A Tea Addict's Journal

I had a lot of puerh in the past few days, so I decided to get off the puerh binge and drink some oolongs instead. I brewed up my sort-of-higher fire tieguanyin, and…. messed it up. I almost forgot how to brew oolong, so it seems. The first two infusions were a bit sour, and I think I basically left them in the pot too long, as well as not clearing the pot out of water sufficiently. I adjusted my brewing in the third infusion,and it got better and more drinkable.

One thing about drinking tieguanyin, especially from my small tieguanyin pot, is that I’m done very quickly — 7 infusions takes maybe 20 minutes. It’s all over after that. Whereas a puerh session can last for hours, if I feel like it, a tieguanyin session can’t. In fact, if you drag it out, the quality of the tea suffers because it sits too long in the pot.

If you drink it like some people do, only really having the first three or four infusions, then it’s over even faster.

“Never judge a book by its cover”. I think this can be applied to puerh.

I don’t just mean the wrapper. Obviously, the wrappers mean nothing. In fact, fake tea abound where the wrapper is one thing and the tea is another. Those wrapperologists out there who argue about quality of the paper and the size of the characters are, honestly, quite ridiculous.

What I mean is the tea itself can also be deceiving. Look at this thing I drank today:

Looks like cooked? Yeah, well, it’s mostly cooked, with some raw tea mixed in. This is from the early 80s, supposedly, and given to me by YP. When she gave it to me, we didn’t taste it. We were drinking the Hongyin that day — and not enough time to taste “crappy” teas like this :).

This is the cake’s wrapper – Traditional Character Zhongcha Brand

And the tea in question — looks terrible

I brought it with me to Beijing, thinking at some point I’ll drink it. I thought about brewing it with BBB, but we didn’t really have time to drink tea at home, and the one chance we had, we drank the Zhenchunya Hao (which was really good). So, between all the teas to drink, I never touched this and let it languish in its little bag. When I showed it to BBB, and told him it’s a cooked/raw mix, he said “yeah, I didn’t want to say, but it smells like cooked puerh”. Understandably, since he doesn’t like cooked puerh, he wasn’t much interested in it.

I had to brew it at some point, so I did today. I figured drinking some cooked puerh will be good for my stomach after drinking so many young ones yesterday.

Infusion 1:

Infusion 4:

I washed it twice, as the tea is very tightly compressed, and also being of old age, I thought it might be wise to wash it off (although, YP keeps her tea VERY clean — almost no bubbles). I brewed it up…. the first infusion the tea was still warming up, and tasted a little flat. The second one onwards…. wow. It’s GOOD. It has flavours like the ones present in the Zhenchunya Hao, except much more intense. An impressive sweetness penetrates the mouth and lingers at the back of the throat — this is huigan! A really strong one! It sticks to the end of the mouth for a long time, and it’s really obvious. The taste and the aroma… are more like dried peaches or plums. They are very obvious, and very strong. There’s no “cooling” sensation, and it makes sense that it doesn’t have it, and it does have a little bit of the cooked tea taste, but the cake is very nice. I drank it infusion after infusion, and every infusion it was something that I could think “wow, this is a good tea”. I was thinking on my way to dinner that if I am only allowed one cake to bring with me to a desert island, this could be it. It’s smooth, nice, friendly to your body, and it tastes great, just great.

It’s not the same as, say, an old 100% raw puerh, in the sense that the tea lacks that bite that remains even in an older raw puerh — it’s very weak in this tea, but what it does have, and what older raw puerh (without going through wet storage) don’t, is that sweetness and fruity aroma. My 30 years old loose puerh has a bit of that, but it’s nothing compared to this one. Zhenchunya Hao’s interesting point is that it is developing that without wet storage, and supposedly pure Yiwu is more prone to that sort of development trajectory. Most teas, however, only get that sort of taste with a wet storage process, as far as I’m aware.

I think I stopped after about 12-13 infusions. The tea started getting weak, another sign that there’s cooked puerh in this thing. I pulled out the leaves

Most of them are bundled up into little balls that won’t unfurl without disintegrating. Some, however, you can tell are nicely stored raw leaves, and they are mixed in with the cooked. It’s really only obvious in person when you can play with it — it doesn’t show up on camera.

