A Tea Addict's Journal

Chayuan

October 27, 2007 · 3 Comments

There’s a tea mall in Maliandao called “Chayuan”. “Cha”, you all know, is tea. The word “yuan” ç·£ in this case can mean “predestined affinity”, or something like that, anyway. Chayuan, when combined, can mean something like “some natural affinity through tea”, either between two people, or between a tea and a person.

I suppose I had some of that today, when I went walking around the Chungking North Rd. area again where the old teashops of Taipei are located. There aren’t that many of them nowadays, and one or two that I went by looked downright imposing…. even worse than the “Grand Old Store“. They were so imposing, I didn’t go in at all.

Then I found this place that’s across the park from Youji. It still looked like a Grand Old Store — old decor, lots of big (I can comfortably sit in one) canisters for tea, all lined up along the store and two women sitting there watching TV. No customers. I walked in, and asked if they have “laocha”, old tea. This is parlance for old Taiwanese tea, usually, when one’s in Taiwan. Surprisingly, she took out some puerh — cooked, loose puerh at that. “No no no, old Taiwanese tea”, I said. “Ok, we have some”. She popped open on of those big cans, inside of which is a big plastic bag, and there it was… kilos of what look and smell like aged baozhong. It was then the owner of the store, a man in his 60s, came out. Wanna try some?

Sure…

The tea itself wasn’t very good. It’s a bit too sour — sour enough to make it unpleasant. The conversation, however, was going well. I think the owner liked the fact that I know a few things about tea, and that I am a young person seeking old Taiwan teas. These days, he laments, young people don’t know these things anymore. They just drink the new stuff, and all those new stores that are popping up — those owners know nothing about tea. You can’t drink that green stuff too much. It’s too stimulating, and is bad for you. This is what we drank in the old days, etc etc

Not surprisingly, he then brought out some better aged baozhong… they look better, and tasted far better. It’s a little sour in the opening, but it’s only a touch sour and is entirely acceptable. There’s an aged taste to the tea, although not a lot of the fruity sweetness, but the qi is strong and obvious — I was sweating profusely, and today was hardly hot. This rarely happens with me, so I know I’ve got a winner here.

So I got some of this, and then, the guy was like “want to try some of our gaoshan oolong?”. I think he likes educating a young man in tea. I’m a happy and relatively knowledgable audience, so he was having a good time talking and brewing. He took the stuff out — looks like good gaoshan oolong. Roasted about 8 hours, he said. You can’t really tell by the way it looks when dried, or wet. The stuff is still pretty good.

You can, however, tell by the taste. There’s very little of the grassy notes in this tea, which I loathe in a green Taiwan oolong. Rather, it’s fruity, smooth, with a nice hint of sweetness and also some floral notes. The difference between something like this and some of the unroasted stuff is quite obvious. It doesn’t have that nasty, green, and metallic edge to it that I really dislike in green Taiwanese stuff (and which generally makes me feel unwell after too much drinking). This tea was good… not awesome, mind you, but good, and I don’t say that very much about green Taiwanese oolong.

The best part was the conversation though. He was telling me a variety of things, some of which I knew, others I’ve heard for the first time. It’s always interesting to hear a man who’s spent his life in the tea business (since 13, he said) tell you his take on things. As I’ve said before, these are the real tea masters who really know their stuff.

So I got some of both, left…. picked up a gift along the way, and ended up at the place that sold me that $10 pot again. I couldn’t resist going back there to see if there’s one or two more pots to pick up that are cheap enough. I ended up choosing two…. he sold them to me for even less than 350 per pot. Amazing, eh?

So here they are. The first one is not bad, I think, the second a little more iffy (the nub on the lid, as you can see, is not well done). The clay on that thing though feels awfully silky and soft. You almost feel like you can push it in and turn it back into a ball of clay. Heck, it’s not even $10. All in all, a pretty productive tea shopping day.

