A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from September 2007

Another aged oolong

September 20, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Before I go on about today’s tea…. here’s the one from two days ago

Recognize these leaves?

Probably not, but they’re the same leaves (minutes the yellow leaf on the right) as the ones I posted two days ago for the mystery cake. I often keep the wet leaves around for a day or two and let them dry to see what they look like when dried — this way I can relate back to how they looked originally (or at least closer to it) and thus be better able to gauge the leaves when I first see them. All the leaves are quite hairy. That’s not always true for puerh, and sometimes there’s very little hair. Re-drying also leaves an interesting aroma — almost vanilla like. Try it sometime.

Just don’t sell it as new leaves :p

Anyway, today I drank a sample I got from Fuxing, the shop I visited on Sunday. The owner gave me a bit of an aged oolong to try, because when I was leaving I told her that I am looking for that stuff. This tea is quite cheap, which is always a plus. It also looks aged — especially since it is a non-ball rolled tea, indicating that it’s been around for some time now. She warned me that this particular sample is a bit sour, because she just left it out and it got damp. Ok, forewarned.

Looks and smells legitimately aged

I think I’ve mentioned before that in Cantonese we call the taste of aged oolongs “chen”, which literally just means “aged”, “old”. “Chenpi”, dried tangerine peels, literally means “old skin”, and has a slightly similar taste to teas like this. Some people will age their oolong with some old chenpi thrown into the jar and sealed together. When you pull them out, they will taste like chenpi and is supposed to be somewhat medicinal in properties.

This tea has a lot of that kind of flavour. I actually only detected a hint of sourness. I think the sourness is light, and is only noticeable when infusions are long. Since I used the whole sample in my small gaiwan, a short infusion was enough and it avoided any serious sourness — in the silghtly longer steepings I could taste it, but then it went away very late in the tea. I like stuff like this. In fact, I might even like this stuff more than aged puerh sometimes. They’re just very pleasant and easy to drink, no thoughts required, little worry about fake tea (it will be obvious), and not much concern about poor storage (it shows in the taste). They’re also way cheaper. I wonder why I bother with puerh sometimes.

The wet leaves seem to tell me it wasn’t very heavily roasted at all. I like this tea, and better if the rest of it is packed well and not sour (which she seemed to indicate it’s not)

I should go buy the rest. I think they have a kilo left.

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Music and tea

September 19, 2007 · 7 Comments

I opened this up today to drink, finally, after it’s been sitting around for months and traveled with me.

Action Jackson packed it in Shanghai. It’s a cooked tea that she wanted me to try. It’s surprisingly sturdy as a packaging — even though it’s been in a luggage multiple times, it still kept all the tea!

Seeing the wrapping made me think of this question again – do people listen to music when drinking tea? What kind, if any? I first thought about this question on the subway listening to Philip Glass.. and wondered if any tea would go well with such music. I am not sure, especially since I usually drink in silence by myself.

These days, a lot of shops in China are starting to have guqin in the background or even live. It really started while I was in Beijing — all of a sudden many shops acquired one. After the cultural suicide during the Cultural Revolution, now people have finally gotten enough time and money to start worrying about something other than feeding themselves. Guqin works very well with tea. I wonder if others find music works or not.

The tea today was a little off. I’m not sure if the multiple trips in a luggage did some damage to it. The aroma of the leaves (wet) smell better than the tea tasted — it was a bit bitter for a cooked, a little off, and after a few infusions, a little sour. It’s still an ok cooked, and I didn’t really mind drinking it, but it wasn’t the best out there, I’m afraid.

It looks just like most cooked teas

When it comes to cooked puerh, Menghai still works the best. While raw tea involves very little skill in making the cake, cooked tea has a lot of skills — and apparently, water is also an important factor. For example, Mengku factory had problem with their cooked tea (tasted sour) because the water they used wasn’t good enough, and so they had to pipe it in from a faraway spring.

Still, I don’t drink much cooked tea, and if I ever want one… I would rather drink a red (black) tea or a shuixian instead.