YP said this is something useful as a “teaching tea”, and I agree. There’s a lot of flavours here that you can go “ok, this is x you’re getting”. I still have a few more pieces of this… probably enough for two more sittings. I have to let it sit for a while longer before coming back…. although I won’t complain about brewing them all right away.

Today I went to Maliandao again, although without BBB since he just left for Datong this morning.

I went there after lunch, not really looking for anything in particular and instead just going to check things out, hoping to taste a few teas, and maybe finding something good. After the whirlwind tours of Maliandao with BBB, I decided that good tea on Maliandao is just going to take lots of time and lots of searching. Considering we didn’t really find much that was good…. out of the at least 10-15 cakes we’ve tried, I think only two or three were truly good.

These days I tell the cab driver to stop at the entry to Maliandao — the left turn alone into the street can take 15 minutes if I’m not lucky, by which time I’ll already be at the various tea cities. Today was the same, and I generally enjoy the stroll down the street, looking at the windows of the various street vendors of tea, but rarely going in, because they usually don’t have anything exciting.

Today, however, I walked into one of them. This place only sells puerh, and BBB and I walked in there briefly. Today, I took a closer look. There was a naked cake (no wrapper) just labeled “Yiwu”. Since I tried the Chen Yuan Hao two days ago, and Yiwu is sort of fresh on my mind, having read a bunch of stuff on sanzui about Yiwu, I decided to give it a go.

The sales girl started telling me how great this cake is, Yiwu, blah blah, 10 years, etc etc. I just nodded. She started brewing it, and …. surprise, it’s nowhere near 10 years. It’s lucky if it’s got 5 (what I said to her — didn’t want to say outright that I think it’s only 2-3 years old). A typical Yiwu type taste — mild, not very impressive when you think about it. Cha qi is low. Everything is pretty mediocre about this tea — I didn’t find it interesting.

And the asking price? $80 USD. WOW. Talk about sky high.

I decided to see how I can bargain. So I started with an offer of $10 USD. Didn’t bite, of course, but the price is already lower — $60. I upped my offer by $2, not budging — I walked. From her looks though, I think she knows she overquoted me to start off with, but I suppose lowering her price THAT much was pretty much like admitting that she lied to me, big time.

I then went into Maliandao Tea City and searched for that store that sells puerh books — found it, and looked around, but nothing really interesting. There’s that puerh facebook, basically, that includes lots of old puerh. There’s also the “yearly” book from 98-2003, and the year book for 2004. Those are something like $30 USD each, which I thought was slightly high. Tried to bargain, no go, so I didn’t buy any. I figured I don’t really need them, although they’re interesting to look at, that’s for sure.

From there, I walked all the way down the street to Chayuan again. So far, the best stuff I’ve seen are all from there, so I figured I might get lucky.

I didn’t go into the mall right away, deciding instead to go to another store that’s near it that sells teaware to browse a bit first, but before I got in, I noticed that there’s actually another puerh store next to it (looks like it’s closed), so I walked in to take a look at what they’ve got.

There were some interesting looking cakes, and again, it was a company that nobody has ever heard of, Stateside (or, really, Chinaside). There were something like two dozen raw cakes there, plus a number of cooked stuff. They are one of those stores that does a very nice thing — they unwrap their cakes halfway, so you don’t have to go pick it up from the rack, unwrap the thing, look at it in the hand awkwardly while trying to hold up the wrapper so the bits don’t fall out, put it back, try to wrap it while having no support, and repeat twenty times for twenty cakes. When they are half unwrapped, you can easily scan a number of the cakes and find out which one looks better and which ones look worse.

I picked one out, asked if I could taste it, and the girl at the store, after giving me a slightly funny and uneasy look, agreed. Turns out this cake is not really for sale — they have a sample here, but it was pressed by a private collector who gave them one. There’s a price on it — something like $150 USD!, but not for sale as there’s no stock. But she was willing to brew me some anyway, so we had some.

Good Yiwu cake. Better than the other stuff I just tried, and better than the Chen Yuan Hao. Nice cha qi, reasonable huigan, the nice sensation goes down to the throat, although not terribly prominent. Soft, subdued, not too aromatic…. all good signs. The leaves look decent after brewing, not a lot of red, etc etc. Too bad it’s so ridiculously priced, and more so it’s not even available.