Categories: Objects · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: , , , ,

Another aged baozhong

October 26, 2007 · 4 Comments

Back to the lineup of aged oolongs…

This is an aged baozhong from Youji that I visited last weekend, and that I might visit again this weekend. When I asked them for aged tea, this is what they showed me. When I tried it at the store, I didn’t like it too much, because it’s a bit sour and a bit weak, but it was brewed lightly in a porcelain pot. It wasn’t the ideal setup for me, given my drinking habits, so I decided to buy some of this and try it at home. Despite the fact that one can try teas out at stores…. there’s nothing like trying a tea out at home.

You can’t tell too much from the dry leaves

The liquor tells a little more… although I actually forgot to take a picture before a few infusions went by, so the colour lightened up a bit.

The tea actually is quite similar to the alleged 60s baozhong I had a little while ago. The tea opens with a bit of sourness, and then delivers that aged taste…. etc

There’s only one obvious difference — the price.

The tea I tried last week costs something along the lines of $270/600g. This one today costs about $55/600g.

Yeah, 1/5.

Here’s the deal with aged oolong prices — it’s all over the place. Every store has some of it. They will tell you it’s aged, it’s been in their store for years, etc etc. Sometimes they can tell you where it’s from, other times they can’t. They will show you the tea, you can try it, and their taste is also all over the place — some taste like newly roasted tea, others taste like slightly aged green oolong, more taste like real aged oolong…. and the level of agedness has almost nothing to do with the price. I think one difficulty is simply because these things are not, and cannot, be labeled — a 5kg canister of tea is a 5kg canister of tea. Unless they come in those competition or whatever boxes that can be dated, it’s just loose leaf tea, and whether it’s 3, 5, 10, 50 years old… is up to the seller to claim and the buyer to decide.

Which, in some ways, is how things should be. You can decide if you like the tea or not on its own merits — not based on a wrapper or a reputation or somebody else’s opinion. After all, tea is for drinking. Do I (or will I) enjoy this tea? Is it worth it? Those are the two questions that I try to answer whenever I try out a new tea. If the answer to either of these is a “no” or even a “maybe”, I won’t bother.

I think it’s a shame that aged oolongs don’t get much coverage outside of Taiwan, let alone in the West. They’re every bit as good as old puerh, I think, but often for far less money (an aged puerh would be considered cheap even at the price of the more expensive baozhong here). Their problems are 1) lack of large volumes, 2) relative difficulty in storage, 3) difficulty in authentication, and thus 4) lack of consistency, again due to storage and authentication. There isn’t a lot of money to be made in these things, if at all. Like today… I know that I shouldn’t get the expensive one, but the cheap ones might be a good buy, and I might go and get some more to stock up for future consumption. At $270/600g, it’s not really an everyday tea (although still not too pricey, I suppose). At $55/600g, I can do whatever I like with it and won’t feel any guilt. The choice is pretty simple.

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged:

Golden Damo

October 25, 2007 · 2 Comments

I was rummaging through my samples today, and found one given to me by Lew of Babelcarp when I visited NYC. This cake, from what I know, is somehow highly regarded. I’ve tried it before in Hong Kong as the Best Tea House sells it as well (for a hefty sum, as a new cake anyway). I remember I was not particularly impressed, but I could be wrong. The name of the cake is interesting — Damo is the Chinese name for Bodhidharma. “Jin” just means Golden. I’m not sure what this all adds up to…

The cake is well pressed — or at least my sample is.

Can’t say much about the leaves when it’s a small sample. I brewed it

It comes out a golden colour. So far so good. The first infusion was, oddly enough, somewhat floral. That’s not something you expect from a young puerh, or rather, not what I expect from one. The floral notes went away fairly quickly in subsequent infusions, replaced by a stronger “young puerh” taste that seems to be of the Menghai area variety. It hits the throat reasonably. It is, however, quite rough on the tongue. Something else also bothered me a little — it seems a little boring. I rarely ever use that term to describe a tea. This one though…. somehow hits that spot. Infusion after infusion, it delivers more or less the same thing — a bitter punch, some roughness, the same notes… a bit boring.

