A Tea Addict's Journal

Traditionally stored 2006 Haiwan Lao Tongzhi

April 1, 2011 · 13 Comments

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I don’t really drink stuff like this very often, but since this tea is among those that I think some of us have had, back when it was fresh off the press, I bought one for fun this time in Hong Kong to try it out.  The reason I got it is not because this tea is amazing, rare, or anything — far from it.  Rather, it’s because it’s been traditionally stored.  People often wonder what this process does, exactly, to a tea.  Here’s a good example of it.

I still remember seeing this tea in Beijing when I was living there, and it sold for about $3 USD.  This time, I paid close to $25 to buy it, so it felt pricey.  Then again, buying tea in Hong Kong is never going to be that cheap, but if you go troll the tea markets in China, I’m sure you can still find dry stored versions of this cake selling for probably $10.

Haiwan tea factory was founded and headed by Zou Bingliang, who used to be the head of the Menghai factory, and is credited with having co-invented the process to make cooked puerh.  Like a lot of others who were in leadership position at Menghai, Zou struck out on his own in the late 90s and early 2000s, and I think among the slew of factories that started around that time by Menghai alum (Guoyan, 6FTM, Haiwan, etc) his outfit is probably one of the better and more successful one.  Lao Tongzhi is pretty much the base cake for the factory — the lowest tier mass market tea.  I remember trying the very young version of this tea, and it tasted like any big factory, newly pressed cake — bitter, rough, but powerful in the hard hitting sort of way.  The tea was not something you’d particularly enjoy drinking, but hope it will get better with time.  An interesting thing to note about this tea is that it says “nongxiang xing” on the left — intense flavour type, literally.  I have, however, never seen any other types of LTZ cakes, so I think this is all just silly marketing speak.

Since this cake is traditionally stored though, it’s not your run of the mill 2006 vintage young puerh.  Right away, the smell is obvious when you open the wrapper.  The cake also looks visibly darker.

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There’s a reason puerh is a heicha (black tea).

There’s some white frosting on the cake, although nothing too serious.  It’s not white all over, and once I crack it open, the interior is quite ok.  Traditional storage can be overdone — as you sometimes see cakes that literally are covered in white hair.  This is medium.

The tea looks dark too, when you brew it.

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I believer it’s very important to educate yourself with stuff like this to get a sense of how a 5 years old, traditionally stored tea tastes like.  If you don’t know what it’s like, then it is very easy for someone to come by and tell you that the tea is actually 15 years old, and you would not be able to tell the difference.  In the cup, the tea is still a little sharp – the storage taste is quite present, and needs time to fade.  The underlying bitterness still exists, although having aired it out for a week now since I got back, the tea is already somewhat sweeter.  There’s decent body, nice aromatics that range from what Toki would call granny powder to dried leaves.  Good, solid traditionally stored pu that needs some time to age.  If I were to buy more of this, I’d just leave it around for a few years, and I think the tea will then progress to something quite nice.  It is also necessary — after all, part of the process of storing a tea traditionally is to tuicang (退倉) process, to both reduce the immediate smell of the storage as well as further aging the cake.  Stuff that just came out of the basement is not meant for consumption.

The wet leaves are various shades of green and brown, a typical look for this sort of storage condition.  Note how none of the leaves are black or stiff — they should retain flexibility, if they are well stored.

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All in all — a pretty enjoyable drink, I think.  More importantly, this tea has gone from pretty undrinkable to pretty drinkable within a span of five years.  I’m pretty sure that if you pick up a 2006 LTZ from Kunming, it’s still going to be fairly nasty.

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Resurrection

March 29, 2011 · 33 Comments

A few years ago, I bought a silver kettle.  Only problem is, it leaked.  The part where the spout connects to the body was falling apart, so while it was ok to make, say, matcha with it, since matcha doesn’t require a lot of water, it was impossible to use the kettle for Chinese tea, when I need full pots of water.  The joint was visibly cracked.

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So for the past two years, the kettle’s been sitting in a tomobako, waiting to see the light of day.  I almost forgot about it at one point.  It’s hard looking for a silversmith — the few I did find in real life didn’t handle this type of work.