Then she brewed something else for me — something called “Tiaosuo Cha”. It basically means elongated shaped tea. I think it’s basically the same stuff as the old tea tree stuff that BBB bought from Six Famous Tea Mountain — long, large leaves covering the cake and the inside being more or less the same, except this one is extremely smoky. I felt like I was smoking a cigarette, except I was drinking tea.

Beyond the smoke, the tea is not too bad. The leaves don’t look too bad either, but the smoke was SO EXTREMELY OVERWHELMING that I found it hard to justify buying any of it. I don’t know what happened, but somebody burned something when making this thing. It will take years just for the tea to lose the smoke flavour.

Then I pointed to another cake that I wanted to try, and she said “you only pick the good stuff, don’t you?”. This, of course, is partly so that I will feel good about myself and hopefully will get me in a better mood for buying things, so I pretty much ignored it. The tea was also a Yiwu, supposedly. It was impressive. Soft, smooth, again a typical Yiwu with very subdued flavours, light aromas, decent cha qi — but very good huigan. I could also feel the tea going down my throat, in a sort of minty way that reminds me of some of the better teas I’ve had in Hong Kong and maybe a Xizihao or two. It was good, very good. The brewed leaves looked good as well. In fact, I think it’s far better than the $150 one. I wanted some of this! I asked…. turns out it’s another “we don’t have any” cakes. They don’t have any in stock. Meh. No wonder she said something about me only picking the good stuff… seems like they don’t have good stuff in stock.

I should add that while tasting teas, there were a bunch of girls sitting in the back room doing what sounded like Mandarin lessons. When tasting the last cake, a girl came out to taste it with us. Turns out her dad was the one who made this cake — well, I guess her family did. So, after some prodding, she said that their family in Yunnan still have a few tongs of this, and can probably part with one. I asked for a price…. not too cheap, especially for mainland fare. I asked for a discount. She ended up calling her dad to confer, and gave me a price. It turns out to be a “take it or leave it” price. She didn’t care if she sold this tong of tea or not, and neither did her dad. I tried pretty hard in bargaining, but there was no budging — her dad’s price was the final offer.

At first I stood pretty firm. In fact, she left with the bunch of girls (turns out they are on training in Beijing before being sent back to Yunnan to work in a teahouse there, or maybe work in Beijing, I didn’t get the whole story) and was off for the day and I didn’t buy it. I was a bit disappointed about the tea and the fact that the price was non-negotiable. But this was by far the best new cake I’ve tasted on Maliandao. What do I do?

After about another 10 infusions of this tea… I caved 🙁

Oh well, spent more money than I thought I would today, and they still have to ship the tea over from Yunnan. I probably won’t see it for two weeks. Yet, I think I bought something really good. I think… I’l
l probably bring this to Hong Kong when I go there in Christmas and get some second opinion there. I feel pretty confident about this one though. Let’s hope I’m right…

I drank one and half teas today, bad me.

The first one was at a teahouse. I went to Liulichang today to buy a book for my girlfriend, and on my way back, I stopped by the Lao She Teahouse because it was sort of on the way, and because they sell a puerh called “Chen Yuan Hao”. Chen Yuan Hao is much like Yang Qing Hao and Xi Zi Hao from Taiwan — all of them are made by Tainan tea merchants who go to Yunnan and collect maocha and press their cakes under their own labels. Lao She Teahouse, somehow, sells Chen Yuan Hao, as I discovered on their website yesterday, so I went.

It was a nicely decorated place, and most of their guests are probably tourists of one kind or another — lots of foreigners, I’d imagine. There are some puerh on sale there, but not a lot. They mostly do oolongs and green teas, and that’s not really a surprise. I asked if I could taste the Chen Yuan Hao, and with a little hesitation, they were ok with it. I think most of the time their guests don’t ask for tastings, and even if they did, it would only be your run of the mill oolongs or greens. In fact, the store people told me that none of them have ever had the Chen Yuan Hao there.

There were actually four types of CYH there. The one I had was from 2002, a Yiwu. They also had a Yiwu from another year, a Mengsa, and I think a Nannuo (can’t remember for sure now). Some of the cakes looked a bit odd in terms of their setup and also the compression. It was obviously stone mould, but a few cakes the depression on the back was so deep that there was literally only one layer of tea leaves in the center — and you can see through the tea to the other side of the cake!