I do wonder if the very tender leaves that are mostly what this cake is has contributed to this

Cakes I like generally use more mature leaves. Cakes with mostly young buds seem to be a bit simple sometimes. I’ve read things that say the best are second flush spring leaves — so not quite summer, but not early spring, because buds are too tender and summer tea gets watery. I wonder if this is the case here with buds that are just a tad too tender. It could also be the case where the batch of tea is made from a very limited area with a very limited set of trees, which can, sometimes, render a one-dimensional tea.

But anyway, thanks for the sample Lew πŸ™‚

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged:

Green Taiwan oolong

October 24, 2007 · 6 Comments

I rarely drink green Taiwan oolong. I get dizzy often enough from drinking this stuff that I tend to avoid them. I don’t know why that’s the case, or why I am more sensitive to this stuff than young puerh, which should be equally hard on the body. But sometimes there’s just no explanation for this sort of thing. I used to drink a fair amount of this stuff, as well as green tieguanyin, but nowadays I almost never drink either. Part of it is because I got bored of them, but part of it is because my body doesn’t like them very much anymore.

The tea today is from Aaron Fisher, who gave me some of this when I left

I can’t really remember what part of Taiwan this is from. I think he got it in Lugu in Nantou, but I can very well be wrong.

The tea brews a typically neon yellow/green liquor

It is actually one of the better light oolongs I’ve had recently. It’s floral, but not too much to the point where I feel it’s artificial. There’s obvious qi. The tea has a nice aftertaste — at one point I felt like it was sort of apricot like. It goes for many infusions. I rarely like light Taiwan oolongs. This one isn’t bad. I told Aaron as much when we drank this at his place, and he generously gave me some to take home.

That said… I only need to drink this sort of thing a few times a year to get my fill. After a while, the grassiness (of which there’s still plenty) and the sort of one-dimensional quality to this sort of thing bores me. I know many enjoy the high floral qualities of such teas and find many nuances in them that are perfectly enjoyable. I think my tastes have changed and really no longer find these things attractive. Perhaps I drank too much of it during college and am now recovering.

The leaves are quite beautiful

Althogh — only the left one is this tea. The right hand side bud-leaf system is yesterday’s puerh. You can see how the oolong is no smaller in size than the puerh leaf. The puerh leaves eventually grow to a larger size, of course….

By the way…. I hope all of you in SoCal are ok. The fires look really bad.

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged:

And the winner is…

October 23, 2007 · 13 Comments

(drumroll)….. John of Chabei!

So, how much was it?

Well…. I’ll explain in detail how I got this pot.

So I left the Youji store on Saturday. By that time, it was already 5pm. I decided to wander around the area a little, but most places were either closed, or were not interesting (non-tea related). I walked and walked, and saw this sign across the street – an antique shop that, among other things, sells teapots. Hmmm

I walked up, and noticed that it’s actually two similar looking shops right next to one another. One was closed, the other open, and the pots were right near the door. They looked interesting enough for me to walk in and check them out.

I normally never buy pots from antique stores, mostly because they’re either fake, really expensive, or both. Granted, most of that experience has been in China, where almost everything is fake when you walk into an “antique” store. Then again, this place looked shabby… but I thought it doesn’t hurt to just look.

There were about 20 pots on the little shelf, all of similar size. I picked up a few to check out. Some were bad — obviously poor quality stuff, not obviously faked to be old (they looked rather new, in fact) but just not high quality. Others were in the old Southern Yixing style with the curly spout and the pear shaped body, but the calligraphy on the bottom of the pot was wanting. Then I picked up this thing that I bought…. hmmm, looks ok. I smelled the inside — smells a bit weird, like an old attic. It’s a bit dirty inside too. I asked how much.

