A Tea Addict's Journal

Aged 1990 Winter Dongding oolong

October 17, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This is one of those that actually has a claim to be something specific, instead of just “something aged”. I got this tea from Yetang on one of my visits to the Yongkang area, and I was rather impressed when I tried it there. It’s been a month already, and it’s a good time to break it out now.

It comes in a simple box

With these filled inside (within a bag, of course). The dry leaves smell a little different — it has a slight affinity to an aged puerh in smell. No wet storage, of course. Rather, it has a sort of “old” taste, if I can call it that. Something different, not the slightly plummy aged oolong smell you usually get.

You can’t really say much about an aged oolong just judging by its colour

It is slightly numbing on the tongue, with a full yet interesting flavour — again, not the sweet plummy taste you often expect from an aged oolong, but rather, a slightly puerh-ish taste comes out rather strongly. More interestingly, there’s a hint of some high floral notes that I didn’t notice when I tried this tea at the store. The floral notes I think give it away — this tea wasn’t highly roasted at all at any point, I think, but was aged in probably a reasonably sealed container for some years without further roasting. The floral note persists throughout the session. There’s also a green Taiwan oolong finish to the tea that you don’t get with the more roasted varieties. Only near the end, maybe 15 or 20 cups later, did the tea turn to a more generic aged oolong plummy taste — not that it was never there, but rather, I think it was always overshadowed by something else in the foreground.

There’s a misconception that aged oolongs must be re-roasted every year or every few years. I know for a fact that this doens’t always happen, since I know private collectors who definitely don’t roast their teas. They just keep it in a well sealed jar and take some out every once in a while, and some of these teas are 20 years or older. As long as one is careful about storage (mostly by avoiding moisture) roasting is not really necessary. I’ve tried some of that stuff before, and they can be quite delightful.

You can see how the wet leaves are more like a dark green.

I think this tea is quite good. Not too cheap, but perhaps I should get another bag and let it age some more while I drink off this one…

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Cheaper aged oolong

October 16, 2007 · 4 Comments

One problem with these teas is that they have no names — and most of the time, there isn’t even a region name to go by, so unfortunately, price is the only real distinction 🙂

This is a tea that I got along with the more expensive, but sour, tea. I got this one because it’s cheap… it’s under $50 for 600g (600g is a jin, or Chinese pound with 16 taels, and prices are often quoted in these, but do not confuse this with a mainland jin, which is 500g and has 10 taels).

The leaves are a bit mixed looking when you inspect them closely, and has a few shades — darker and lighter brown. Sniffing it, it smells a little aged, and roasty.

The tea looks very roasty

And tastes so too. There’s definitely some aged-ness to it, but the aged character is not particularly obvious. The roasted flavour is more prominent, and probably needs a bit of time for that to go away. The first few infusions are actually quite good — with a solid coating of aroma in the back of the mouth. There’s a slight sourness in there, but it’s not obvious enough to be unpleasant. When they sold it to me they said this is 10 years. Is it? I don’t know, I’m not sure. It’s probably a few years old, but there’s really no telling exactly how old. One of the problems is that the aged-ness of an oolong can vary very greatly. If aged in a sealed package, the aging can progress very slowly, whereas sometimes they’re aged in more open air, and the aged character show up much faster, but I think at higher risk of sourness and that sort of thing. Almost every time I go to a tea shop around here I ask if they have aged oolongs, and they really run the gamut, both in quality and price.

Would I drink this again? Sure, it’s not offensive, and the first few cups are nice. Again, if brewed a little lighter, there should be no sourness and perhaps even a bit more aromatic.

I really need to use a pot for this sort of tea. Brewing them in a gaiwan is almost a waste.

The wet leaves show this tea to be more broken in nature — not too obvious when dry, but really obvious when wet

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My tongue needs a holiday

October 15, 2007 · 2 Comments

My tongue got bored of the aged oolongs — it needs something totally different. I still have a few more to go, so I’m taking a break and drank a bit of the Fuxing Youle cake instead 🙂

This time I used my pot, and the tea seems to come out similar, but perhaps slightly rounder, than from the gaiwan. I think the leaves to pot ratio is a little lower when I use the pot, which might be the reason why I achieved the results I did. The tea tastes like a good old tree puerh, at least I think it is anyway… flavourful, strong in the throat department, and clearly has energy. Compared with an aged oolong, the energy is a slightly nervous one. Instead of making you calm, it works you up. It’s a stimulant. Young puerh tend to be like that; it’s as if I were spending time with an energetic kid, rather than an old man who is sipping tea peacefully. The tea, even when it’s almost brewed out after 10+ infusions, still exhibits strong activity in the mouth. I have high hopes for this one. I even wonder if I should go get some more, haha.