I knew the work had to be done, sooner or later, and finally worked up the time to do some research to find someone who can fix it.  Some googling later, I decided on this guy, Jeffery Herman of Herman Silver.  (Yes, this is a plug, because I liked the end result)  I must say it took a bit of courage and trust — after all, you’re sending a valuable piece of silver to somebody you’ve never met, and you really have no idea how it’ll turn out, or if they’re even legitimate.  I figured, though, that if he’s no good, I would be able to find something about it on the internet, and I couldn’t.

I finally got the kettle back today, after about two to three weeks of work.  I must say I’m quite pleased.

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Looking like new, and he even cleaned up the interior of the kettle, which had some yellow deposit.  Most importantly, of course, he re-soldered the spout, and it no longer leaks.

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It’s not the cheapest – $250 for all this work, but I am quite glad I did it, because now the kettle can serve its intended function again.

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Roasting

March 27, 2011 · 3 Comments

Tea wise, I’ve spent more time in old Hong Kong shops this trip than anywhere else. This time I was actively looking at various options for roasted teas — suixian, yancha, tieguanyin, and the like.  It’s always interesting talking to these folks who run these stores, because each of them give you something new that you don’t know, and when you see where they have contradictions, you can then start figuring out what’s market-speak, and what’s truth.

For example, I only found one shop that insists that they only do charcoal roast.  In fact, the owner told me that “some charcoal just arrived — we’re going to start up the fires in a few days”.  The others have all pretty much moved on to electric roasting, both because of space and cost, as well as, I suspect, the erosion of skill and the lack of people willing to spend two weeks in sweltering heat in a closed warehouse with lots of smouldering charcoal.  I think it is indeed possible to taste the electric vs charcoal firing, having now tried a whole bunch of teas from different places, and I think it’s hard to say one’s definitely superior to the other.  It is clear though that there is a lot more to roasting than just putting your tea over heat and hope for the best.  Different people have mentioned the variations in temperature during the roasting of each tea needing to be refined so that you start and finish the right way.  If you’re using charcoal, you also need to figure out when your tea is going in and coming out — apparently, different days of the charcoal have different characteristics, and the roaster needs to pay attention to that.

All these are probably best left to the pros.  They have decades of experience and know how to do it.  One mentioned to me how, when he was transitioning from charcoal to electric, the first few electric roasts he did were terrible — the timing was all wrong, and the tea was burnt.  The same happened when teas got tighter in their rolling – it became more difficult.  Those people with lots of experience can quickly adapt.  DIY roasting is, I think, best avoided.

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Going lower and lower

March 24, 2011 · 7 Comments

One of the peculiar things about my tea shopping habits over the past few years is that I have been buying cheaper and cheaper teas.  I am quite literally paying less money overall for the tea I am buying, and on a per gram basis, I am definitely paying far less than I used to a few years ago.

I think tea shopping, in general, falls into two categories.  There are the teas that are for general consumption — stuff you drink regularly because they’re good, and then there’s the special stuff, teas that you bring out when you have tea friends coming over, or when you feel like you want a special treat.  What these things mean, however, depend on the person.  I find that the gap between my “daily” tea and my “treat” tea is quite slim, and I find very little difference between them.  I have a few things that are old and aged and expensive, but I find very few reasons to drink them.  I don’t even have much of an urge, for example, to dig into my cake of Traditional Character.  It just doesn’t excite me enough to do so.

There is, actually, a lot of tea out there — far more than anyone of us can consume in many lifetimes.  Whenever a vendor tells you something is “rare” or “exceptional” or what not, chances are whoever is reselling the tea (usually on the internet) bought it from someone who has a virtually unlimited supply of the tea.  I just had a great tieguanyin the other day that I thought was complex, deep, and well balanced, and it was quite cheap for the quality.  I’d be more than happy to drink it every day.  In fact, it has revived my interest in tieguanyin, because I can see that good ones still exist and they don’t all have to be nuclear green.  Yet, there’s no story to this tea, no “I got this from farmer X who did Y to get this tea”.  It’s a blended, roasted tieguanyin, made year after year by this teashop, sold to locals who got accustomed to the taste and will refill their jars when they run out.  For a lot of people who live far from a tea producing country, this is definitely a luxury, but the internet should make it easier to acquire such things.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  Cheaper teas online tend to be very bad, and the expensive things are often not a lot better.  Things priced as “treat” are often just slightly higher grade “daily tea”, especially when it’s attached to some story, which is pretty unacceptable.  I’m pretty sure that the loose puerh that some of these stores sell can beat any loose puerh sold online these days, but alas, nobody can find them.