Anyway, so I sat down and they put the shavings of the cake into a gaiwan and brewed. The tea is a little light for a 4 year old cake, although I think they could’ve put in a bit more leaves. Like a typical Yiwu — mild, soft, full bodied, decent cha qi, but not very impressive when you just drink it. I detect a hint of fruitiness, and I think give it another 5-10 years, it will develop the same sort of plum taste that the Zhenchunya Hao I had a few days ago. It was fresh on my mind, so I was able to make the connection. Maybe this is what pure Yiwu tastes like when aged? Fruity?

There was one problem with the tea — after a few infusions I started feeling very thirsty. The tea soaked up all the moisture from my mouth and throat. I’ve read that it could be because the environment in which it is stored is too dry, and thus it does this to you. I’m not sure. The price was something like $70 USD. I didn’t buy it. Not THAT good. This is definitely something I’ll seek out though when I go to Taiwan next year.

I came home afterwards, feeling a little tired. I have been itching for a whole day now to drink the new cakes I bought, so I broke out the 2002 Mengku bing and decided to brew that.

Just a reminder:

I took a corner, carefully peeling off the leaves (and also took the shavings). The tea has an odd aroma when dried. I can’t really describe what it is. The same aroma exists in brewed form and is an important part of the taste profile.

The tea, when brewed, is a bit bitter. I think my tastebuds are now quite numb to bitterness, but for the uninitiated, I think this tea will taste quite bitter. There’s something of a metallic taste to it, and now that I think about it, it reminds me a little of the 7542 Shui Lan Yin from HouDe in the way it tastes. Not quite the same, but there are a few notes that ring a bell.

This is the first infusion

I think this is the second infusion leaves

And a pair of later — around 10 infusion — leaves and liquor

The colour really didn’t diminish, and the tea was quite resilient.

One thing I really like about it is that the mouthfeel is GREAT. The water tastes round, soft, moisturizing, and goes down very smoothly. Interestingly, especially in comparison with the CYH, it does not make my mouth dry. There’s a bit of salivation, and a bit of huigan. The sensation in the throat is not prominent — only a bit here and there. That’s perhaps a flaw of this tea. The aromas …. are hard to describe. I’m a bit loss for words. The smell under the lid is a consistent Chinese medicine smell, while the tea itself is perhaps what can be described as woody? I’m not sure. I have a feeling this is a tea that will turn to the “medicine aroma” type of puerh in the longer run. Worse comes to worse, I can drink this now and be fairly happy with it, although I really hope it’ll turn into something greater over time.

I had a bit of doubt as to whether this is really a 4 year old, because I know the 2004 also has the same wrapper and neifei, but looking at the tea again, and especially in the brewed leaves and the liquor, I think it is quite plausible for it to be 4 years old.

I had a Wuyi tea today. I’m not sure exactly which varietal it is, and I am not at the point where I can tell yet. All I know is that it is heavily fired. It came in one of those tiny one-serving packs (this was a free sample we got when we went tasting). So as you can see, the leaves come out a bit broken because it had to fit in the small pack

I thought this is a bad way to pack Wuyi. It’s great for the ball-shaped oolongs, but not for these.

The first infusion of the tea had a charcoal like taste, which was just a hint too charcoal like, although still quite nice. The liquor is a dark orange. This, I think, is infusion 3

Overall, good aftertaste, so so aromas. I don’t know how much they want, but I didn’t like it THAT much. It was an ok tea. I prefer the stuff I have now. Although, perhaps it is because I didn’t have full control over brewing parameters (especially amount of leaves) so that might have been a big reason why I didn’t really like it.

Buying puerh is a crapshoot. We’re basically making investments about how these young cakes will age after being armed with two pieces of information.

1) What we see now in the cake along with all the necessary info about it — production year, factory, location, origin, type of tree, etc

2) What we know about teas that are like this before, and how they have aged over time.

With point 1, we are on decent ground. I think most of us can probably find out something about particular mountains, factory, etc etc, so long as the cake in question is a newer vintage. They are getting better about disclosing such information. The manufacturers know that people want this kind of information and are providing them more and more often. Just because it comes from the manufacturer (or the vendor) though, it doesn’t mean it’s correct.

So, this involves out skill in determining what is really in the cake, and what is being claimed. For example, Hobbes’ sample of fake 7542 didn’t lie — it sucked. It looked terrible, it tasted terrible — it is terrible.