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Yet another mystery cake

September 18, 2007 · 2 Comments

Mystery cakes abound in Taiwan. I found another one this weekend, and since it looked good enough and is cheap enough, decided to give it a spin.

First let’s take a look at the mystery cake in question:

The shadow in the bottom is a lighting thing — the cake looks quite even throughout actually

As you can see… lots of tips, furry, and light in colour. I thought, when I saw the cake, that it looked pretty good. The leaves look robust (at least in person). When I tasted it at the store…. it was a little bland, it seemed, but the guy used very little leaves. I thought I should buy one and try it out in person, so I did.

I used a gaiwan today, so as to not have any interference from the teaware in the preparation of the tea.

The tea is interesting. There’s a surprising smoothness early on, even though I used quite a bit of tea. The tea still tastes very new — at most two years of age, but perhaps even less than that. The taste is mellow. Some bitterness is there, but on the whole, not very bitter at all, but also not too sweet either. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but I think this is probably Lincang tea.

There’s some throatiness as well as some qi, and the tea generally held up very well over the course of the afternoon (holed up with a minor typhoon — mostly rain and not much wind). The under-the-lid smell is that of a properly made puerh — no aroma, really, aside from the normal smell you’d come to expect. I find that if a tea is odd in some ways, the lid will be aromatic instead of neutral or even has a bit of that “green” odor.

The leaves of the cake, when wet, is the most impressive part

They look very good. I wonder if I should get more of this thing. I’m really unsure, at this point. Perhaps it’s best to sit on it and try it again some time down the road….

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Laocong rougui

September 17, 2007 · 5 Comments

This is one of the acquisitions over the past weekend — a laocong (old bush) rougui.

This is what I will say is a heavy roast. It has been aged a bit to mellow out the “fire” taste in the tea, but there’s still a bit of it left. The tea’s not particularly cheap, but I’ve been wanting to try some of the stuff available here in Taiwan to compare with stuff I’ve got from China, and this store sells basically every kind of Wuyi Yancha imaginable.

Although rougui is supposed to have some sort of cinnamon aroma, I have never in my life found that to be the case. I don’t know … is it just me?

The tea brews a darkish coloured tea

This is with a 80% fill of dry leaves in the rather small pot that I use.

The first few infusions were quite good — very good, actually. Deep, full flavours that coat the mouth, and the lingering aroma lasts quite long. Sniffing the dried cup yields a pleasant sweetness. Some qi, although perhaps not as much as I’d like, given the price. The aroma in the cup lingers for quite a while — I can still smell it distinctly from the fairness cup hours after the last (rather weak) infusion has left it. It lasted easily for 10+ brews, and can keep going if I wished. Of course, the tea turns to a sweet, mellow flavour after about 5-6 infusions, but one of the things about yancha is that they keep going, and going, and going….

I am rather curious to try some of this guy’s other offerings, since this initial one is not bad at all. There are some rarer varietals that are on sale there that aren’t usually found elsewhere. Prices range from medium to high, but if the quality is good… getting 100g isn’t that much of an investment. These teas generally keep pretty well, and aren’t too fussy. If only the store is not so out of the way. Yancha is very pleasant as a regular drink, as opposed to young puerh, which, despite my frequent intake, is never really quite pleasant, necessarily speaking. One reason I didn’t try one of the new cakes I bought is precisely because I feel like I need a break from that young stuff…

I still can’t tell much from wet leaves for yancha. Leaves here seem a little smaller, perhaps an indication that more tender leaves are used (thus better). Roasting is obvious, but not so much that it becomes black. Honestly, of all the kinds of tea, I feel that yancha is perhaps the most difficult to understand. It’s easy to appreciate, but to be able to figure out the ins-and-outs of any one particular batch…. I should probably go to Wuyi again and spend a few days just observing their processing. The tea requires so much skill — from picking, processing, roasting — it’s extremely complex and the factors that go into the final product are many.