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An old new acquisition

March 22, 2011 · 6 Comments

Shopping at old teashops in Hong Kong is always fun.  You find things unexpected, like this one

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What is it, you may ask?  The date says 1978, April 27th.  Sadly, it’s not old tea, but nevertheless, it’s well worth the money — it’s a tea tray.

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It’s brand spanking new, but old at the same time, especially since these are no longer made and so are quite hard to find in good condition, never mind a brand new one.  Most old shops have one or two that they use regularly, but no more.  This is a smaller one, big enough for four cups and a shuiping, but not a lot of room left after that.  I’ve always wanted one of these, and now have found one.  Too bad there’s a one-per-customer limit, because otherwise I’ll buy them all.

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Tea with friends

March 13, 2011 · 6 Comments

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It seems almost frivolous to talk about tea when Japan has suffered one of the biggest earthquake in recorded history.  I was on my way from LAX to Hong Kong while it happened, and when it struck I think I just got in the air, eventually flying through Tohoku, completely unaware that 35,000 ft below me was death and destruction on a scale that is hardly imaginable.

Traveling with me was some teaware.  I have virtually nothing here in Hong Kong to make tea with, and so I transported a few things so that it will be possible for me to host a few friends for some tea.  It is always difficult to devise a course of teas for people who have varying levels of experience.  In the group of five (not counting me) was one MadameN, a serious tea friend, and three relative novices.  Left to our own devices, the serious tea friend and I will probably drink a parade of young and old puerh.  MadameN normally humours my habit, to a reasonable limit.  Then you have the novices, who may or may not react well to any or all of the teas, and it’s always a bit of a crapshoot because of that uncertainty.  I settled on a menu of a green tieguanyin, a slightly aged baozhong, traditionally stored Guangyungong bits, and in the end, an impromptu Golden Needle White Lotus, courtesy of said tea friend.

It is always fun to drink tea with people you’ve never done so before, especially if they’re encountering something for the first time, or have very little experience with what they’re drinking, because all of a sudden you hear all sorts of new perspective on the drink that you’re so familiar with, and end up learning more about it in the process.  The green tieguanyin is the most familiar to all, I believe, and goes over as well as one would expect such things to do.  The aged baozhong received mixed reviews, not least because the tea itself is odd — aged, but not too much so, and the liquor was a nice reddish colour.  It is slightly sour, with that vaguely chemical smell that sometimes accompanies aged oolongs.  It was likened to paint thinners as well as meicai (preserved Chinese vegetables), which is quite apt, I think.

The Guangyungong bits elicited some interesting comments, ranging from a certain hollowness, to varying responses on the bitter/sweet balance in the tea, and the earthiness of the brew.  Some were very attuned to the aftertaste that both the baozhong and the GYG present, while others were less aware of their existence.  What I always find most interesting though is that what tea drinkers see as good tea is often not necessarily considered good by others.  Sometimes there’s a lot of navel gazing when tea drinkers talk to each other about teas, and forget that for most people, none of the teas we drink are actually good (i.e. taste good, in a juicy, flavourful way), but perhaps merely interesting.  The Golden Needle White Lotus, for example, does well up front, but when stressed to a slightly longer (1.5 minutes) steep alongside the GYG, it’s obvious that the GYG is sweeter and better.

What’s most important though is that everyone had, I think, a good time.  Tea is best drunk with friends, and if I could, I would do this every day.

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Yixing vs gaiwan vs Jianshui

March 9, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Martin, a reader of this blog, has posted a series of tasting notes of side-by-side comparisons of using yixing pot vs a gaiwan vs a jianshui pot (most likely from YSLLC, I’d iamgine).  It’s well worth reading, so please take a look.

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The later, the better

March 8, 2011 · 3 Comments

Sometimes some teas behave oddly, or rather, they behave in unexpected ways.  I had two “white paper” puerhs in a row, both of which are from no-name makers, purchased off taobao and claiming to be “Yiwu” of the 05/06 vintage.  One of them looks like this
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Nothing too fancy, clearly, even though the seller claims it’s from Mahei and used old tree leaves.  Both teas share a similar characteristic – they are both slightly sour, not very pleasant, but get better, not worse, as I continue to brew them.  The first is, I think, the better tea, with a stronger taste and better longevity, but it also has more off flavours in the initial infusions — sourness, mostly, but also some odd flavours.  The second one is much cheaper — by a factor of 7, in fact, and a little weaker, but still quite good, as long as I keep brewing.  The initial infusions, once again, disappoint.  Both brew a similar looking cup.