Not all cakes will be so clear cut though. Say, someone tells you they have a Lao Banzhang from 200x, sun dried, stone pressed, arbor trees, the works. How much of it is true? Is it really 100% pure sun dried high quality arbor tree leaves from the Lao Banzhang area? Or is it mostly that? Some? A little? What else is mixed in it? Is it even from the Banzhang area? What about the processing method? Is it any good? Did they do funny things with it? Was the “kill-green” process done at the proper (i.e. low) temperature? All sorts of unknowns abound.

So this is where information 2 comes in. We taste the tea, and by our previous experience with other teas, we compare it with what we already know and try to see if we can determine whether what is being claimed is what is actually in the cake we’re seeing. It is not only the taste, but the appearance, the smell, the feel, everything. Down to the paper quality, in some cases, as we all know there are plenty of faulty claims.

In terms of the tasting, we’re looking for a lot of things. We look for the aromas, we look for the colours, we look for the wet leaves and signs that it tells us, and of course we look for the reactions that our mouth has to the tea (or our body after you swallow it). Lots of things are going on, almost too many. Most of us can only keep track of a few things at a time, and the rest get lost.

This is partly why it’s so fun to play with puerh… every cake, even from the same production, can be a different beast, and until you’ve uncovered it, dissected it, you really have no idea what it holds for you. Two cakes that look remarkably similar in initial appearance can taste vastly different. Two cakes that look very different come sometimes come out tasting rather similar.

This is also why it’s frustrating when looking for good puerh, as Bearsbearsbears and I recently did on Maliandao. We tasted at least two dozen puerhs, and out of them, only two or three of them were truly in the “good” category. The rest… some were acceptable, some were so so, some sucked. Mind you, they suck for different reasons. Some are just bad tea, some have no strength, some are too expensive for what it is (but could be a great tea if the price were, say, 1/10). It all depends.

I think the biggest problem is in terms of what to look for, and also in terms of how to predict changes. Taste and aroma is not, supposedly, what you should look for. This I’ve gotten from a few people already. Rather, one should search out the tea that has the strength and the overall good-feeling that it gives you, and also in terms of mouthfeel and that sort of thing. Taste in a young puerh is fickle, and what you taste now will not be what you taste in 3-5 years. Look no further than Cloudstea’s Yiwu cake and the picture of the young liquor to know that the tea is changing, very fast. The underlying quality of a cake does not lie in the present aromas, but rather in the other more intangible things.

I am by no means an expert yet, but I do know I am learning. I can, for example, now predict the taste of the cake in question a little bit by looking at the leaves, although it is still a bit iffy. It gets harder when you get into the aged category, but at least for younger stuff, I can roughly envision how they taste. But, how they ACT in the body is not the same. Whether a tea that tastes sweet initially will close up your throat and make you feel sick, or whether it will moisturize your throat and make you feel good, is difficult to predict. Some of that is due to storage, some of that just in the tea itself.

And besides… what do I know what to look for? I have no idea, at the end of the day, what makes for a good puerh 20 years from now. All I can do, and the best I can do, is to hopefully drink more older stuff, look at what those cakes have, observe how cakes age, how they change, what shows up, what don’t, and then hopefully will have enough information to make wiser purchases in the future. Which means paying a lot of tuition right now.

So hard.

Didn’t go anywhere else today for tea — drank at home with BBB. We first tried the mystery cake number 2 that I got – I have no idea what it is. The dry leaves looked good enough. When brewed…. it was bitter, for me, while BBB said he didn’t quite get bitterness, but there was nevertheless something unpleasant about the tea. It was in a way very …. aggressive? I don’t know how to describe the taste. There is some cooling/minty effect, and the mint flavour really showed up after a few infusions, but the tea just didn’t taste very pleasant, and apart from the bitterness, not much else to it. There were smoke smell on the lid of the gaiwan, but not really in the tea. I don’t know what to make of it.

Will it age well? I don’t know, but maybe that nasty feeling will go away and turn into something more pleasant given some time. I might give this another go in a few months or a year, and see where it has gone since.

