A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from January 2007

More tea tasting with L, and funny tea storage

January 10, 2007 · 3 Comments

I went to drink tea with L again today, who has a shop in Maliandao and a vast array of friends.  Everytime I go out with him I’m meeting someone new, which is quite interesting in and of itself.

When I got there they were drinking some cooked pu, with one person looking to buy stuff at the shop.  Since they were busy, I walked out with L and one of his friends, S, to look at some teapots.  While there (mostly crap) I also saw some interesting cakes…. but wow, they were expensive.

Back in the store, we started drinking tea.  I pulled out the tea that I brought along.  It was an Ying Kee Teahouse loose puerh, quite cheap (around $250-300 HKD for 600g, if I remembered correctly).  It’s wet stored stuff, but ok as a drink it now thing.  We had it… and everybody was wondering what it was, and how much it was, etc.  This is stuff that is rare in Beijing.  However, L’s business partner told me that where she used to work, they also sold a tea that was similar, for something like 1200 RMB/500g…. wow, they’re charging a lot.  In fact, I’m sure right now you could sell this tea for just as much here in Beijing.  The taste is plain, but pleasant, and easy to drink.  You can really fool a lot of people with this stuff.

Then we tried a dizzying array of raw teas as some more friends walked in (and out).  It included a Nannuo (ok, but expensive), a Yiwu (not really Yiwu, I think), a Fengqing tuo from 99 (decent).  At one point, there were 10-12 people sitting around the table drinking tea, which is rare for any store on Maliandao on any day.  None of us were actually going to buy anything, of course, and having a whole bunch of people around the table ensures that no business will be done, because nobody interested in buying tea will walk into a store full of customers already.  Nevertheless, Chinese businesses tend to think that the “qi” from people is a good thing.  There’s nothing worse than a store that is perpetually empty (which most stores on Maliandao seem to be).

We had dinner (Fujian fare), and then went to a new store that just opened that sells lots of old teas.

This is probably the weirdest store that I’ve been to on Maliandao.  It’s nicely decorated (a growing trend, it seems).  It’s got lots of old tea.  It’s expensive.  The woman who seems to own or operates the store is the polar opposite of how the store looks.  She looks like an old aunt from a rural village.  She is slightly crude in her manners, and worst of all, not too well informed about her tea.  When we commented on a few things (ZH is around) she doesn’t always seem to know what we’re referring to.  The one thing she keeps repeating is “I have lots of this tea!  I have lots of this tea!  Aren’t they all clean and in great condition?”.  She keeps telling us about her great storage facilities and how clean they are.  It’s in Xinjiang, the NW part of China that is largely arid, and she says she keeps a few workers there to clean the facilities constantly.  She basically transports teas from Hong Kong and Guangzhou to Xinjiang to let them lose the wetter storage flavour before sending them back to the equally beautifully clean storage in Beijing.  Ok, got it.

Well… we tried two things there before I left.  The first is a 99 Xiaguan iron cake.  Nice flavours, reminds me of the Fengqing tuo that we had earlier today.  Teas from that area all broadly taste similar.  Good storage condition, nothing too remarkable.  I didn’t ask how much, but it probably wasn’t going to be cheap.

The second thing…. she asked us to pick something.  Nobody wanted to, so I did the honours and picked a 80s Zhongcha Traditional Character (8653) cake.  I wanted to compare it with the sample YP gave me and see how it’s like…. Wow, what a difference.  YP’s is so, so, so much better.  The cakes look very similar in shape, compression, condition, etc.  In fact, I’d say that looking at the teas, there’s almost no difference (except that this cake is whole whereas YP’s is partially drunk).  This cake you can’t smell anything, while with YP’s you can smell some tea taste.  The liquor also looked similar — the same dark amber hue, very alluring, very nice.  Then I lifted the cup to my mouth, poured the tea in, and swished it around…. and I was very disappointed.

