A Tea Addict's Journal

Nor Sun Puerh

January 21, 2008 · 7 Comments

I saw this in a Chinese market yesterday. I actually opened the can to look, and thought it smelled traditionally stored. Couldn’t resist

The leaves look nondescript — traditionally stored, for sure (from the smell). Nannuo (that’s what Nan Nor is)? Who knows. But who can say no to something that can be used as a disinfectant for internal use?

When I brewed it, it’s obvious that there’s some cooked leaves in this mix

The taste is… interesting. It’s actually, for what it’s worth, not that bad at all. It’s cooked, sure, but it’s traditionally stored cooked, and traditionally stored cooked, IMHO, is better than non traditionally-stored cooked. The taste is richer, and it removes almost all traces of the nasty pondy smell/taste that you normally get in a cooked puerh. The tea is actually decent, which surprised me. I wonder how people who don’t know much about tea think about this?

As I examined the wet leaves, I realized that this is actually a blend of raw and cooked leaves.

The greenish leaves are such that they can’t possibly be cooked… I just don’t see it happening. My guess is these could be broken cakes, or at least some are broken cakes, that were thoroughly mixed in and blended together for export. The tea comes from a Hong Kong company with a Hong Kong address in the section where a lot of these old wholesalers are, so I am guessing this is just one of those traditional upstairs tea merchants who are packaging this. Pretty interesting, I must say, and quite a surprise to find ok puerh in Columbus OH in a tin can.

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Bitten by the teaware bug

January 20, 2008 · 1 Comment

After Taiwan and coming back to the States, I realized I got infected by the teaware bug. The symptoms were already manifesting themselves while I was in Taiwan, but has grown more acute over time. They include an endless desire to look at, play with, and purchase teaware, a constant obsession with trying to learn more about the various aspects to understanding and dating teaware, a desire to use older, “antique” items, rather than new commercially produced goods. Severe symptoms include an obvious loss of money in the walle for no particular reason, staying up late to browse through forums or sites online to read about the newest piece of info, using a loupe to pore over every inch of yixing wares one owns, and the accumulation of teaware that cannot possibly be all used while the act of accumulating continues unabated.

The upside to all this, of course, is that there’s a real satisfaction with the ownership of every piece, and the increased enjoyment of tea, whether real or imaginary. Right now I’m in the process of trying to change the way I make tea here, but certain items need to arrive from the right places. I even start wondering how I’ve managed to make tea all this time before. I’ve already got pots that I probably can’t use and should, realistically, give away or sell so that I don’t end up having to move around with many duplicate items that no longer serve a purpose. Yet, I’m acquiring more at the same time. This is getting really serious….

I hope you don’t get bitten by the same bug.

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Gongfu coffee

January 19, 2008 · 8 Comments

No, I don’t drink coffee… but my fiance is a drinker, and I think this press is pretty cool. While drip coffee or espresso machines always seem too mechanical to me to involve much skill in brewing, something like this makes me think that one can, indeed, have better control over their coffees than is normally the case. I’ve tried using it, and it gives you a funny “kick” when almost done pressing. I think there’s actually a high level of pressure that builds up as you press down on it with hot water streaming through. It’s an interesting contraption, and if somebody can manipulate this thing to make different tastes, etc, I’d like to learn how.

I wonder what will happen if I put some tea in it and press hot water through it…. broken orange pekoe might work. Hmmmm

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Iron kettles galore

January 18, 2008 · 6 Comments

Some of you may remember my Ebay misadventure post. Well, here are the kettles in question

The right hand one is the leaky one. The left hand one is the dirt cheap one that I bought in a hunch, somehow feeling that the first (i.e. right) one might be problematic. The right hand one is still leaky — I tested it. I’m going to try to get it fixed somehow, although, thankfully, the guy who sold it to me agreed to refund every penny of the cost and did so, including shipping. Gotta give it to him for being straight.

The reason I bought any at all was because my glass kettle broke on the way from Taiwan to here. Everything else was ok in my luggage, including the cups that Aaron gave me — in that case, a bit of a miracle because the wooden box they were stored in was totally smashed, but somehow the cups were ok. The glass kettle, however, was in a box that didn’t look damaged at all, but when I opened it, it was shattered. So I needed a replacement.

The left handed kettle works, in so far as one can boil water in it. However, it has some rust in it. That’s not the real problem. The real problem is that even after a number of tries boiling water and what not, water boiled using this kettle still comes out yellowish with a smell that most reminds me of chamomile. Anybody with a suggestion on how to get rid of such a smell? I’m thinking using some sort of chelation agent to get rid of the rust and see where that takes me…. suggestions welcomed.

So the hunt for a replacement kettle continues.

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Loose mixed puerh

January 17, 2008 · 1 Comment

A surprise visitor today outside the window; this is what you get for living in the middle of nowhere

Just because there’s a pretty deer out there who was quite nervous about a human being moving around doesn’t mean I don’t drink my tea today

This is a random bag of puerh that I found in my tea closet. I don’t know where it came from — I didn’t label it (as I normally don’t — a bad habit) and I now don’t remember where it’s from. From the looks of it, it is some traditionally stored loose puerh, most likely from some Hong Kong shop, and very likely Vietnamese in origin.