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It’s things like these that throw me off.  I can never quite tell whether teas like these are really worth buying more of.  On the one hand you have things like the Yisheng, which you know, right away, that they’re made of quality material and will do well.  Then you have the clear losers that are just terrible in one fashion or another, and can be written off almost immediately.  Then you have stuff like this — pleasant, decent, but having enough negatives to make you wonder if they’re any good at all.  The fact that they have some legs seem to suggest that they’re not all bad, but it’s also hard for me to say that they’re indeed all good.  Price often becomes the primary deciding factor — I may not buy the first one, but might buy some of the second, simply because it’s dirt cheap.  Shipping would cost more.

Categories: Teas
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Using yixing pots

March 5, 2011 · 12 Comments

I used to be a yixing skeptic.  I remember buying my first pot, mostly for fun, back when I was still in college.  I had no idea what I was doing then, and like many of us, paid some tuition along the way.  My first pot came from Tenren, of all places, and was far too large for anything decent.  Eventually, I forgot about some wet leaves in it one time (green tieguanyin) and the pot is now no more.

I remember that for the longest time I was a gaiwan user — I didn’t use pots because I thought they messed up the taste of the teas.  I want the pure, unadulterated taste of the tea itself, not whatever the pot is doing to it, so gaiwan it was.  There was also a practical aspect of it, since I was traveling a lot and carrying anything more than a gaiwan is absolutely insane.  So, for the longest time, there were very few pots in the picture.

Over time, however, I have come to appreciate them and have used them more and more.  Teas do taste different whether brewed with pots or gaiwans, and different pots do indeed do different things to the same tea.  I remember when I visited N in Paris, he remarked how his teas taste different — all because I was using a gaiwan instead of his usual pot for the tea.  I now rationalize my use of pots for testing new teas as this: if I normally use this pot for drinking this kind of tea, then I should use this pot to test it.  If it tastes terrible with my pot, then I am highly unlikely to enjoy the tea in the long run.

Recently though I have added gaiwan back into the mix of teaware I use with some regularity.  For example, I recently tried to drink a tea that I have a few cakes of.  It’s a Yiwu from about five or six years ago.  In the gaiwan, the tea was sour — enough so that it’s bothersome.  In my usual pot for it, the tea is not sour, and displays the characteristic “Yiwu” taste much more clearly.  Otherwise, they are similar in profile, but somehow, the tea is improved in the pot.

I’m still not quite sure how this is even possible.  I don’t really buy the theory that pots season significantly enough so that it affects the tea in question.  They do seem to soften the harsh flavours in a tea, for better or worse, and make the tea more enjoyable.  There are tangible benefits to using pots.

Then there are the more question benefits – for example, do older pots do better?  How much does clay quality actually matter?  Does a pot with bad clay do more or less the same thing as a pot with good clay?  How about clays from different places — tokoname, for example, rather than yixing, or shantou pots?  Thickness of the pot?  Pot collectors are, by and large, not really serious tea drinkers.  Like any type of collecting activity, they value the rare, the unusual, the famous, rather than the practical.  The best pots for brewing tea is often not the best pots for collecting (just witness the huge 400cc pots that these collectors love to buy).  I don’t know anyone who has actually tried to do this sort of study in any serious way.  It will be interesting to find out how these various factors play into the taste of the tea.  I have some ideas, but then, my ideas could very well be wrong.

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Yamada Jozan

February 28, 2011 · 13 Comments

I’m using this today

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Looks awfully like a yixing, but is in fact a tokoname pot made by one of the Yamada Jozan (there have been three so far, in good Japanese tradition of passing down the name).  I’m not quite sure which generation made this particular one — some indication online seems to suggest the first, but I can be wrong.  This type of pot was made basically in imitation of yixing ware, and the Yamadas have been particularly good at it.  I got this without the original tomobako, but it comes with a yuzamashi and five cups.  I’m only using the pot at the moment, and ignoring the rest.  Obviously, this was intended for sencha, but I’m making Chinese tea with this, with good results.

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