“350”

350? I thought I heard wrong. Surely, it can’t be 350? But at moments like these, you can’t ask to double check, nor can you really react in any way other than just a simple nod and a little grunt. Anything more, and you might risk an immediate price raise. I put the pot down, looked at some other pots, and asked prices for those too…. turns out they’re ALL 350 NTD, which translates into almost $11 USD. That’s about 5.50 pounds…. just enough for a short ride on the Tube, I think.

I had some reservations about this pot, because it 1) smelled, 2) was a bit dirty, and 3) was almost too cheap. The clay seems to be good, the patina seems really nice (it’s a bit uneven and doesn’t look like the obviously fake patina I’ve seen on some other pots), and the thing feels sort of right. It’s a bit too big for one person, but is perfect for two. On the other hand, the lid is well fitted, the spout looks clean and good, the body was well moulded, the wall is not too thick, not too thin…. hmmm

At 350 NTD, I figured I could take a chance. Worst case scenario, this pot can serve as a decoration. I’ve bought useless souvenirs that cost more. Heck, I’ve bought a bottle of beer that costs more.

So…. now this pot’s with me. I’m trying to see if I can get rid of the attic smell. I’ve brewed some of the cheap and not very great aged oolongs in it already after rinsing it repeatedly with hot water. The first few pots of water brought out a lot of old bits of something (probably a combination of dust and dirt). Now it doesn’t smell like an attic anymore. It just smells like the aged oolong tea. I’ll perhaps try making tea with the pot in a few days and see what happens…

The winning guess was 395 NTD. I wish to make one point clear though — I do not think it is normal for a pot like this (or really, any pot) to sell at this sort of price in Taiwan. While they do obviously exist, as evidenced by my purchase, for the most part pots I’ve seen cost more than this, even small and crappy ones. Not necessarily a lot more, but definitely more. So don’t get the wrong idea πŸ™‚

I do wonder if I should go back there and see if there’s another pot worth gambling on at that store. One or two others looked ok. I’m probably being too picky at this price. The other store also had pots, and since they weren’t lined up near the window, I couldn’t get a closer look. Maybe it’s even cheaper :p

Meanwhile, a few more pics, as requested by Toki.

Thanks for playing πŸ™‚

Categories: Objects · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: ,

Waking up another tea

October 22, 2007 · 5 Comments

First off: A reminder of the contest going on that I posted at the bottom of this entry. There’ve been some guesses, but anybody is welcomed to join. You have about 24 hours to do so :).

Last time I tried this tea, I felt it was a bit odd. It loooked strong, but it didn’t taste the way it looked. After the encouraging results from waking up my loose leaf puerh a few days ago, I decided to revisit this sample again today.

The liquor looks more or less the same

But this time, the tea tastes better. Sweeter, smoother, less bitter, overall a better, rounder tea. I really do think that perhaps the wettish environment the past few weeks has done something good to it. It was raining (or at least threatening to rain) for at least a week or more in the interim. Then, the northerly wind came in and dried everything. Perhaps having gone through that cycle, the tea improved. Either way — I know in this case it’s not placebo, because last time I wasn’t fully enjoying this tea, but this time I am. Since water didn’t change and vessel didn’t change, the only thing that changed, I think, is the tea itself.

The tea is obviously wet stored, but it isn’t very heavily wet stored.

The leaves are quite ok and probably good for some more aging.

So there’s a definite science involving the waking up of a tea. From what I was told anyway, the process of waking up a tea involves at least moving air, and a certian amount of moisture in the moving air. Bone dry air moving through the tea doesn’t make it better (or, I suspect, carry away the nasty bits). It merely makes the tea dry, as I’ve experienced before with deliberately dried tea left out in a desert weather warehouse (the owner of the cakes was precisely trying to improve the tea — but ruined them instead without realizing it, even after the fact). Breaking a cake up will obviously improve the process, and so will, I think, spreading the tea out. However, I suppose that too much spreading out might be bad. So, at the end of the day, it depends on what the purpose is and what time frame one’s working with. To make a tea immediately good for drinking, perhaps breaking a cake apart, spread it out on a plate and putting it in a humid climate will do best. If it’s just for short to medium term (within a year or so?) drinking, then perhaps sticking them in a jar will do. Long term storage, and you don’t break it open at all.