When the dry leaves hit the warmed pot — indeed, smells like Vietnamese loose puerh.

The stuff is standard, although, I think this is better than the border tea I bought in Taiwan. It’s got a little more softness, and a sweeter taste in general. Quite decent for regular consumption, as long as one’s not too picky.

An examination of the wet leaves tells me why that might be the case

You might be able to tell from the picture with all the leaves that there are actually two types of leaves in this mix — some are greener, more flexible, and softer in feel, while the others are tough, inflexible, and darker in colour. The darker stuff look more like the border tea leaves, whereas the greener softer stuff look like Yunnan leaves I’ve seen before…. is that a coincidence? Probably not.

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Aged fenghuang shuixian

January 16, 2008 · 3 Comments

This is a tea I picked up in Beijing way back. I was told it’s an aged dancong, but having had it a few times, some with friends, we’ve decided that it’s probably an aged shuixian — but probably of the Phoenix Mountain (fenghuang shan) variety, rather than the Wuyi ones. The size of the leaves are big, as they generally are from that area, and there’s a bitterness to it that a Wuyi doesn’t usually have. Reminds me of that fairly fickle Fenghuang Shuixian I tasted a little while ago. Maybe if I leave that around for 10 or 15 years, it’ll be like this one.

Otherwise, there’s a plummy sweetness that I think is a classical “aged oolong” taste. There’s a bit of a spicy finish to this one, somehow. I don’t think it’s been stored too carefully, so it might have picked up some random notes. There’s also a little sour early on, but just a little and not enough to detract from the overall experience.

What does detract from the overall experience though, and what is so commonly going through my mind these days, is “why the hell did I not buy more of this when I had the chance?”. Oh well, I will just have to worry about that until next time I go to Taiwan or China.

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A nostalgic tieguanyin

January 14, 2008 · Leave a Comment

One of my boxes from Taiwan arrived with a bunch of tea in it. I couldn’t wait to pull out the bag of that tieguanyin that I felt reminded me of how tea used to taste… and taste it.

The dry leaves of the tea is unremarkable. It looks more or less like a roasted tea, but you can see how the rolling of the leaves was light — it was done in the old style when leaves were much less tightly rolled than today’s teas, which are so tightly rolled into a ball that you can actually throw them around. I’m not sure of the exact time when the switch happened, but I think this is at least 10 years ago when the mainland started switching to the more tightly rolled teas.

The liquor also looked like roasted oolong

But there’s very little roasted taste, in my opinion, in this tea. I’ve sent it to people who thought it tasted more roasted, so perhaps it’s because I’ve tasted stuff that have been very roasted that I don’t feel it. To me, it doesn’t really have any charcoal taste, and it also doesn’t have much of that “fire” taste in roasted teas. It’s mostly just sweet…. quite sweet with a soft aftertaste that lingers in the mouth, a sort of plummy taste. I don’t know what it is, exactly. Maybe somebody with a better range of taste-related vocab can do a better job.

The leaves are, as you can see, rather green. I was a little surprised myself, as I never brewed this tea in Taiwan after buying it from the store. There isn’t really that scaly, “toad” surface of highly roasted teas. Instead, it unfurls to something that looks more like what nowadays is a green tieguanyin. Mystery.

What I like about this tea is still the aftertaste and the sweetness. I think this tea is something that everybody can easily enjoy — there’s nothing that needs to be “acquired” for somebody to like this tea. There’s, of course, more to get from it if you’ve had more experience, but I think anybody who isn’t offended by tea can probably appreciate it. It makes me wonder why I didn’t buy more of it.

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Xizihao fall 2007 Nu’ercha

January 14, 2008 · 8 Comments

I got these in the mail the other day

I haven’t really tried anything new for quite a while, and definitely haven’t tried anything from Xizihao for a long time — since April, I think. Some of these cakes, especially the higher priced ones, have been selling like the world’s about to run out of puerh. I’m not sure who’s buying these things sight unseen, but it seems like a lot of money to spend on cakes that one hasn’t tasted at all. Now I’m curious to find out what they’re actually like.

I get the sense that the nu’ercha (daughter’s tea, literally) is the lowest grade of the three, so I figured it’s a good place to start.

The leaves are big and good looking. They’re quite green, which I’ve found to be pretty typical for 2007 teas. At any rate, looks deceive.

The tea brews yellowish green. It also tastes that way. There’s an interesting floral quality to it somewhere during the second or third infusion, which I tend not to associate with young puerhs. I found the tea to be generally a little meek, and the bitterness somewhat lingering. The tea hits the throat quite well, but in a way that some green tea puerhs have also done before. I’m not saying this is definitely problematically processed, but it does seem to raise some questions. Having tried some 2004 or 2005 stuff before, I have to say this tea, on the whole, behaves differently. The floral like quality to the tea especially makes me wonder if something is going on there.