I couldn’t find the nice aromatic taste, the sweet, very sweet huigan, and the general smoothness that is present in YP’s tea.  Instead, this one was a bit harsh.  It’s obviously aged, about 15-20 years I think (she claims 30, but Traditional Character is no older than 1980, I think).  The tea is not that aromatic, almost a bit bland given the age, and the body, while thick enough, was not very smooth.  It roughs up your tongue, and dries out your throat.  There were lots of things that didn’t seem quite right with the tea.  I was hoping it would improve with a few more infusions, but it only got worse.  Why?

I think I have a theory…. I asked the lady if the storage facilities are well ventilated.  To her, it probably sounded like a compliment… but it’s not.  She said, proudly, that unless there was a storm, all the windows and doors of the storage are open, usually.  The Beijing facilities boast of powerful floor fans that blow a steady and strong breeze through the storage at all hours.  This all in the name of “tuicang”, or “receeding storage”, i.e. the process that you do by leaving wet-stored tea in a dry storage facility to let it lose the wet-stored taste.  It all sounds good in theory…. but I think she got it wrong.  I am by no means an expert, but from what I have gathered from reading, and from what I can imagine, a too-well-ventilated storage area for tea is actually bad for it.  The main reason is that the aromatic substances in a tea will dissipate quickly if it’s too well ventilated.  On Sanzui you sometimes hear people asking for help, because they put their tea in a breezy corridor and now they are bland.  I think this is why the Zhongcha cake is so bland in comparison — the flavours are blown away by the too-well ventilated air.

The other problem, the dryness, is probably also caused by the air movement.  Both Xinjiang and Beijing are very dry places.  While this might sound like a good idea for storing teas that have been through wet storage, if you have a constant breeze that blows through the tea, then it is constantly bringing very dry air through the tea — sucking away moisture in the tea.  Not only will it age poorly while sitting in said storage, it will dry the teas out and also cause the rough/dryness that I felt in the tea.  By trying too hard, she might be ruining a lot of good teas.

This is all mere speculation, but most of the stuff I’ve read and heard (from people with experience) all point to the same thing.  Tea is best stored in an enclosed area with little to no circulation of air, to keep in the tea’s aroma.  It doesn’t have to be extra dry or wet — just average, normal, and natural.  It’s a pity that her teas might all be messed up eternally given how they are treated.  Sure, they look great, and look like perfectly dry stored stuff, but when it hits your mouth…. it’s just not the same.  I will pay $600 for YP’s cake, I will not pay $600 for this woman’s.  Besides, her prices are easily double that of Hong Kong.  Forget it.

Wow, this was a verbose entry.

 

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Confused

January 9, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I walked by the tea store in the supermarket again, and saw something interesting — it was the cake that I bought at the Best Tea House before I left Hong Kong this time.  So, I walked up to the cake and took a closer look to see if it’s the same thing.  It is, and it’s priced $400 RMB… almost 3 times what I paid in Hong Kong, proof that not all tea is cheaper here.

I picked up the cake anyway, smelling it, to see if it smells any different (it looks more or less the same).  At this point, the sales came up behind me, and starting saying “this is a 8582 cake”.  Ok…. it’s not, obviously, since it’s not made by Menghai and looks nothing like any 8582 I’ve ever seen.  The best comment followed…”this cake is cooked puerh”.

Wah

Lady, this ain’t cooked puerh!  This is a 2-3 years raw puerh!  Whoever hired this woman should be fired.  Then again, maybe it’s exactly this kind of misinformation that allows them to sell at such extremely exorbitant prices?  I mean, my oh my, cooked puerh?  8582?  This is a small factory (tiny, in fact) cake that uses big tree leaves and has quite a nice throat feel, even though the liquor is light and the flavour is also somewhat light, and you tell me this is cooked puerh?

I just shot back “this is not cooked puerh”, put it down, and left.  They looked a bit shocked… I guess usually potential customers don’t do this sort of thing.  Cooked puerh… meh

 

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A barrage of youthfulness

January 8, 2007 · 2 Comments

I went out for tea today in the afternoon with L, who came back from Shanghai.  He went tasting at the Zhongcha office today again, and invited me to go along.  When I got there, things were already in full swing… and there were LOTS of people.  SH, the guy whose family member made the Yiwu cake I bought yesterday, was there.  L was there.  In the end, ZH also came (sorry I use these “names”, but I don’t know if any of them wish to be identified).  There were others too… about 8 people in all.  It was a big gathering.