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A short shopping trip

September 16, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Yesterday I went to two shops, both of which were relatively unexciting. I bought a little bit of stuff, but mostly of curiosity and not because they represent what I really see as very high quality stuff.

I was a bit dissatisfied, and seeing that there is a store in my neighbourhood that I haven’t visited (the Chinese version of puerh-teapot is probably most useful for that) I decided to go there and take a look. They even have a website, which is rare especially for a store in my neck of the woods, since they don’t seem to be a huge operation. (Website in Chinese, and I linked you to the puerh page which is more easily navigable).

I walked in, and there were already a good three or four people at the store, sitting around the big table in the middle. The decor of the place falls into the “neighbourhood shop” kind of decor — rather dark, very unimpressive looking, with lots of pots lined on the wall and some puerh cakes in one corner of the store. They also had the obligatory bags of oolongs, but I get the sense those really don’t move much.

The person who was manning the desk was an old lady, who turned out to be the mother of the store owner. I was left alone to look at the cakes (I first quickly looked at the pots — some of which look very good). Most of the cakes on the website exist in the store. It was an interesting collection, and some of the stuff are even available in Western shops. I was, of course, rather curious that this unassuming looking store has this rather interesting collection of puerh — and all only less than 10 minutes walk from my place!

Meanwhile, some other guy walked in, and he started chatting me up. It seems like what I said was enough to impress upon him that I am not quite a complete newbie to tea, so I think that smoothed conversation. I eventually settled down at the desk, trying a tea that I picked out — it’s one of the cakes I’ve never seen before (page 6 of the website, third one from the left on the top row). It looked good enough, and I’ve never encountered it. It’s from “Zhang Jia Wan” or “Zhang family bay”. It’s a village in Mengla, which is part of the Mengsa mountain, a bit away from Yiwu, but not too far. Some will fuddle and say this is a Yiwu tea, but it’s not quite.

The dry leaves are dark, and the taste interesting. It’s very mellow, but there’s something there, something that penetrates down the throat. She brewed it in a tasting set — those white cups with the lid. It wasn’t an ideal way to try it given that she wasn’t doing long brews. Nevertheless… interesting tea.

I tried the other cake that is under that private label (the one on its right on the website). It’s from Youle… even mellower, and very smooth. It’s harder to tell if this cake is really good or really bad. I can’t quite decide. It tastes less aged than the first one, which is in and of itself an interesting thing. I don’t know how that can be the case, since they’re both from 2005 and made by the same folks and stored in the exact same way. I suppose it’s all a function of the raw materials and the processing. Food for thought.

Meanwhile, conversation continues. Obviously, everybody at the store know each other well. What also became obvious is that this place doesn’t just deal mostly in teapots.. it deals mostly in high end teapots, and has deep connections in Yixing. She knows quite a few of the craftsmen. She also seems to know most of the more famous personages in tea in Taiwan. You would never be able to tell by the unassuming store and the location.

She was quite generous and let me try another tea, made by Ta Culture Tea of Malaysia (website still under construction, it seems). She said the owner of the place, or at least one of the owners, is actually Taiwanese, and he gave her quite a few sample cakes of different provenance. The one I tried was a Bulang. It’s obviously made of good material. I don’t know how much, but I suspect it won’t be cheap. Very durable tea, made of mostly spring tips. Interesting…

I ended up leaving the place with one cake each of the two teas I tried, since they are not too expensive at all and are rather interesting in their own right. I want to try them more thoroughly before deciding if they’re actually good or bad, as the conditions at the store made that a little difficult. I also seem to have found a connection to a Pinglin farm while there (one of the other people there is from a tea farmer family), so maybe going to see a tea farm will now be an easier thing come October, when they start harvesting again (fall pick was just done, apparently). Obviously, today was a good day.