The leaves are big, long stems, but largely in keeping with what an autumn tea might look like. Some leaves have some redness or what not to it, which is normal, but others are so uniformly green, it worries me. I hope puerh isn’t going through a change in process that tieguanyin went through in the past decade. If it is…. it’ll be a sad day.

When I went and met with the guy from Taipei whom I contacted through the internet, he mentioned how the Taipei tea drinkers don’t view the Tainan tea makers who have their hands in puerh very favourably. There’s a certainly difference in philosophy. He didn’t elaborate, but I get the sense that it’s about materials and processing. There’ve been a few times when I thought certainly Xizihao products are designed more for better current consumption than long term storage. Not all their stuff give me that sense, but this nu’ercha is one of them.

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Teazone

January 12, 2008 · 4 Comments

Today I was in the Pearl District here, and ran into a place called Teazone. Why not walk in and check it out?

It’s not a big place, and there’s a section where they serve alcoholic drinks in the back.  There are some standard racks with teaware on it — ok teaware for those who don’t have much in the way of teaware, but not too useful for those who do have a collection of something.  A few gaiwans, a few other things, not cheap…. but these are never cheap in a store like this.

The tea menu is actually fairly extensive, and thankfully, most are actually teas and not some strange concoction.  I wanted to try this tea from Georgia (the country), but…. they ran out, so instead, I opted for a supposedly pretty good Sri Lanka.  Unfortunately, I should’ve remembered that even the best Sri Lanka tea are often not terribly great…. at least that’s what I’ve found from my experience.  I find them a bit rough and without enough of an interesting character — there are better blacks in different ways, whether aroma, body, aftertaste, etc, so that they’re rarely worth the trouble.

I think this place is actually fairly typical of teashops in the US — you can drink tea there, you can buy some teaware, and you can buy some tea there.  The teas they serve are not glamourous.  It’s not terribly interesting, if you’ve got a fair amount of tea experience, but the shop does try to serve interesting teas.  Bread and butter teashops, basically.  They do one important thing though that are absolutely essential though — they provide that gathering place for people who are interested in tea, should the shop be sufficiently good.  It’d be a better location if, say, the shop didn’t smell like cooking oil the whole time I was there (ventilation problems with their kitchen…).  Still, I wish every neighbourhood would have at least one or two of these places.  It’d make tea drinking more interesting in the States.

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The Dreaded Box

January 11, 2008 · 8 Comments

Having been back to the US for about two weeks and having been forced to eat out since I’m not spending time at home, I am reminded by how most Americans view tea — they either come in bottles, iced, in bad teabag varieties, such as those Nestle 100% real tea bags, or they come in the Dreaded Box.

The Dreaded Box I’m talking about is, of course, the great wooden thing they bring to you in supposedly nice restaurants.  I think most of you who’ve eaten out in the US have probably seen it before.  They’re made of some sort of dark wood, maybe about 8 times 8 inches, sometimes with some writing on top, other times blank.  Inside is usually lined with some sort of blue velvet thing, and compartmentalized into (usually) 8 sections.  In these 8 sections, of course, are great delights such as Constant Comment, Orange Spice, English Teatime, or other great offerings from (usually) Bigelow or, horror of horrors, Celestial Seasoning (which is the same as Bigelow anyway).   80% of these are not even teas…. tisanes of various sorts with various artificial or less than artificial flavourings involved.  The packaging already looks bad, and the box is such a waste of the wood because, honestly, Bigelow needs to hire a brand manager and redo their image.

Once in a blue moon, you might have teabags from Harney, which is sadly a welcomed sight when given the alternatives.  When a restaurant actually serves loose leaf, it’s such a rare thing that I sometimes almost feel like jumping up and down.  Yes, some of you will tell me that you don’t order tea outside, and you’d rather drink their (often very good) coffee instead of the nasty “tea” they serve.  Others will say I should just bring my own.  But why is it so hard to find decent tea?  I don’t ask for much.  A good Assam or Keemun will do.  Those are pretty easy to find — just source from Peets or whatever, throw in an infuser and a pot, and let the customer do their own thing.  It’s really not that difficult, and is probably a lot less involved to make for a restaurant than a cappuccino.  I sometimes feel it’s rather ridiculous for, say, a great restaurant to serve up such awful tea.  There are sommeliers for wine, so where are the ones for tea?  My cousin is now working to redo a restaurant’s menu and winelist to make sure they go together.  I wonder if they do Bigelow.

Perhaps if we all start to demand better tea, places will take notice.  After all, I don’t think all places served good Italian or other styles of coffee 20 years ago.  Over time, people have asked for better, and when customers vote with their feet, vendors take notice.  Today I went to a hotel where they have, in the room, teas from Peets, and the room has an electric kettle, a pot, and an infuser, so you can make the tea easily in the room.  Nice touch, but this is Portland, where tea is more common than most of America.  Now if only that were standard.

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