We then had the Zhenchunya Hao sample that YP gave me. This, again, is not the same as the one that is being sold now at the Best Tea house, but an earlier production that is very limited in quantity. I put in slightly not enough leaves, but the tea went down very well — very pleasant. The overwhelming and presistent flavour was, oddly enough, dried plum. A very strong huigan, decent amount of cha qi, and in many ways, a very unique puerh. Both BBB and I thought this is something like we’ve never tasted puerh — not a classic puerh taste, but a lot of plum taste. It’s sweet, fragrant, but not overly so, and does not have the usual spicy, “chen” flavour that is typical of puerh of 10 years age.

Too bad I only have one sample. This is a tea that will be fun to taste over time to see how it ages, I think. The sample I had at the Best Tea House was VERY different. There it was a bit more bitter, less plum-like. Not the same tea at all.

Well, where else did we go today but Maliandao again. Yes, that’s right, we went to Maliandao again. Surprised? Didn’t think so.

We started the day a little later today, and didn’t get to Maliandao until after lunch. Today was easily the WORST day since I’ve gotten to Beijing in terms of air pollution. It was horrendous. The air really, really sucked. You couldn’t see across the street without noticing the haze, and visibility on the ground was no more than 1km or so. You couldn’t see the far edge of the Tiananmen Square if you’re standing in front of Tiananmen. My eyes were burning when we were in the cab, because of all the air pollution. This was in really sharp contrast to two days ago when the weather was pretty nice, really.

So we were, needless to say, not happy and didn’t feel terribly good when we got to Maliandao. The air was just nasty, so we beelined it to the Mengku store, where we planned on doing some purchases today.

We sat down, and they were drinking some cooked puerh. There was this guy from another store in the same tea city that was there chatting with them, and so we joined in. We had a taste, and it was actually quite decent. Not bad for what it’s worth, and I enjoyed it. BBB, I think, was a little less enthusiastic. Then again, I wouldn’t spend my good money buying that stuff, but I felt ok drinking it.

Then I broke out my 30 year old loose raw tea to let them taste it. I figured it might help in the bargaining, who knows.

They were impressed, interestingly enough, by the tea. While this is only middle-of-the-road stuff in Hong Kong that nobody would raise a serious eyebrow about, it seems like they genuinely thought of this as great puerh. The guy who was from the other store, a certain Mr. Li, kept going on and on about the tea. The manager of the Mengku store first played with the dry leaves, and looked at the wet leaves more than a few times during the drinking process, each time remarking how the tea is originally pretty high grade, and the storage was excellent. I guess this made me feel better about bringing it, and I at least got a hint of why some tea friends in Hong Kong are so generous in sharing — they like to know that they’ve got the goods.

So after about 20 infusions of this tea, we started the bargaining. BBB said I’m a bad bargainer afterwards, as I did not get the 40% off that we hoped to get. Instead, it was more like 25% off. I think I might have been too affected by 1) the prices of puerh in Hong Kong, but more significantly 2) the price I was quoted for the 2002 Mengku cake at a different store a week and half ago. By that price, I had lowered the purchase price to about 35% of what they asked for. Oh well.

So we bought a total of two tongs of the 2002, and 2 of the 2000 Yuanyexiang. Pictures to follow at the end.

Then we walked around some more, first going to the teaware place where I got the gaiwan for my cousin (the green one). BBB looked at the stuff, and thought about getting 4 cups, a fairness cup, and a gaiwan, but the quoted price was 185, and all they were willing to go down to was 180. He was not happy, so he didn’t get any of it.

We then went to the store where the owner was drinking my 30 year puerh with me. It was actually a tea drinking club — where you can join as a member and then drink some tea there while chilling, basically at a much discounted price than when you compare with, say, teahouses in the city. Then again, the environment there is not very nice, and the lighting very harsh.

We had another cooked puerh there — better than the one at the Mengku store, I think. It was fuller and rounder, and at 10 years old or more, for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, we looked at the puerh on offer there. There was one that caught my eye — a Banzhang King, and decided to give it a taste test. The tea was quite good — very good, in fact, although the price was a bit high for a new tea (more than any of the Mengku stuff we got). I might go look around to see if I can find it, and if not…. maybe try my best to get a good bargain there to buy at least one of those. I really liked the way it felt. It was strong, got a nice cooling effect down the throat, and I think better than the Xizihao Banzhang cake, although I need to taste my sample again to be sure.