They had already tasted two aged bricks of some sort, and which I only got a taste.  It’s here when you could feel the immaturity of the Beijing market relative to Hong Kong… this is stuff that people in Hong Kong won’t even bring out to taste with friends, because really, it wasn’t that good.  Yet here people treasure it, because it seems like some really good stuff.  There’s really a dearth of aged tea here.  In 5 years time, I’m sure that situation will change, but right now… it’s all new tea, and everybody is still trying things for the first time.  SH is obviously more experienced, since he’s based in Guangzhou and has access to many more good teas.  ZH and the other tea taster at Zhongcha also have tried a good bunch of stuff.  Everybody else, however, are relative novices.

The first two teas that we brewed up after I got there were the two new fall 06 production Zhongcha cakes.  One is a Bada Mountain cake, while the other is a Yiwu.  The Bada is quite nice, very fragrant, reminds me a bit of some Nannuo teas I’ve had… almost oolong like in its fragrance, and fairly alluring.  The Yiwu, on the other hand, is a bit …. off.  Bitter, a bit thin, not that interesting, and IMHO, not really Yiwu at all.  It smells like a Yiwu, but when brewed, it doesn’t taste right in many respects.  I’m not sure why.  I guess the most obvious explanation is that it’s not pure Yiwu, but mixed with other stuff.  It just doesn’t taste like the many other Yiwus I’ve had so far.

Then we went on to a Xiaguan Iron Cake from the 90s.  Wet, wet, wet stored.  The whole thing has a coating of whiteness on it.  Not very good.  Tastes heavily of wet storage.

At this point, SH pulled out a tea from his bag.  He poured the contents of the bag into the gaiwan, and a cloud of dust appeared.  It looks like fannings, stuff you pulled out of a teabag.  It looks quite unremarkable.  He said this is bamboo tea — the tea that is stuffed in bamboos.  He said that apparently what they do is put mud over the opening, and then store the whole thing under soil for a year, before pulling it up again.  This will make sure the bamboo won’t crack and I imagine also ages the tea.  This thing is about 40 years old.

It’s very nice.  Old tea taste, more like an aged liu an or an aged thousand taels tea.  Smooth, sweet, got good qi, some huigan…. very nice, very tasty, and he said when they got it, they only paid 200 RMB each…

We then had some cooked puerh.  It’s really not very exciting and not even woth mentioning.  Reminds me again why I generally don’t drink cooked puerh.

L wants to get together again.  We might drink something on Wednesday.  I also need to pick up some tea for Rosa, as well as going to where I got my electronic scale to see if they will replace mine — the thing isn’t working anymore, and I’ve used it a total of maybe 5 times!

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2005 Yisheng

January 7, 2007 · 1 Comment

I went to Maliandao today, predictably enough.  What else am I going to do on a sunny, cold sunday in Beijing?

I didn’t exactly make it very far today.  I walked into the Puerh Chadu, not having been there in ages, thinking that maybe I can find a few 02-04 things.  Chayuan, nice as it may be, is too new.  Most of the stores there only carry stuff from 2005 onwards because they haven’t been around that long.  While some are moved from somewhere else, so they have older stock, most of the time they just sell very new teas.

I ended up in the third store I saw.  They had a tea from a maker called “Dou Ji”, which I’ve seen online, so I figured it’s not a bad idea to at least look at it in person and check it out.  There are simply far too many puerh brands out there, and the more you see, the more you know.

I stayed there till almost 6pm.

I ended up trying three Yiwu teas, one is 04 spring and two are 05 spring.  The 05 springs, despite being from the same company and the same period, taste different.  They’re not hugely different, but different enough for anybody to notice.  One was obviously better, more rounded, fuller in flavour, body, texture, etc.  The aroma is especially good, tasting obviously like a Yiwu that is beginning to age… or at least like all the aged Yiwus that I’ve had.  I don’t know why, but there is something particular about this aroma that I like.

The 04, on the other hand, felt a little stale.  While it’s still good, and actually more full flavoured in the aged taste, it’s somehow missing something.  I ended up purchasing 3 of the 05 spring that I like.