All of these, of course, without a whole lot of practical experience to back it up other than small experiments and bits of drinking experience here and there, along with information told to me by others who are indeed more knowledgable. But I think in this case it is possible to deduce these things…

Anyway, Lew, I think this tea is not a bad buy!

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged:

Zhenwei Hao 2007 Spring Yiwu

October 21, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Today’s tea is another sample from the Fuxing shop that I got.

This cake is made by Lu Lizhen, a Taiwanese tea maker who is one of the people behind the Zhenchunya Hao cakes. He owns a shop in Yingge, and presses his own cakes still. This cake is some sort of commemoration cake, and according to one of the people at the Fuxing shop, is basically a special order for a few people with too much money to blow. It uses good leaves and most of the cakes went straight from the factory to these people’s storage, and only very few got on the market.

As you can imagine, price for something like this is not going to be low.

I got this sample because I bought a fair amount of tea, and because the owner thought I should give it a try anyway. The dry leaves certainly look very nice — they’re big, hairy, and look robust. Let’s see how it fares in the cup.

It brews a liquor that is golden yellow

The aroma is that of a lightish Yiwu — young and impressionable, I suppose. It’s a delicate flavour that is rather subtle, and the first few infusions yields that Yiwu aroma, but not quite the qi and the thickness I would expect from a good, high priced, premium Yiwu cake. There’s virtually no roughness in the tea, and very little bitterness. It is, in fact, a little green in nature, which, as I’ve mentioned, I think is common for many 07 teas. I’m not sure why that would be the case, honestly, but I’ve found that to be a common theme for new teas this year. The tea does hit the throat though, with a solid aftertaste and a relatively long lasting throatfeel. I think the Chen Guang He Tang Spring tea from 2006 was better.

I wondered if Mr. Lu doctored the tea a little, because he is said to favour slight pre-fermentation to reduce bitterness and roughness in puerh. Supposedly, the Zhenchunya also went through a similar process. I don’t know if that’s what makes this tea a little “off” for me, comparing to other Yiwus I’ve tried. I find it overall a little lacking in character — it doesn’t quite do it for me. Something didn’t hit the spot.

The owner of the store did admit it is too expensive — she didn’t even get much of it to sell, thinking it’s too high a price to pay for new tea. Her customers mostly bought maybe one or two cakes at most, treating it more as a curiosity (because the tea isn’t too bad, after all, and the maker is famous).

I find this sort of thing to be quite common these days — high priced new cakes that are made by people with a reputation. They certainly have their reason for the price — the fame of the maker, the supposed quality of the tea, and the rarity of the production. When judged against cheaper stuff though, I don’t know if they will all hold up in, say, a blind taste test. Some, I think, will. I’ve had my share of excellent new teas from more famous makers that fully deserve the praise and price. Some others, however, are more likely to be just average tea riding on a good brand name. That, of course, is what a brand does — the brand itself has value. What I find troubling, however, is that in a market like puerh, where the producer of cakes do not have active control of raw materials (at least for many of the smaller producers) a strong cake from a brand in one year does not guarantee a good product the next year. There are also brands out there that are relatively unknown but sometimes produce good cakes anyway. I tend to favour those acquisitions, partly because they can be more reasonably priced for a tea that isn’t necessary inferior (sometimes far superior, even), but also because I enjoy the process of hunting for these things. That, in itself, has value for me. This is, after all, a hobby. The act of searching out for unknown but good cakes, the feeling of finding sometihng new, and the joy of getting my hands on some such things are all part of the enjoyment.