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Teashop archetypes

September 15, 2007 · 6 Comments

A collection of archetypes of tea stores in Greater China, not exhaustive:

The Grand Old Store — stores that have been around for years, maybe decades. Often run by old men wearing wifebeaters. They often look quite glum (the store, that is), with old decor and a counter that is quite worn, maybe with an old cash register (the mechanical kind) to boot. They deal mostly in wholesale business, and so often have an attitude when a youngish person walks in poking around looking at things. They honestly couldn’t care less if you buy your 150g of tea or not, but they will, however, brew stuff for you to try if you ask. Not the easiest to walk into and shop, but can be quite rewarding, because they could be cheap, and they are often cultural experiences in their own right.

The 7-elevens — stores that are just around the corner from some residential area, serving primarily the locals. They generally don’t have very good tea, and prices are not necessarily cheap, because they’re the final link in the tea food chain before the consumers (who are often not very knowledgable and just want some tea) buy them. You’re not likely to find good stuff here, although sometimes for things like puerh it could be possible to find bargains in such places. Not likely to hold much interest for the visitor who doesn’t live in the area.

The art galleries — stores that are more or less selling culture, not tea. Often well decorated, with pretty salesgirls clad in qipao and that kind of thing (substitute qipao for kimono when in Japan). Prices are high. Tea can be good, but that’s actually no guarantee because the owners who open these things often claim to be experts, but I’ve found some to be less than expert sometimes. They are often a joy to drink tea in, but not always a joy to buy tea from. They will tell you a pretty story, with fancy settings, etc, and entice you to pay premium bucks for something that you can buy next door for half the price. A few places in Yongkang in Taipei, for example, fall into this category.

The one-man-show — stores where the owner lives in it, practically (or sometimes, literally). Sometimes these expand into bigger shops, maybe even with a branch or two, as the Best Tea House eventually did, or they just stay small and stay slim, as many others do. Tea selection and prices depend highly on the owner’s preferences, and it seems success in this sort of venture require a good bit of luck and definitely some skill. Prices are often not low at these places, but selections can also be very good, as I think it does take some dedication to tea and the tea business to actually do this kind of thing with a passion (and spend so much time on it). I went to a store like this today, and got some interesting things. Not too cheap, but could be very good. I find these are often the most enjoyable to visit, because you can really get into a conversation with the owner about the teas they sell, etc, and spend hours chatting over some good tea. Many shops in Maliandao are also of this type, although there, knowledge of tea varies very considerably.

The retailer pretending to be wholesaler — this is mostly a mainland phenomenon, I think, where you have bona-fide tea markets where dozens, or even hundreds, of tea shops gather together. They all say they’re wholesalers, but often they’re just retailers pretending to be wholesaler, trying to get you to think you’re paying a better price than you actually are. Some are genuinely doing wholesale while also retailing, as my friend L’s store is, but many are very dependent on the retail business. They overlap with the one-man-show sometimes, but not all the time, as some of these are started by non-resident owners who are just in the business of tea without the interest, and staffed by (often) country girls who are just here for a job in the city.

The fake teahouses — these are places where they’re either a restaurant, a cafe, or some other such thing, but calling themselves a teahouse to make themselves seem higher class, more cultured, etc. Tea selection can be iffy, but can have some gems sometimes. Prices are universally high, of course, especially if you sit down and drink stuff. They are more into selling food and snacks, and tea is just part of the menu.

The real teahouses — these are places that do focus on tea as their primary business. If you are generous, you would include places like Chunshui Tang where they mostly sell bubble tea. If not, then it limits the range to only places like Wisteria in Taipei (there are others like it, but it is the most famous). You go there to drink tea, maybe with a few friends, but you don’t go to eat, or snack, or just hang out. Drinking tea is your purpose there. Selection can be ok to great, and decor often is pleasant. Difference between this and the art galleries is mainly on the focus — whether it seems to do more sit-in drinking or more take-out.

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Weird cake revisited

September 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I tried this tea. It was brewed lightly, and the reuslt was ok, pleasant, not too offensive, but not too much to write home about.

I decided to try it again today, with a heavier hand.

Some of the same things remained. The most noticeable thing though, is that the odd smell coming from this tea — a bit of a slightly weird, perhaps fermenting smell, is very strong when brewed heavier. The way the leaves smell, the tea smells and tastes too. I don’t think it is a particularly good taste. I do think the taste will eventually fade, but right now, it is very strong.

