A Tea Addict's Journal

Monday August 21, 2006

August 21, 2006 · 7 Comments

Many thanks to Toki for letting me know that there was a sort of tea display at the Yuhua Chinese Products store in Jordon. I went to that place today, on the 6th floor, and found quite a few stalls selling tea.

This is shot from one of the stalls.

There are also enticing displays like this

From which I tried two cakes

The first is an old growth tree cake, from Wuchidao. It was quite nice, somewhat complex, sweet, drinkable now. Decent cha qi. The price, however, was not friendly. They wanted $30 USD for one cake. I balked. It was way too much.

The second cake was a little more reasonable. It also tasted a lot worse. The colours are a bit dark, although in this picture it looks almost cooked puerh like. The tea, compared with the old growth, is not very good. $15 USD. No way Jose.

The biggest stall at this place was the place that Toki was telling me about. They sell lots of pots, some of which are nice. At first I had my eye on this one

An imitation Mengchen pot. Zhuni. You can see the lines where the Zhuni sort of contracted, and there are also marks on the pot where you can clearly see the clay contracting, leaving small cracks of sorts. It’s been used, so these are accentuated with the tea stains. The price was not too friendly — list price was something like $900, although I could get it for a decent discount. Even then, it was a bit steep, and the pouring of this pot was not the best.

I didn’t, however, leave empty handed. At the same place where they sell pots, I saw some bricks that were rather cheap. From 1993, supposedly. I had a taste. It was nice and mellow, smells better than it tastes, but still good enough for regular consumption, and not too expensive for that purpose. I ended up buying 4, which means a kg of tea. It has enough of the aged taste, while there’s still a bit of rawness left in the brick. The brewed leaves are a bit green, still. The smell on the lid and the bottom of the cup is a strong medicinal fragrance, although the tea itself hasn’t fully developed it yet. I am hoping for a little more from these bricks. If they just stay the way they are though, I am ok with that too.

This is the booty of the day :). I was going to open it for some pictures, but it will prove to be quite messy, and I’m not confident I can repack it well enough, so I decided to leave it be. It’s rather browned in colour now. I don’t think it’s cooked, as the taste isn’t entirely cooked, and the colour of some inner leaves are still quite green.

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7 responses so far ↓

  • osososososos // August 21, 2006 at 3:26 pm | Reply

    I think you’ll like the prices better on the mainland. I hope you like the tea as much as the prices…!

  • Phyllo // August 21, 2006 at 4:57 pm | Reply

    The leaves of that Wuchidai tea look quite awesome!

    IMO, I think the teapot at BTH is better looking and better-made looking.  Did you get that pot from Tiffany?

  • MarshalN // August 21, 2006 at 10:57 pm | Reply

    Not yet, not yet, I haven’t gone back since.

    Prices on the mainland are better for young cakes, but for this thing which is 10 years old, I’m quite certain prices will be higher on the mainland as most of the time they come down to HK to shop for goods

  • MANDARINstea // August 21, 2006 at 11:36 pm | Reply

    They carry much better pots in Central. Some of them goes for over 1 million HK. If you are interesed in Zhuni pot, there Wanchi stores have some decent ones also. Not trying to sounds like a sales…. : P

  • MarshalN // August 22, 2006 at 3:54 am | Reply

    Way out of my league 😛

    $1380 HKD and I have to think so long, what makes you think I’ll buy the more expensive ones?

  • Phyllo // August 22, 2006 at 5:20 am | Reply

    Confucious said: “Buy your last pot first.”

    Ok, it was not Confucious, but from a Hasselblad camera ad piece: “Buy your last camera first.”

    Which makes sense, in a way.

  • alexander_f // July 1, 2015 at 3:21 pm | Reply

    Hello here!
    The brick this is Keyixing, and it’s really something average between raw and ripe. Here are some quotes I found:
    “Keyixing Tea House, located in Yunnan Province, is a classical tea house with a history of 100 years. This kind of tea brick it produce experiences a relatively moderate process of fermentation, which is good for the aging of tea and guarantees the tea brick’s second spontaneous fermentation during its storage. Only with these conditions can the tea reach the standard of aged tea after long time storage.
    Keyixing uses sun dried green tea grown in Brown Mountains as raw material of its tea bricks. After traditional pile fermentation and graphite pressing, bricks become quite tight.”

    Very cool to read your blog; I read from the beginning -)

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