Not much interesting to report today… other than prices here are sky high, and I discovered another Yichang Hao lookalike — this time it’s called Yiwu Hao, looking just like a Yichang Hao cake, except that it’s not.
Puerh’s got a long way to go in Shanghai…. which also means it’s got a lot of market that hasn’t been tapped…. which also means when it is eventually tapped, prices will be sky high.
Oh dear…
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: young puerh
I drank the spring 2006 Jingmai cake in a cup today…. brewed the usual way you would if you were lazy — just throw the leaves in and pour some hot water, and refill as necessary. It makes…. green tea. Drank this way, with a low amount of tea leaves for the cup, it tastes entirely like any regular green tea, nothing too unusual, nothing too bitter, and after a few infusions, the astringency and roughness of a green tea showed up. If you didn’t tell me this is maocha of Yunnan tea, I might not even notice.
After all, this stuff is green tea, and for the longest time, they had bags of these kinds of sun-dried maocha for sale as green tea in China. That, of course, is no longer the case. Anybody selling maocha on its own like this in tin bags for cheap must be crazy. All of a sudden, puerh is puerh as soon as it’s pressed into a cake. Technically speaking… puerh is still only puerh after it’s gone through all the fermentation.
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: grandpa, young puerh
I discovered last night that the biggest tea market in Shanghai, the Tianshan market, is very close to my house (very close being about a half hour walk, briskly). I walked there after dinner, knowing full well it was about to close.
The place is weird. Instead of a big, flat layout, like in Beijing tea malls, this one was multi-storied, with each story being rather small. I only browsed around the ground floor, as shops were already closing and I think the ones upstairs were definitely closed. I walked around… it was an interesting sight. Lots more green tea and tieguanyin, and less puerh in general. A lot of stores carry some puerh, but only a few specialize in it, and the ones that do only carry some pretty inferior goods. There was only one cake that I found slightly interesting, but I have doubts about the price. In fact, prices are high all around. I asked about a Changtai Yiwu Zhengpin, which normally should cost about 50 RMB or so. The quote? 400……….
I will head back there again for a closer look, but this is not very promising
A pretty good day drinking tea with L and J (the reader of my blog in Shanghai) today.
We went to the home of one of L’s many, many friends. That friend, a certain Mr. Y, is a lover of old puerh. He has quite a bit of stuff, but not having had outside, independent verification of his collection, I am sort of brought in as someone who’s tasted a bunch of older stuff.
The first tea we had was the Red Label, ostensibly from the 50s. It’s an iron cake — tightly compressed. There are as far as I know many batches of the Red Label during its production run, and some are iron cakes and some aren’t. The cake in question (he has two tongs) is starting to loosen up on the edges, but still rather tight in the center. He opened up a new cake for us today, basically, and the wrapper and packaging look pretty prestine.
The tea looks good though. Big tree leaves, thick, heavy veins, looking like the real deal. We brewed it up… and it tasted like the real deal. Not exactly the same kind of taste as I got from YP’s Red Label, nor is it the same as the one I had at Hong Zaotou, but nevertheless, the effect was immediate. It was the first time for J to taste something like this, and she commented that the tea is more intense after you drink it than before. Once you’ve swallowed it is when the tea gets good… you can feel the sensation of coolness/pleasantness traveling down your throat, and after about two or three infusions, the qi is hitting your whole body. The taste is a mellow, plum like taste. Sweet, old, and quite subtle, it is not a wow tea, but the qi and the feelings are unmistakable.
Having gone through more than 20 infusions of that, we moved on to something else. By the way, even at around infusion 30, the tea was still tasting like tea — very subtle, very light, but it’s not plain water.
The second tea was something with a bit of a story. Basically… it was gotten from some rural family where they have an old house that was about to be demolished. They found, in the attic, a well wrapped paper bag, with tea in it. The wrapping said Guangxu 7 (1882). So the tea is probably from that year, or thereabouts. It’s not puerh, it’s something else, most likely Huizhou tea of some kind (famous for Liu An, but this wasn’t packed in the usual Liu An packaging).
