A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries from May 2011

Graduation

May 31, 2011 · 13 Comments

In 2004 I bought myself a box of Dahongpao from the Best Tea House.  I told myself that this was going to be a tea that I will keep for the duration of my graduate studies, and that, when done, I’ll celebrate by opening it and drinking it.  The original plan was that I will leave it sealed until then, aging it for five or six years, and have something nice to drink at the end of it.  Since my school’s official colour is crimson, I thought it’s the most fitting tea, in many ways.  I ended up opening the box for MadameN‘s graduation two years ago, but finally, after many years of sweat and toil, I have a reason of my own to do so.

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Now, owing to administrative silliness, I actually got my degree in November last year, but since it’s rather impractical to have three occasions a year that has people dressed in large, crimson coloured bags, everyone does it in May.

Likewise, the actual tea drinking didn’t happen the day of the ceremony.  Rather, it took place two days later, when I was in New York visiting the Mandarin’s Tearoom and friends.  It’s been two years since I took this tea out, and even when I was opening it, I was quite aware that I no longer hold this tea in as high regard as I used to – I don’t think it is that great anymore, certainly not for the price.  Whereas many years ago, when I bought it, it was something that I thought was truly good, now the tea seems merely decent.  The brewing confirmed it.  The tea still has nice qi, I think, which warms, but the mouthfeel is a little flat, and the taste slightly muted.  While I didn’t pack the pot to the hilt, it was enough leaves to make a decent cup.  Yet what came out seemed a little flat.

This, then, is also a graduation of some sort.  We all have moments like this at some point in our tea drinking career.  Teas that, when we were younger, we thought were great, full, and flavourful will almost always appear less interesting, less full over the years.  Some of us got started drinking flavoured teas but have long since swore off such things.  Others may occasionally return to the qingxiang oolongs or green teas that got us into tea in the first place, but find far more pleasure drinking different types.  Still others will turn to cooked puerh from time to time, but would much prefer aged teas, even though cooked puerh may very well have been the “gateway drug.”  The same can be said of vendors too.  Vendors who, early on, seem to offer great selections would often, upon closer inspection and more experience, look like overpriced teas for mediocre quality.  Drinking this dahongpao this time, some of these thoughts definitely crossed my mind.

While I don’t think I will buy another box of this dahongpao from the Best Tea House anymore, it doesn’t mean I will toss this tea — certainly not.  It’s still good tea, just not great, and factoring in the price, there are better options.  There is one more calculation involved though.  Even though it may not be the best tea, it was what I wanted myself to have all those years ago as a graduation celebration.  I have kept it all these years, hauling it around with me while I moved from place to place, and that sentimental value is not something that a far better dahongpao can replace.  Perhaps I’m overly sentimental, but even if someone offers me some dahongpao from the original three trees in exchange of what’s left in this box, I don’t think I’ll take that trade.  This is why many of us, even when we already have shelves full of teas of dubious quality aging, still have a hard time parting with them.  They are pieces of personal history and memory that, once gone, can never truly be replaced.

Categories: Teas
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Baths

May 20, 2011 · 8 Comments

Remember this little fellow?

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He took a bath

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My repair job really isn’t so good — I need to probably re-glue the handle somehow.  The pot now returned to its original state.  The clay is quite rough, with a lot of sand in it.  It even smells sandy.  I know some people wonder why I would clean a pot that is already seasoned so well, but I have to say I enjoy the process of giving each of the pots its patina myself — it’s part of the process of raising a pot and making it my own (and in a sick way, so is the process of damaging them).  So, all my pots, when they arrive, take baths, eventually before I start using them.

I also cleaned another fellow

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This pot has a very fine clay — almost the direct opposite of the first one, and has a very nice shine already even after cleaning.  The only problem is it doesn’t pour so well, and is prone to slow pours.  Oh well, nobody is perfect.

Categories: Objects
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The out of box experience

May 12, 2011 · 13 Comments

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This is a pair of teapots I bought more than a year ago, but because I was traveling for much of the summer, the box was never opened and remained in the attic until a few days ago, when I dug it out and opened it in anticipation of my move back to Hong Kong.  I must say that opening it is quite a thrill — not least because I feel like I bought something recently, but since I paid for it so long ago, it’s as if I bought something anew.  The pair of pots are obviously well loved, one a little more than the other.  They are small, and are of exactly the style that I prefer – rustic, simple, and functional.  A little cleaning and they will be good as new, and ready for use.  Until I finish moving though, back in the boxes they go.

The lens cap gives you a good idea how big (or, rather, small) they are.

Categories: Objects
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Portion sizing

May 8, 2011 · 7 Comments

Tea comes in many different sizes — you can buy them in bag form, in boxes, in tins, and compressed.  There are the easy to distinguish sizes that are pretty common for everything we buy — 100g, 50g, 3oz, 4 liang, a jin.  Then there are the ones that are less common, and is sometimes more troublesome when dealing with them – gram incrementals, 7g packs, 25g samples.  None, however, have ever come in this format before

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Yup — a minibing of extremely mini proportions.  These are 6g cakes of a certain tea whose producer I bought from through Taobao.  When I saw them thrown into my Taobao order, I was positively amused.  After all, it’s actually a pretty good idea, but one that has never occurred to me (and as far as I can tell, anyone else).  Usually, when you buy samples, the vendor chips a little block off the cake and send it to you.  Not here, no.  These vendors know you want a sample, and so they pre-pressed them into sample sizes.  They are so prepared, in fact, they even printed mini wrappers, with the date of production, 2009 March, stamped on the back.  Talk about thinking ahead.