I think I broke the cake up better this time, and got more complete leaves in. It’s difficult to convey this through words, but the leaves seem well rolled — they’re slightly on the mushy side, not always unfurlable, and are mostly bud-leaf systems. I have heard complaints that some cakes these days are not completely processed — wholeness and sturdiness of leaves are sought after qualities for reasons that have little to do with aging, and so sometimes the makers deliberately roll them very lightly to preserve the leaves in order to make them unfurl easily on their own when brewed. I don’t know if this has any grounding in the actual process behind aging, but perhaps that makes sense — little rolling would mean less breaking of the cell structure, and thus, perhaps, slower or incomplete aging. Again, I don’t know the answer to this, and I suppose I will find out in 20 years.

Meanwhile, I marvel at the beauty of these leaves. There’s something about young puerh leaves that are particularly attractive, especially when they feel meaty when handled…

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A few tidbits

October 14, 2007 · 5 Comments

I went back to the Fuxing store today. It’s hard to resist a store that’s only 10 minutes walk away.

I was looking more at pots today, and nothing too interesting happened. I did, however, ask them how they season their pots — since they do it. The answer was “nothing special”. In fact, they don’t do anything other than just clean it of the debris that’s left in the pot, and after that, they just brew tea in them. The pots clean themselves out, basically. Obviously they rub the pots dry afterwards, but that’s really about it. As I was there, she was filling out the pot with some leaves, pouring water into it, and just letting the tea sit in the pot (with the leaves) to stew…. and the leaves were still in it as I left. I guess that works. I also suppose it’s because they have so many pots, it’s impossible to do anything else with them.

While there, I drank an aged oolong from 1983. Pretty interesting stuff, although much weaker than the one I had yesterday. The tea is, as she said, slightly sour if brewed too strongly (due to poor storage), so she deliberately made it slightly weaker. It does, however, have pretty decent qi, and I felt very relaxed after drinking it. Compared to younger teas, such as young oolongs or puerh….

Anyway, that’s all for today.

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60s baozhong

October 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I went back to the Fuxing store today. It’s hard to resist a store that’s only 10 minutes walk away.

I was looking more at pots today, and nothing too interesting happened. I did, however, ask them how they season their pots — since they do it. The answer was “nothing special”. In fact, they don’t do anything other than just clean it of the debris that’s left in the pot, and after that, they just brew tea in them. The pots clean themselves out, basically. Obviously they rub the pots dry afterwards, but that’s really about it. As I was there, she was filling out the pot with some leaves, pouring water into it, and just letting the tea sit in the pot (with the leaves) to stew…. and the leaves were still in it as I left. I guess that works. I also suppose it’s because they have so many pots, it’s impossible to do anything else with them.

While there, I drank an aged oolong from 1983. Pretty interesting stuff, although much weaker than the one I had yesterday. The tea is, as she said, slightly sour if brewed too strongly (due to poor storage), so she deliberately made it slightly weaker. It does, however, have pretty decent qi, and I felt very relaxed after drinking it. Compared to younger teas, such as young oolongs or puerh….

Anyway, that’s all for today.

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A failure

October 13, 2007 · 9 Comments

This is a purported 60s baozhong

The dry leaves smell faintly of agedness, but as I sniffed it hard, comparing it with the tea yesterday, I noticed that there’s a sour note in the smell in yesterday’s that is absent in today’s. Hmmm. Food for thought.

It brews a dark tea

And tastes wonderfully aged, full bodied, good qi, huigan, etc. There’s a hint of sourness in the first three infusions or so, but it doesn’t cross the line into the “unpleasant” category. This is what somebody might call a “fruity tartness”. The tea’s plummy, and very enjoyable. No bitterness at all, but it numbs the tongue a little — I actually enjoy that in these teas. Interestingly, there are some aftertastes in this tea that reminds me of some aged puerhs I’ve had. It obviously doesn’t share the earthy or woody taste of an aged puerh, nor the spicy notes that someitmes you get from them, but the aftertaste — it definitely reminds me of some puerh I’ve tried, mostly drier stored stuff. What’s better yet — these teas are impossible to exhaust. About 25 cups later

It still goes. Aged teas (oolongs, puerh, you name it) has one common characteristic — the longer they’re aged (presumably no serious wet storage in the case of the puerh) the longer they last in a drinking session. Even when the colour of the tea fades while brewing, the taste continues. Now I’m drinking probably the 35th or even 40th cup of this tea, and the colour of the tea is very faintly yellow, but when I drink it — it still tastes like tea, not water, and it still stimulates the senses in a positive way. That is not something you can fake, no matter what you do.