Then I went to the store that L partially owns.  L’s in town, and I figured I’ll go see if he’s there.  The manager of the store saw my cakes, and screamed “oh no you didn’t!”.  Turns out she has a few jian of this, and could’ve easily sold me a few for less (she didn’t say how much less).  Oh well.  She did give me a sample of the tea she has quite a few weeks ago, and which I never tried.  I should try it now to compare with the cake I got and see if it’s actually the same stuff, or if it might be the other 05 spring batch that I didn’t like as much.

One of the persons in charge of making this particular cake was in town, and he came to the store shortly after I arrived.  We brewed up a Mahei cake from 04, which I thought was utterly unimpressive.  It’s a lot worse than a lot of Yiwu teas I’ve tried.  The conversation with this guy, however, was good, and it was interesting to see his take on the puerh market these days.  Among the things he told me…. 5kg of raw leaves makes 1kg of maocha now, whereas a few years ago only 3.7kg of raw leaves could make 1kg of maocha.

I’m not exactly sure what that means, although it does leave me a feeling that something’s going to be really wrong with the puerh market in a few years’ time.

 

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Mystery Keyixing bricks

January 6, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Back to the City of Dust… where everywhere in the apartment has gathered a
fine (or not so fine) layer of stuff.  It’s also bone dry here.  And last,
but not least, is the internet… it’s too slow.  It’s much slower than when
I left, no doubt thanks to the reduced traffic capacity thanks to the
damaged cables that are still being repaired.  I’m asking my girlfriend to
post this for me, as I simply could not get to the edit screen, and forget
about uploading pictures….

I tried the Keyixing brick I bought here again.  If you need a reminder…
it’s the one that seemed to be aged raw puerh, supposedly re-pressed from
loose maocha.  There’s this odd aroma when I first try it.  It’s not quite
typical aged puerh tasting…. similar, but not exact.  It almost reminded
me of cooked puerh, but it’s not quite that either.  The best way to
describe the aroma is that it’s crisp.  In fact, the whole tea is crisp —
and a little thin.  The aroma is shifty, and not weighty enough as a good
puerh.  I debated for a long time whether this is a really lightly fermented
cooked puerh or not, but I decided, from looking at the spent leaves, that
it can’t be.  If it is, it must be cooked with some new method, because no
cooked puerh I’ve seen ever looked like this.

The tea is a bit bitter, but the bitterness does go away and turn to
sweetness.  There’s an obvious huigan, lingering in the back of the throat.
There’s a hint of “throat feel”, but not significant.  The bitterness is
most obvious in infusions 2-4, after which it dies down and gives way to
more prominent sweetness.  I wonder if further aging will make the tea
better and less bitter.  I suspect it will, as it still tastes quite young
in many respects.  I don’t think this can be more than 10 years, although
the colour of the tea suggests it’s probably more than 5.  I’d think it’s
between 5-8 years of age.  I also think there are leaves of various age
mixed in, as the leaves don’t look too uniform in age.

Not a bad tea, certainly not too bad for the price I paid, but not great.
Another experiment, so to speak, and an interesting one.  Too bad it will be
years before I know the answer to any of these questions.

 

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Tea shopping

January 5, 2007 · 1 Comment

I finally bought a few things after having had a whole bunch of free tastings at various shops. I do, after all, need to keep up the appearance that I’m somehow shopping for tea all along.

I tried three things today. One is actually a Wuyi tea that I brought over to the Best Tea House (for Rosa to try). She wants me to buy a whole jin of it, because it’s so cheap and yet tasting quite decent (for the price). It’s 1/2 of the price of the cheapest Wuyi tea on offer at the Best Tea House, and I personally think it’s even better.

The second is a small 100g cake of supposedly Yiwu tea. I don’t think it’s Yiwu, or at least it doesn’t taste like the Yiwu that I know. It doesn’t have that “Yiwu” taste. Not that great, and very expensive for what it is.

