward age. It is sort of aged — in the sense that it is past the really green stage — but not really, so a lot of the younger flavours remain in the cake. The dry leaves are tightly compressed. The liquor when brewed is a light brown. There’s not a lot of immediate aroma coming off the tea, but the overall taste is mellow, and slightly astringent (not very much so). I put in a little too much leaves, because I misjudged the compression, so now I have a fairly strong tea on my hands. Given that though, it is still mellow. I think I need another shot with this before I can really tell what’s going on….

I went out for some fairly poor dimsum today. MSG lovefest. Then when we were on the way back, since it was a rainy day and it didn’t seem like anyone had anything to do, I invited the two friends who were still with me (the others dropped off at various points) to come over for some tea. They quickly agreed — lazy rainy early summer day, right after graduation, what could be better?

Since one of the persons in question just got his PhD and paraded around campus two days ago in his big crimson robe, I thought it might be somewhat fitting to brew up the dahongpao. I used my big gaiwan, and put in about 80% tea leaves. It was a strong brew, but like I said I always do when I have guests, I seem to make better tea when someone else other than me is drinking the stuff. I think I just pay more attention to timing, temperature, pouring, and all that stuff when someone is watching me.

Obviously, with three people one tea isn’t really enough, so after a short rest, I opened up my final bag of the Beijing qingxiang tieguanyin, since it’s my best light fire tieguanyin I have right now, and I didn’t want to make crap for them (that’s for when I’m by myself trying to burn off my tea supply). For that, I used the pot, and it was very fun having them here, chatting the afternoon away. I really should have a better set up, with proper chairs and a good tea table, but that’s for when I have a permanent abode. For now, my cheap Ikea coffee table will have to do.

I had some of my nongxiang tieguanyin from Beijing today. I’ve been trying to balance these warmer teas against those stomach eating young puerhs I’ve been drinking (ok, so they weren’t all THAT young). The higher fire teas definitely are mellower on the body and easier to drink. However, at least in the case of high fire oolong, they are not necessarily easy to brew.

With things like qingxiang tieguanyin I find that as long as you are careful, nothing can go horribly wrong when you brew it unless the tea itself sucks. You can get a fairly consist cup of tieguanyin or Taiwan oolong without too much work and sweat. It’s easy, it’s nice.

With higher fire stuff, however, like the nongxiang tieguanyin, or some roasted oolong and the like, it gets trickier. There are various levels of firing. This particular one I had today is only of a medium fire, I would say, and ends up being fairly tolerant when it comes to brewing. I filled my pot with about half of it full with dry leaves, and brewed a nice cup that lasted quite a few infusions without getting sour or bitter. That’s not always how it is, however. The Taiwanese nongxiang tieguanyin I got, for example, ends up being very easily sour. I can’t stuff half of my pot full of leaves and expect it to come out fine, even with very low infusion times. Instead, I have to only use about 1/3 of the pot full of leaves, and still watch out for overbrewing. Sometimes there’s a hint of sourness, which is ok, but if it gets too strong, it’s just bad.

I remember when I brought the Taiwanese nongxiang tieguanyin to the Best Tea House after my visit to Taiwan (bought a box for the salesperson I know there as a gift). There happened to be one of the regulars, who also has some sort of working relationship with the teahouse, sitting there that day in the “master” seat (i.e. the person doing the brewing). Well, he took the box, and filled a gaiwan with about 80% of it full of the leaves. It came out a bit too strong and sour. He then declared that this is no good, and then took out a box of his own shuixian and brewed it the same way, and said “this is how old oolong should taste like!”. I personally find the tea to be quite enjoyable if you play with it and find the right balance to make it — not every tea will work with the set parameters for whatever method you have, and that’s part of the fun.

It’s hard to tell too on the first try what a tea is actually going to be like. You can never know for sure with a higher fire oolong how it will turn out once it hits water. Things can go very awry, very quickly. The first time or two can easily end poorly with some infusions not working out so well, but after a few times, you’ll get the hang of it. That is, of course, until you run out of that particular tea and get a different batch….

I drank another sample today from Davelcorp — the 99 Yellow Label from Hou De. It is surprisingly good. I thought I was going to get some young, greenish tasting thing and expected an above average young cake, but instead I was greeted with an aged tasting tea. I suppose 7 years is the end of the first fermentation period, and thus makes it drinkable. But the liquor and the aroma are closer to those of an aged puerh than that of a young puerh. It’s not clear why that is the case though. I wonder if it’s been through wet storage? I’m really bad at telling wet storage treatment. Sometimes I get a faint hint of it, but I really don’t know for sure.