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I think these cakes are definitely a nice idea in terms of getting your tea out and giving them some attention.  At the same time though, they are slightly annoying.  I generally don’t like pre-determined portion sizes when it comes to tea.  The reason is that the amount of leaves used in any particular session has a huge influence on how you perceive the tea, and you have no idea how much tea leaves you need until you know what vessel you’re using to brew it.  Brewing tea in a 300ml pot is very different from brewing it in a 60ml gaiwan, but both are equally appropriate for somebody out there who considers drinking from such a brewing vessel a proper tea session.

This mini-minicake, for example, is really too small for my taste.  I’d like a little more tea than 6g, but at the same time, not quite as much as 12g, for my usual young puerh pot.  This is where the trouble is – if I brew apart the second cake I have, I will be left with a completely useless sample of 2-3g of tea.  If I don’t, then I will drink an underpowered tea.  I could find a smaller brewing vessel, but I don’t really want to use a gaiwan.  I also happen to think that brewing too little tea in too small a vessel is not always going to produce good results.  I ended up opting for just one cake, and saving the next for something else (or just to keep around for novelty value).  The tea is pleasant, but a bit bland in the cup, mostly because it is not as concentrated as I like it.

This is why I hate seeing tieguanyin or other oolongs packed into little individual packets.  While they are quite convenient to carry around, they are a pain.  I don’t like 7g for my oolongs — it’s always too little, but two packs is also almost always too much.  There’s really no happy medium, and nobody seems to make any packets other than the standard 7g ones.  Why do it?

I think there are two reasons these are done.  One is the abovementioned convenience.  The other is really something to do with the conception that freshness is at stake.  I don’t think I really buy that — unless you plan on leaving your 100g bag of tieguanyin around for years, freshness is really not that big of an issue.  Convenience, on the other hand, is, and I find myself increasingly disliking the small packets of teas despite their sometimes convenient nature.

Sample size is another issue.  25g is roughly two sittings for me, although depending on the mood, the tea, and the setting, that may vary considerably.  Of course, there’s an amount at which it no longer makes any sense to call it a sample.  Leftover bits from samples is basically a fact of life — there’s no way to avoid it, really, no matter the amount given.  Like division that has a remainder, it is what it is, and nothing can be done about it to get rid of the remainder, short of mixing them together to brew.   Some vendors, however, have odd sizes — 15g, for example, or even 10g.  I find those to be utterly useless, and 10g is sometimes not enough for even one sitting, depending on the tea (and the quality of the tea in question — really ground up leaves counting towards 10g is not really 10g of tea at all).  At the same time though, buying by the gram is a little odd, and not something I’m used to or prefer.  Set sizes, like 100g or 3oz, still works best for me.

Categories: Teas
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Smoke gets in your tea

May 3, 2011 · 3 Comments

Smokiness is a common thing in younger puerh, especially teas that were made a few years ago or earlier.  In recent years, I’ve found that processing has generally been done more carefully to avoid smoke — for good reason, because intense smokiness tends to drive down the price of the tea.

Smoke is a by-product of the processing of puerh, generally attributed to older frying techniques with pans and not-so-careful management of smoke in the fire, etc.  I remember back in the day, friends with far more experience would tell me that the older teas that are now worth thousands, such as Yellow Label, were intensely smokey when new, in addition to being sour, bitter, and generally quite nasty.  Since those turned out well (partly thanks to traditional storage, I believe) smoke was sometimes seen as a good thing by these friends, because it’s another additional character that adds substance for the tea to change over time.  With the advent of dry storage, however, I’m not sure if that mantra holds true anymore.

I had a mix of two teas today, because they were samples running too low for an individual sitting.  The two teas are a 2006 Yongde Organic from YSLLC, and a 2002 CNNP Bingdao from Puerhshop (no longer available).  I remember trying them a long time ago, but I don’t remember much about them.  I’m pretty sure neither were earth shatteringly good.  One, though, was clearly quite smokey, because it still is as I drank it today.  Both teas I’ve had for a few years now, sitting in small plastic bags in my samples box.  As airing-out goes, these samples are pretty aired out.  Yet, when I brewed it, the smoke persists.  It’s not as strong as it must have been, once upon a time, but it is still there, very prominent, obvious, and distracting.

Smoke eventually goes away, in the right kind of environment, but until it does, the tea is rarely enjoyable.  Since only about 1/2 of the sample I drank today contained smokey tea (I’m pretty sure only one was smokey, not both) it is important to note how they do, in fact, linger for years.  One tea is from 06, the other 02, so five years in North American storage did very little to the smoke.  It is a good reminder of how this works.

The tea is otherwise quite good — and because they have been blended as two components, I think the mouthfeel is quite full and luscious.  The tea has strength, and given some more years, will probably turn out to be quite decent.  On the downside, they are still quite young tasting, and are only beginning to show some age.  Dry stored teas require a lot of patience, and even then, the right environment.  Only engage in it if you’re ready and willing to enter a long term relationship with the cakes you buy.

Categories: Teas
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