There’s also a business side of things — like this cake, many of these more famous, but small volume producers have sometimes pre-sold their cakes to select individuals who are basically dealers. They often hoard the cakes and then sell them very slowly, therefore limiting supply and in some ways artificially raising the price on the goods. It often mimics monopoly pricing — where each individual is charged what the market would bear (at an increasing price, of course), rather than a fixed price for everybody. You can do that when you’re the only person holding the 50 jian of tea for this particular production. Even a big factory like Menghai does this to a certain extent. From stories I’ve heard, while Menghai’s total production can be very high, they sometimes send certain productions to only certain dealers — and they control who gets what (the first line dealers have no say in what they get). So, this also creates artificial shortage in markets that didn’t get the cake (Beijing was a victim of this tactic on a few occasions when I was there last year), and thus drive up overall prices by creating an illusion of high demand. I don’t think that kind of tea is my kind of tea. Monopoly pricing is bad for you.

This cake has pretty leaves, but I don’t think I’m getting one.

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged:

A tea shopping trip…. and a contest

October 20, 2007 · 6 Comments

Today’s entry is going to be a little long… but it’ll include a little contest, so read on πŸ™‚

It was a nice day in Taipei today. The weather’s gotten a bit cooler, with drier air blowing in from the north. I figured I haven’t gone tea shopping for quite a while, and it’s time to explore some more.

Instead of going to the posh and nice Yongkang area, I went a section of old Taipei where it’s said there are a number of older tea stores. I only have the address of one, the Youji. I should note here that “X-ji” is a typical way of naming a store back in the day. It’s function is sort of like the English usage of the “‘s” in “xxxx’s”. So…. lots of these older stores have names like this. The Hong Kong tea store, “Ying Kee”, is actually “Yingji” in pinyin. There are other famous establishments in Hong Kong that also have such names.

Anyway, that was a digression. I got off the subway at Shuanglian station and started walking towards Chongqing N. Rd, where, I’m told, some of these older stores are. I passed by a store that sells both incense and puerh — an odd combo, seeing the incense will probably infect every cake they sell. It consisted of mostly cooked cakes, fake Dayi, and wet stored stuff of questionable provenance. I passed, and kept walking. I eventually ended up near the Youji store, and in front of it, there’s a park

But this isn’t an ordinary park, because it tells you about how Taiwanese tea is made!

It has educational routes you can walk along this park that measures something like 40m by 15m

With relief carvings set in the ground of the processes in question

It’s kinda cute.

On one side of the park is the store for Youji

It actually says “Wang Youji Chahang”, but it seems like they just refer to themselves as Youji. The building is actually quite big. The front end of the ground floor is a store — you can sort of see from the picture above that it is somewhat renovated and newish looking (more pictures on their rather weird website). The back half though is their factory — where they process the teas. They do their own roasting, packaging, and what not. Business is obviously not as good as way back in the heyday of Taiwanese tea export, in their case perhaps dating back to the pre-1945 colonial period, but nonetheless… business goes on.

I tried two teas there — an aged baozhong that is a bit sour, and a roasted tieguanyin that is quite reasonable. I liked them both, although the aged baozhong needs to be finished relatively quickly or it can get too sour. I think it’s time they re-roast that one again.

After trying the teas though, I asked for a tour of the premises, which they apparently do. So…. through the door in the middle of the building and into the back we went.

The first thing you see when you walk through the door is this

These are the templates they used for the boxes that they packed the tea in — you paint over them so the words are painted onto the boxes. These are various brand names, from the “Tea Pot Brand” to the “Mitomo Kabushikigaisha” (Three Friends Corporation, bottom right, probably dating from the colonial period). Then, there are a bunch of machines — used for sorting, drying, etc, but nothing too exciting, and none were in action today. The more interesting stuff is the roasting room.