So we walked without buying anything. Then we wandered around, and I suggested we go to the Wuyi tea store that I visited last time. We went in, and tried two different DHPs and an old aged Wuyi. The first DHP had AMAZING cha qi. The last time I felt such a strong cha qi was when I drank the Hongyin with YP. It went up my back and ran throughout my body. It was strong, but the tea itself is actually only a low fired tea for DHP standards. It died out a bit fast — about 4-5 infusions and it was getting weak, but the cha qi was good.

The second was much higher fired. The rock taste was very prominent, and quite nice. No comparable cha qi to the first one, and the price, I think, strongly reflects that.

The third is a very nice aged Wuyi, supposedly 8 years old. I think it was aged together with a bit of chenpi, which is aged, dried orange peel. The Best Tea House does that with some of their aged oolongs as well, so I think it’s common practice. The taste is very nice, fruity, soft, supple, subdued. They said it’s not for sale, but they did quote a price when asked, so I suspect you can probably buy in very small quantities.

Just when we were leaving, we saw the proprietor of the store coming back with a plant — a Dahongpao plant they took from Wuyishan. It’s a bit pathetic looking, mostly because it’s dried up and sort of not doing too well in the Beijing weather and probably all the traveling

I took a pic.

We were really hungry after the tea tastings, and ended up in a hot pot place.

Anyway, you’ve all been waiting for the teaporn, so here you go

The 2000 Yuanyexiang

And the 2002 Mengku Wild Tea Bing

We went back to Maliandao today.

We took a different tack today, first going to the Maliandao Tea City that we’ve both been to separately, but have not yet shopped together yet, but first, a photo-op

Yes, there’s English.

Anyway, we went in there, walked around a bit, saw a store, and walked in, sat down, and tasted some tea. We tried one — a decent cake. It tastes actually somewhat similar to the 2002 Mengku cake we had yesterday, although a bit weaker — but the price was distinctly NOT similar. She either thought we were gullible tourists, which we did look the part of, or just tea drinkers who don’t know any better. She claimed it’s a 1990s cake, which cannot possibly be true. A lying, cheating merchant quoting sky high prices. We walked.

Then we went into another puerh store after much walking around. It was a Dayi only store. We had one — the 0622. It was a cake that consist mostly of buds — very small buds at that. We tried it… and it comes out a bit bitter, somewhat aromatic, but at about fourth or fift infusion, sour. I didn’t like it one bit. We didn’t buy anything there.

Then we saw the 6 Famous Tea Mountain store. BBB wanted to try some stuff there, so in we went. We had two things there, and one was decidedly better than the other. BBB left with one cake in hand — our first puerh purchase of his trip!!! By that time, I was feeling a little dizzy. I think my body really isn’t used to the amount of caffeine and tea I have been drinking the past two days, so it’s protesting. The Dayi cake was especially bad — I think because it’s all buds, the caffeine was overwhelming and my body didn’t like it.

We grabbed a quick bite, then we went to the Beijing Puerh Chadu

To actually look at teapots, not tea. There’s a teapot store there with some decent stuff. We spent a good deal of time there, with BBB looking at various things while I sat down trying to recover from my tea-drunkenness by drinking lots of hot water and having a bite of some biscuit. It worked — I gradually felt better. BBB finally settlled on one pot that I think is quite decent. Maybe we can take a picture of it at some point soon.

We then walked around the mall a bit more, again commenting on how many cakes we simply don’t recognize. There was this one store where he did recognize sometihng, the name of the factory now escaping me — and we went in there and he had some more tasting. Unimpressed, apparently (I was not drinking any tea at this point), so we left again.

So yes, a lot of tasting and “ummm, no”. In some ways, shopping with someone else is a nice thing, because it keeps us from impulse buying. When I’m by myself, I know I often will go “hmmm, this is not too bad, I can try one cake”, and before you know it, I have a bunch of stuff, none of which I necessarily feel THAT great about. Having someone around tempers that impulse. I’d imagine it’s the same with BBB.

We’ll probably go back one more time, at least. It won’t be tomorrow though — I’m just too worn out from the tea tastings. I think I need a low caffeine day to recover before going again.

So BBB and I went out to drink our way to hell today at around 9:30am. We had breakfast and hopped on a cab to go to Maliandao.