The tea is medium bodied, with some sweetness, but still bitter for the most part. Rough, not too rough. It’s a bit like a younger version of yesterday’s tea, although with a bit better longevity and also a bit more sweetness later on, which yesterday’s tea sort of lacked. You can see the raw nature of the tea in later infusions, when it sort of returns to a more green cake state. The change in colour is noticeable, and the last infusion is sort of a golden yellow rather than a brown.

I’m not sure what to make of it. Perhaps this is just the smell of whatever storage facility it was in — and the storage smells a bit nasty? It seems to be the case, as the base tea seems quite ok, and underneath the smell I can detect some more floral notes. However, I do wonder why the tea behaves the way it does. I even wonder if it has been doctored a bit to appear more aged. I did comment last time that I don’t think this is a real Menghai. I did buy it mostly out of curiosity more than anything else. It will be interesting to see what happens to it… perhaps after a few months of airing out, it will change? Who knows.

The wet leaves look better than yesterday’s

But some leaves are oddly shaped — look at the one on the left

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a leaf with that kind of shape before — with a round, big bottom and tapered ends. Usually they are thickest in the middle.

Odd.

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Loose puerh from Off-Chaism

September 13, 2007 · 6 Comments

Before I start ranting for the day… I should apologize for what must be an obvious lack of attention recently on this little venture of mine. I’ve been spending whole days at the library hammering out data these days, so it’s been a bit… taxing on the fingers and the brain for me to spend too much time on blogging.

But still, a man needs his tea, and keeping a diary of what I drink and what thoughts occurred to me was and still is the primary purpose of this thing.

I decided to start partaking some of the things I have purchased since I got here. I’ve already tried that cake I bought once, but the other stuff, I haven’t yet. It’s high time to try them now, a month after arrival and two earthquakes later…

This tea is a loose leaf puerh, allegedly aged 10 years, that I bought from Off-Chaism, one of the shops in the Yongkang area. It’s a bit expensive for what it is, but I wanted to buy some and try it, because it was a bit…. interesting when I tried it in the shop. Packaging in these high end shops tend to be nice

The original box is the darker brown one, then inside is the light brown envelope thing, within which is the foil bag. The little bag of moisture-soaking pebbles was enclosed within the foil bag. A lot of packaging for 100g of tea, really.

The tea looks nondescript, but you can smell a bit of agedness from it. I should probably leave the bag in open air for a bit — it should help the tea.

It brews up somewhat aged looking tea

This tea is odd. At first it was really quite nice…. impressive aroma, great depth, pretty reasonable qi. It was not rough, still bitter, and overall quite decent. Somewhere in the middle, though, it starts to fade a little. Perhaps because it is loose leaf, it doesn’t last quite as long as compressed teas. The bitterness also stays quite constant, which was slightly annoying. I think it could be because it’s still transitioning, and perhaps if I air it out a bit it will get better, but I also think that the tea probably wasn’t a great tea from a great area when young — it reminds me of Lincang area stuff, or maybe even border tea of some sort.

The wet leaves turn out to perhaps prove my point

The leaves are large, but there’s a sort of roughness to the surface of the tea and a certain stiffness. Some of the leaves feel like yellow leaves, which are stiffer, rougher, as well as less flexible. Even the smaller buds don’t feel too great. This might possibly be due to storage too — I think the tea is a touch wet stored — but I don’t think wet storage in so light a condition would cause this alone. More likely, it was simply inferior leaves when it first started out.

I definitely won’t get this one again, although that initial few cups were quite ok. I think if I brew it with a lighter touch, I can get more of the aroma and less of the problems from the tea. At the price I paid though, I could spend some more and get a whole cake of stuff that’s probably better — or at the very least, with a lot more potential. Lesson learned, but it’s an interesting lesson nevertheless. Who knows, maybe give it another 10 years and it’ll be a fine tea, although I suspect the remaining ninety something grams won’t make it that far.