There were a few different kinds of tea in that bag, and we tried one — a mix of some old tea leaves with I think the shell of the tea fruit. It’s something that is kinda weird — slightly bitter. Mr Y brewed it while throwing some 1998 Menghai tuo into the mix. The resulting tea is very interesting…. and obviously very old. The qi was strong, and I really felt it going up and down my back. The flavours were not remarkable, but when you drink stuff like this, it’s not about the flavour at all.
The last tea we had, after dinner, was a 7532. It’s probably from the early 80s, I think, and slightly wet, but still, quite pleasant. After the food though, the taste was not so obvious. It was nice, sweet, aromatic… but since we had such superior teas early on, it was no match.
All in all, a nice and educational experience. Mr. Y is really generous with his teas, and we spent 6 hours drinking three teas…. quite a feat in itself.
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: aged puerh, friends
I had tea with L today at his office. It was a dizzying array of teas, among which a comparison tasting of two Jingmai teas stood out, because they are made by the same person, one in Spring, and one in Fall 2006.
The leaves look similar when dry, and exhibit a simialr fragrance. When brewed though, the spring leaves are obviously more tender and younger. The fall ones are a little bigger, older, and less tender. The colour of the brew was significantly different — the spring one being darker in colour, due to age, no doubt, but I think also concentration of leaves. The spring one also just simply tasted more concentrated — a higher level of aroma, fragrance, a smoother mouthfeel. In fact, the spring was better in every respect.
How much of this is due to age? I suppose some of it must be due to age, as it’s got basically double the time of the fall to age. Yet, the spring cake still tastes really raw, and I think the fact that it is consisted of younger, more tender leaves also makes a huge impact. Younger leaves, especially buds, tend to produce a smoother tea. It is also more concentrated in flavour, reflected in this tasting.
If at the same price, I think it’s a no-brainer that one should buy the spring. There is, of course, the variable that the spring leaves might be of a lower quality (say, from lower quality plants). That, unfortuantely, is the variable that is the hardest to gauge.
Tomorrow I might be going with L to a friend’s place to try some more tea, and to meet up with a reader of my blog who also lives in Shanghai. I hope it’ll be fun 🙂
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: friends, young puerh
Some of you know that I am a PhD student doing research in China this year, and today, in Shanghai, we had a dissertation group meeting today, with a few fellow PhD students talking about their respective projects. That, of course, is not interesting subject for this blog.
What is interesting is the tea I drank. Lipton Yellow Label tea.
A thought occurred to me today — what makes it so that Lipton, a company that sells what really is an inferior product, can penetrate the country where tea is originally made and still made with such sophistication?
I posed this question to the group, and got everybody wondering. After all, there are cases where something that is abhorred earlier would take over a market after it’s been accepted, but usually, that something is foreign, unknown. Tea, on the other hand, is not such a thing. Chinese drink tea all the time. I suppose bad tea in a bag is unknown, foreign, just as coke or pepsi or sushi might be, but still…. it’s like introducing some weird burger to Americans and taking the States by storm. Mos Burger (google it) is weird, is good, but is not popular outside of Hawaii.
So, I guess the question is — how did Lipton do it?
I suppose the fact that it’s in a bag helps. The perceived image of drinking something foreign (foreign must be good!) helps. But the tea itself is horrible… it’s a little sour, flat, not aromatic, goes well only with milk (I was imaginging it having milk in it the whole time I was drinking my bag). Why do people like it? It’s not even that cheap.
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: musings, teabags
I had the home stored puerh from Best Tea House today. No vintage, no specific region, just puerh in the old style… aged stuff, blended together, and drunk. Sweet, smooth, aromatic, thick… everything you’d want in a puerh. It’s not a Red Label, or Blue Label, or anything near that, but it does the job, and it’s not expensive. In fact, I’d rather drink this than the Traditional Character we tasted yesterday. An aged puerh should be sweet, smooth, aromatic, thick… not coarse and thin. At least for me, that’s what matters.
Don’t drink the wrapper. Drink the tea 🙂
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: storage, young puerh
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.
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: aged puerh, storage, young puerh
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
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: cooked puerh, shopping, young puerh
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!
Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
Tagged: friends, young puerh
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I just want to say that I still find your blog and writing extremely relevant. Thanks!