I’ve seen these individually before, but not in a room like this and certainly not this many at once. Since I think many tea makers these days are using electric roasters (I’m guessing they’re more consistent, less room for error, and probably more economical), this is going to be an increasingly rare sight. These pits are like this

They fill them with big pieces of charcoal

Then they ground them down

Using these tools (specifically the right-most long stick)

Then you cover the pit with what he said are something like burned grain husk

When these burn down, they become the powder you see on the left of the picture. This covers the fire so that you are not directly burning the tea. I always knew you cover the charcoal with a dust like thing. I always thought that’s used charcoal that’s disintegrated into powder. This grain husk thing is new to me.

Then…. you roast the tea for hours….

You can also see other things going on, like in the picture of the tools — look on the left, and you see a guy picking leaves. He’s sorting the tea, presumably readying it for sale, or roasting, I’m not sure. I had a good conversation with the guy, who is running the family business. He said it’s really hard these days to find young people who want to do this, especially the roasting part. It’s just not pleasant work (high temperature, having to deal with charcoal, leaves, etc) and nobody is interested. Why do it when you can sell non-roasted tea for the same price, or even more? They insist on it, and even lightly roast their baozhongs, but that doesn’t always happen anymore. I can’t agree more — this is something that, I think, needs to be preserved because I personally feel a lot of these teas can’t be drunk without ill effects for one’s health without some roasting. (Sidenote: this is also why I don’t drink a lot of the really green Taiwan oolong these days, in answer to Julian’s question a week ago)

I picked up a little tea, and plan to be back here for more. I walked out, and wandered around a little more. I couldn’t find more tea shops… they are hidden somehow. Some of the stores are closed. This part of Taipei is no longer important, economically — the center of action has moved eastward, leaving this area behind. There are some older stores here, definitely, but they are only dealing with locals, and not the big exporters they once were. So it is somewhat fitting that there were some antique shops around here that look rather run down. One, though, sells some teapots…. so I went in for a look. He had about 20 of them on display, which was all he had. They were of various levels of authenticity and craftsmanship. One, though, caught my eye, and I eventually came home with it.

It pours well, the lid is well fitted, the patina is very nice and it felt good enough for me to buy it despite its funny smell inside. I tried brewing some of the cheap aged oolongs in it to get rid of the smell, and it seemed to have worked. I’m going to let it sit around some more and see if the odd smell comes back (probably because of where it was stored for a while). We’ll see what happens.

>
Which gets us to the contest part:

In trying to make this blog a little more interactive (I have a, relatively speaking, very quiet set of readers), let’s play The Price is Right. Submit your guesses to me via email regarding how much this teapot cost me. The person who comes closest (either high or low is fine, in deviation of the rules of the gameshow) will get samples of all the aged oolongs I tasted the last week, good and bad. If there’s a tie (say, one person guessed 1.1 and the other 0.9) the lower one wins.

Please submit guesses to (my username) at gmail. Please quote the prices in Taiwan Dollars (currently about 32 NTD for 1 USD). I am going to announce the answer on the 23rd when I blog. You have lots of time to ponder πŸ™‚

Categories: Objects · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: , , , , ,

Awakening a tea

October 19, 2007 · 5 Comments

Some of you may have heard of a practice called “xingcha” 醒茢, or “awakening a tea”. Generally this refers to letting an older cake of puerh come to life before drinking it. Everybody has a different routine, but it generally involves taking the cake out, perhaps breaking it up into pieces, air it out a little, put it in a jar, let it sit for a while, before actually drinking it. This process is supposed to improve the tea’s taste — it will be better than if you dive into it right away.

One can do this with loose puerh too, because I’ve talked to an owner of an old teashop in Hong Kong who said I should spread the stuff out on a plate or something, let it air out for a little, before drinking his tea. It will be smoother and better. Since last time I tried the loose tea I bought from Off-Chaism did not produce a good result, I decided I’ll do this to the bag of tea. I had a feeling that between the air-tight seal and the little pouch of anti-oxidation stuff they put in the bag (keeps oxygen out of the bag, I guess — I don’t know why they did this for a puerh) did the tea in, causing it to taste worse than it did at the store. I shook the tea around in the bag from time to time, and just generally let it air, hoping it will make the tea get better.