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Yongde 2006 Spring Organic

September 12, 2007 · 3 Comments

The other sample I received from iwii is this thing. It’s surface is pretty. The inside is less pretty

It’s also one of those cakes that have leaves that are layered on top of each other… when I peeled, it peeled right off, and didn’t offer much resistance.

I used a healthy amount of leaves today, and this was the result

A rather golden coloured brew. The tea is quite thick, actually, and has good body. It feels like you could chew on it. There’s a certain floral character to it, and there’s also an underlying bitterness there, although it wasn’t something that was in the foreground. The bitterness also turns into something else – that kind of minty feeling you get with some teas. It did get rough on the tongue after a few infusions, and doesn’t really right itself until very late. The tea has a clean taste — perhaps this has something to do with the organic claim? Although I really don’t know how seriously to take the organic claim of any tea factory in China, especially when it’s not certified by a body outside of the country.

I also don’t take old tree claims very seriously these days. This tea feels like it has genuine old trees mixed in, but for the most part, the number of cakes that claim old tree status probably far exceed the total amount of leaves that can be harvested from real old trees in Yunnan. I even think that were we to cut down all the old trees they still would not be able to produce all those “old tree” cakes out there.

Most of them, as far as I know, are mixed. Some have more, some have less, but even if it’s 10%, they’ll say it’s old tree. How many people can actually tell if it’s a half and half mix (or a 3/4 and 1/4 mix)? There’s also the question of what’s really old. I’ve had teas that are sold as “small arbor tree” that are about 60-80 years old. The guy who was selling it was saying this is not true old tree (normally defined as over 100 years old) but often sold as such because they fetch higher prices, and because they do look/feel somewhat similar. Prices for their maocha, however, differ greatly, and I remember the “small arbor tree” price was about 1/3 of the old tree cakes.

Unfortunately, unless there’s some sort of appelation control, this is never going to be fixed. One way some people defend against this is simply to only buy stuff that are labeled as plantation or from lesser regions — nobody sane would fake these. I know somebody who a few years ago insisted on buying Bulang cakes and not Banzhang (which is a small part of Bulang), because Banzhang prices were going up while Bulang was dirt cheap. That’s no longer true, but there’s still a huge difference between Bulang and Banzhang, and nobody sane would use Banzhang leaves to make a Bulang cake.

Is this cake made of pure old tree material? I think the answer depends on how you define old tree. It probably has some, but I doubt it is all of it.

The tea, early on, also has a bit of “watery” taste. It’s not that it’s weak, but there’s something people call “water flavour”. It’s not a good thing, and is generally indicative of potentially problematic processing, etc

Still, it’s a fair cake, and I was glad to have given it a spin since I was a bit curious. The price isn’t high for what it’s worth these days.

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Infidelity

September 11, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I am not terribly faithful when it comes to drinking tea. You, the observers, can probably tell that I drink a different thing every day. For me, that’s part of the fun — to try new things, to experiment with something different every day. I know some people do it with food, others with movies, etc. Tea, however, has that added advantage that no two sessions are ever exactly the same, at least for me.

I went back to the aged shuixian I have today, and it tasted quite different than last time. It’s less heavy — more airy and aromatic. It opened with an incredible sweetness, but then faded a bit to a dull, slightly boring tea. When I overbrewed it near the end though, the sweetness came back (which means I probably brewing a touch too fast in the middle). There was also something creamy about it at the end. I don’t know what that is.

It’s not a terribly exciting tea, but there’s always a sense of something new… some sort of discovery when one makes a cup. Maybe this is why I don’t use a timer (I tried putting those times down in my blog a few times…. and realized it’s really not for me to do it). It’s more fun that way. I can probably make more consistent cups if I always use a scale (which is mostly used these days to make sure I don’t overstuff my pots with young puerh). I think when one worries too much about the details… how hot exactly the water is, how long exactly the water’s been in the cup… one loses focus on the more important things, which is to relax and enjoy a cup of tea, preferably with friends, but even when alone, there’s much joy to be had.

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