We got there around…. 10:15? Something like that. Bright and early. We went into the Beijing Puerh Chadu — walked a circle around the whole place, saw thsi one store with an unknown factory (I think they’re called Yunnan Xiangming Factory) and tried two of their puerhs. One is a Yiwu, and the other is a Banzhang cake, both 2005, I believe. The Yiwu was definitely better than the Banzhang, which was just a bit sweet and nothing really interesting. Prices were, well, low, but since it didn’t quite exactly impress either of us, we didn’t buy anything.

So out we walked, and into the tea mall next to the Beijing Central Tea Company we went. We saw this wonderful zhuni pot — the thing felt like it was melting in our hand, it was so smooth. It was not cheap, and since I 1) didn’t bring enough cash and 2) didn’t really feel like bargaining for it, not yet anyway, I decided to stay off of it, but both of us agreed there was something nice about that pot going on there. We walked around what is essentially a rather sad little tea mall with nothing impressive to offer, and BBB kept remarking how most of the teaware stores basically sell the same stuff he sees in Winghopfung in LA — except cheaper.

We ended up in the Jingmin Chacheng, where I got some of my Wuyi tea last time. We went to the top floor to look at more teaware, since BBB is looking for something. Walked around, didn’t find much. Then we hopped into a few puerh stores to check their goods out, and didn’t see much of interest either. There are just SO MANY different kinds of cakes out there, most of which we’ve never heard of, that it’s almost impossible to go “ok, let’s try this”. Near the end of our walkaround, we did find one store with two cakes that he recognized. We ended up trying three cakes — one being better than the rest. It was a Dabaihao — Big White Buds — but the seller wouldn’t agree to a price drop to a level we wanted, so we walked again, no goods in hand. I was severely dehydrated because one of the teas was really drying and I felt water was being sucked out of my body.

Had lunch at a pretty busy place with semi-warm rice (nasty). BBB loved a chicken dish I ordered.

After lunch we went to two more stores on the streets where we browsed and tasted nothing. Then, in the third one, we saw a bunch of Yichang Hao cakes. Since I have rarely noticed them in my wanderings around Maliandao, we decided to give some of it a try. We tried one, a 2005 Zhenpin, which was decent, but somehow, the tea tasted like it was locking our throat. After we walked out, I once again felt it was a bit drying. I know this apparently happens with teas stored in drier weather — they tend to have this nasty effect of drying out your mouth and throat. It was not pleasant, and so I was drinking loads of water.

Then we went all the way to the end of Maliandao, to Chayuan Chacheng. I took him to the Mengku Rongshi store, where we sat for about two hours tasting different things and (mostly me) chatting with the owner.

We had four things there. The first was a Big Snow Mountain brick, 300g, that had some wild tea mixed in with regular stuff. It was, well, good. Then we had the 2000 Yuanyexiang, which was excellent, although I detected a hint of wet storage, and the owners admitted that it had briefly gone in wet storage before. It is by no means unpleasant, just that it has gone into wet storage once upon a time. Not too bad at the end of the day. I thought this tea doesn’t exist outside of Hong Kong, and was pleasantly surprised when they said they have a little bit left. The owner, I think, was surprised that I know it at all. Thanks Davelcorp for reminding me of the existence of this thing.

Then we had the 2002 Mengku cake that I talked about last time. Both BBB and I thought it was great. I don’t know how it will age, but as it is, it is already quite pleasantly drinkable, and I think it will probably turn into something better. The price, given the goods, was excellent. I think we’re going to buy some of this.

The last cake we tried was a 2001 production of their tea, similar in taste to the 2002, but somehow a little less impressive. It’s VERY tightly compressed, so maybe that’s partly why it doesn’t seem to be as good.

We decided to just ask for quotes and then come back in a day or two before making any purchases. We then spent a good bit of time walking around Chayuan Chacheng, trying to look for more teaware. There were some ok stuff, but nothing exciting. We also looked at some more tea, but decided that we’ve really tasted enough for the day.

At the end, we walked into a store thinking we’ll look for puerh, but surprisingly, they sell a LOT of dancong. It was a better selection than the other place that I went to, and I was pleasantly surprised when they pulled out something that I recognize as what I want. I ended up getting 125g of it. No bargaining, but oh well, they broke half of a standard pack because I didn’t want so much tea.

So, not entirely without acquisition, but the buying hasn’t started. Meanwhile, I think my stomach is not really agreeing to all this young puerh, and is giving me a little trouble. I should really be more judicious in drinking puerh next time I go.