So I decided to give it another spin today.

Still the big leaves

Still the same colour

But I am happy to report that after a few infusions, it became obvious that the tea is, indeed, better. It is noticeably less rough than the last time I tried the tea, which was one of my complaints. It also wasn’t as sharp on the tongue or as obviously bitter (though it was definitely still there). Instead, the tea acquired a little more aromatics. Much more pleasant to drink this time around. Obviously a dry stored tea still, but it is a Taiwan dry stored one — not the driest of dry, with just enough aging to give it that aged taste.

Which makes me wonder even more — why did they pack this tea they way they did? I guess they mostly sell oolongs, so there’s a need to pack it well. But…. this isn’t an oolong. Given all the packaging materials that went into the box, you’d think they can take enough care to package it the way it should be — maybe with a little less care so the tea doesn’t taste nasty out of the box.

The tea held up quite well for many infusions. This is a later one… probably 12?

The leaves are still the same, of course — a mixed bag.

I’m happier with this purchase now, although I’m still not sure if it’s worth the price. I suppose though, for a dry stored tea with obvious aging… it’s not so bad.

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged:

Blending

October 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I’m taking another break from the aged oolongs (yes, there are actually a few more) because I ran out of containers for the bags I’m opening. Since I want to keep them away from moisture (and it’s very moist here in Taiwan, at all times of the year, basically) I need to get new containers before I will continue. That shouldn’t take too long.

So I went back to vanquishing leftover samples.

I have some leftover from the Sanzui guy who sold cakes through the forum, a Jingmai and a Bangwei. Neither sample was quite big enough for one sitting, so I figured… why not, I’ll mix them.

Blending is an art, and I’m not claiming to know anything about it. The purpose of blending is to cover up faults of a tea and enhance each other’s strengths. It is supposed to give a tea more complexity and make it better. This isn’t just true for puerh. I know oolongs are blended, especially if they’re roasted teas. Sometimes it’s also a matter of cost, but “mouthfeel” is something they often shoot for when blending. Whereas a single-region tea can be “simple” or perhaps even “boring” in mouthfeel, having a few regions mixed together can create a more balanced or perhaps fuller experience.

I have no idea what works and what doesn’t. I know a few people who will do things like putting some old, wet stored puerh in the pot and add a little bit of very young tea in with it, which gives the tea more liveliness while mostly retaining the aged character of the tea. It enlivens an otherwise rather flat, if aged, tea. Young tea is blended for “layering” effect, so that when the tea enters the mouth it will not only stimulate just one region of the mouth, but rather envelopes it in one way or another. One might be particularly good in the aftertaste department but is flat on the aroma, while another is sweet and tasty but lacking in a good finish; those would work well together (hypothetically, anyway).

I figured the Jingmai and Bangwei teas sort of worked like this. The Jingmai is better up front, with an aromatic opening but lacking in longevity in terms of its ability to linger in the mouth. The Bangwei is better in that department, but can be boring with a low level of aromatics.

The mixture is about 1 Jingmai to 2 Bangwei. You can hardly tell what’s what when it’s dry

Or for that matter… when it’s wet

The tea did seem to come out a little fuller — and the first few cups filled the mouth with its aroma, a mixture of Jingmai’s distinctive taste and a more bitter edge that the Bangwei has. However, I can’t say for sure that this is not just placebo. The tea did, however, have a clearer progression during the subsequent infusions. I realized afterwards that what I should’ve done (and will do next time I try something like this) is to have three gaiwans — one of tea A, one of tea B, and one of tea AB, and see what differences I can detect. I feel like a self-experimenting guinea pig sometimes.

Categories: Old Xanga posts
Tagged: ,