The third… is better. Some unknown origin old tree tea. Good chaqi, nice feeling down the throat that lingers for a long time… it’s hard to find tea that actually does it, and I am still wondering what it is that causes such a feeling down the throat (and why it’s only present in some, but not all, teas). It’s a bit of a mystery to me still, since you’d think that the same chemical will be present no matter what, but apparently not. Teas that look almost identical can have a great variation in how that particular sensation develops (or fails to develop). I think this is why YP thinks it is such an important indicator of a tea’s quality.

It is increasingly difficult to buy anything from Hong Kong though, simply because prices are high. I can usually find the same thing for much cheaper. I know I probably paid more than I need to for what I got today (which wasn’t much), but I can sort of justify it as payment for all the free teas I’ve had over the past two weeks.

Back to Beijing tomorrow, then Shanghai, then Beijing again, then Hong Kong, and then the States for a little bit…. the next few months will be busy!

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How do you make puerh?

January 4, 2007 · 2 Comments

How DO you make puerh?

Conflicting versions abound. From my understanding, puerh making is very simnple — picking of the leaves, kill green, some rolling, and sun-drying. There it is in its entirely, raw puerh maocha is done. Then you steam it (enough to soften the leaves) and press it. Then you have compressed maocha.

Puerh, properly speaking, isn’t quite finished until it’s gone through at least some fermentation. Raw maocha just compressed is more like green tea.

Technically, I think, maocha can be classified as green tea, because it goes through the essential processes that green tea goes through, but there’s a crucial difference in processing temperature, which allows something in puerh tea to retain its bioactivity and continues to ferment naturally (into something that tastes good) whereas green tea of our normal kind is processed at very high temperatures, and the tea gradually loses flavour over time and turns into something nasty.

However, some now process puerh with additional steps such as the withering of leaves and the intentional breaking of leaves (to encourage fermentation before kill-green). This, generally speaking, is what you do to tea that is destined for oolong. This process creates honey or fruity like aromas, along with lower bitterness and astringency (relative to raw puerh). It makes a nice tasting tea right away… which will mean the tea is easier to sell. It also means you have something more like oolong, and the aging prospects…. are suspect.

There are other raw puerh that are processed like green tea, and tastes like green tea (a la longjing type green tea). They might not age as well either. The jury’s still out on the long term prospects of these teas. Xiaguan mixes some of them into their tuocha, but it’s only a certain percent, not 100% of it. What happens to these things 20 years from now?

This is what we were debating in the Best Tea House today with Rosa and Tiffany. We don’t really know. Nobody seems to really know. So many developments are so recent that nobody really could figure out what’s a good way of making puerh, what will really age well, what won’t, etc. I’ve heard at least 10 different versions of what makes a tea a good tea for aging. The only common point so far is that it should be strong, somehow. If the tea is mild and weak right now, it won’t do well (Yiwu is weak in many respects, but not in chaqi and thickness of the tea). Is that the only indicator of a good raw puerh?

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Provenance

January 3, 2007 · Leave a Comment

One of the things that distinguish a Hong Kong tea vendor from a mainland (at least Beijing) tea vendor is that Hong Kong tea vendors tend to be very imprecise about the provenance of their tea. Most vendors in Hong Kong cannot tell you if the tea you’re tasting right now is from 1989 or 1991. Most vendors also cannot tell you which mountain its from, or whether it’s a fall or spring tea, or what not. Some do, like Sunsing, but that’s rare. At the Best Tea House, for example, such information are usually qualified… i.e. “I think this is from xxx” or “we started selling it in 200x”. The Mengku Yuanyexiang, for example, is, I believe, a 2001 cake, but Tiffany always thought it’s from 2003, because they started selling it in 2003. They don’t always sell everything right away, and that is fairly standard practice. Usually they are not in a hurry to sell… and why should they, with prices going up so fast?

This is in stark contrast to Beijing tea sellers, who will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the cake in question, from the production date, raw material origins, storage location, etc, down to every last detail. Sometimes it’s probably true, but more often than not, I think it’s probably at least sometimes fabricated. I’ve heard so many times from people in Beijing that their tea has always been dry stored since production in, say, 2001, etc etc, except that I find them sometimes to be slightly wet stored, damp, etc. They will always tell a story, but the story is not always true.

The other thing is… how many people can tell the difference of a tea when it’s ten years old? As far as I am aware, nobody knows what a 10 year old Banzhang tastes like. Pure Banzhang (substitute any mountian here) cakes didn’t appear until about 10 years ago. Before that, all we’ve got are recipe cakes, or cakes with leaves of unknown or only somewhat known origins. Who can say for sure where the leaves for the original 8582 was from? The season it was picked? Anything? Yet, we’re drinking them up like there’s no tomorrow (with prices to match). I recently heard someone tell me that this 1997 brick was made with Banzhang area materials. Huh? How do you know that? It’s not written anywhere. By taste? How many people can taste that much of a difference among these locations?

Yet, it is on this sort of information that prices are driven up. XXX cake is expensive because it’s a pure Yiwu from, say, 2001, and the 2002 and 2003 have correspondingly lower prices. If the materials (and the quality) are about the same… why buy the 2001 when its price is, say, 100% more? Your money won’t make 100% return in two years unless you’re a very good investor, so wouldn’t it be better to pay the 100% lower price to get the tea that is 2 years younger? There’s an opportunity cost involved. I guess if I were 65, I might pay the higher price to get the further aging, but otherwise… I’m willing to wait. This is mainly why I only buy cheap or loose aged puerh for current consumption, and buy mostly 5 years or younger compressed teas… because they are correspondingly much cheaper. At the end of the day, 15 years from now when I am drinking some of my current purchases (when they’re finally ready for consumption), I probably can’t tell the difference between the stuff I bought in 2006 or 2007.

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Bangwei 2006 Fall cake

January 2, 2007 · 4 Comments

While editing texts stuff like Xanga is ok, uploading pictures is still not really possible (too slow and unstable). So for now we have to do without pictures…

I tried the sample of Bangwei 2006 Fall cake that I received with the purchase of two Yiwu cakes from that guy on Sanzui. I have to say I really liked this tea, and thought it’s quite nice. There’s a robust aroma, with a hint of smoke, in the first few infusions, and the tea is not too astringent and also got a nice cooling feeling down the throat. The leaves are big, meaty, and soft. I gave up drinking before the tea gave out… around 10 infusions (I had to go somewhere). Even in the less than ideal setup of my home here, the tea tasted quite nice, so I can imagine if I were actually able to brew in a better environment, then the tea might taste even better.

It’s also selling at only about 2/3 the price of the Yiwu cakes, which makes this a little more attractive as well. I also think I need to diversify my holdings of tea. Right now, I have a disproportionate amount of stuff from Mengku for some reason (not all from the Shuangjiang Mengku factory). I also have some Yiwu, and a few other cakes, but in general, my holdings are pretty concentrated in a few areas. I should really branch out into some recipe cakes, and also some stuff from the “new” six mountains…

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Sunsing

January 1, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I went to Sunsing today for the first time since I got back. I don’t usually go there, mostly because their stuff, aged or otherwise, are all quite expensive (in some cases even more than Best Tea House). Also, the service I’ve gotten there before has always been sub-par. I’ve always found them to be a bit snotty and hard to deal with.

I tried three teas there today. The first two were Yiwu teas… one 2006 spring and the other 2006 fall, both made by Sunsing themselves. They are supposed to be Mahei teas, and honestly…. I found both to be pretty poor, especially considering the price they wanted for it. They were not smooth, not that fragrant, not that thick…. and just not that interesting. The fall one is especially poor, and charging the same price for both fall and spring, when there’s an obvious difference in quality, is a little…. meh

Then I tried the 2004 Yongnian cake… it’s a Manzhuan, and I don’t think I really liked that one either. The Manzhuan cake from Beijing that I bought was much better. Price is again a factor.

I think the next few days I’ll actually make some purchases. So far, I’ve only gotten a few loose puerhs in Hong Kong (and picking up the tong of tea I ordered in the summer). There are a few things that I want to buy and deem good enough for the price, and will start going around to buy them….

Time’s running out, but then, I’m going back to Maliandao. I think I learned something this trip to Hong Kong though… so that’s progress, at least.

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