It’s still brewing as I type

Yum. I like this tea.

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A failure

October 12, 2007 · 11 Comments

This tea looked pretty

I bought it today at a shop near where I was running an errand. It’s one of those grandpa shops — looks awful inside, and has lots (I mean lots) of random stuff accumulated over time. I figured they might have some old stock of oolongs — and they do. There are two, and I bought a bit of both. The shop owner said this tea is 30 years, and it sells at a moderately high price. I didn’t buy the 30 years claim, but the tea is oh so beautiful. It’s a rich, dark red, shiny, oily… looks great. The tight rolling perhaps indicates a later date than the “30 years” claim. That’s not a real concern.

It yielded a dark liquor as well

It’s thick, it’s aromatic, it’s got a good finish. The problem is… the tea is sour 🙁

It’s not deadly, because the sourness comes on later, and isn’t the all-powering, all-covering sort of sour. Instead, it’s just somewhat sour, and the sourness happens when the tea (liquid) has had a little time to cool down. When piping hot, just out of the gaiwan, the tea is not sour at all. After a sip or two, it starts showing up. When cooled down further, the sourness is more apparent. I am not sure the reason why that would be the case, but …. it’s what I found.

It’s a shame, because otherwise the tea exhibits good aged qualities, but I don’t think it is nearly as aged as 30 years. The tea itself was pretty high grade, and tastes that way with enough complexity. Sourness could be due to a few things, but it generally has to do with moisture, or so I was told. This is perhaps fixable with some proper treatment in the roaster, because the sourness does go away after a while. If I brew the tea lightly, it might not even show up at all. In fact, that’s I think how I’m going to drink the rest of this — brewed light, maybe even in a cup with water added, and see how it turns out. In a gaiwan with a heavy hand, it’s not pleasant enough, certainly not for the price.

This is what the tea looks like when wet…. still beautiful

Compare it to yesterday’s cheap baozhong

You can see there’s a difference in the hue of the leaves, and obviously, baozhongs are not tightly rolled like this tea today. Still… in terms of aged oolong, this one has failed.

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Benchmark teas

October 11, 2007 · 3 Comments

Quality, in my opinion anyway, is all relative. Nobody is insane if everybody is insane. Likewise, no tea is bad if all tea is bad (or good). Good and bad, I think, are entirely relative terms — and so in order to assign “good” and “bad”, one needs a scale.

There are some teas that I have that I drink for the purpose of setting standards. They are usually not great tea, merely ok, most likely cheap, predictable, and easily obtainable. Tea is especially difficult this way, because other than big Western tea makers (say, Twinings) it is hard to get a consistent product. A longjing from shop X this year that sells for $5 for 50g might be good, but the one two months down the road, when they sold out of the first batch and restocked, can be quite different. I’m sure we’ve all had that experience before. Sometimes certain teas also have some oddities – a funny aftertaste, a strange mouthfeel, etc. If drunk often enough, one might not notice, but if one tries many different varieties of the same tea, then it will become obvious that it is the “usual” that is odd, and not all the other ones.

So what I usually try to look for in a “benchmark” kind of tea that helps me set basic standards is basically an average tea… something that isn’t offensive, isn’t too great, and will allow me to judge other teas by.

The tea I drank today I got for this purpose, or at least when I got it I hoped I could use it for this purpose. It’s the roasted baozhong that I got. It is probably aged a year or two, but basically without aging. I can still taste the firing, and the tea is, generally speaking, not great, but fair and does the job. It doesn’t have off flavours, most importantly it isn’t sour, it is relatively smooth, has that Taiwanese oolong aftertaste, but still has a nice yun and can be enjoyed on its own terms. Good for benchmarking purposes.

The reason I drank this today is because I intend to try out the few aged Taiwanese oolongs I’ve collected since I got here, and I want something cheap and basic and relatively unaged to compare it against. If, say, a purported 15 years old Dongding outperforms this roasted baozhong only slightly (if at all), but costs a few times more… then that Dongding, unless it has some truly interesting quality, is not worth the trouble. I know some of the stuff I’ve gotten are not terribly good, but you have to have multiple points in order to construct a scale, and I am starting with the first one today.

I’m still deciding on what to drink tomorrow. There are at least four options… hmmm

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Long live the Republic

October 10, 2007 · 4 Comments

Today is Double Ten — 10th day of the 10th month, which is the National Day for the Republic of China. Do not confuse this with October 1st, which is the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Confusing, perhaps, especially if you haven’t figured out the rather convoluted history of China’s past century, but an important distinction this is.

On 10th October, 1911, a bunch of young officers in Wuchang (a part of contemporary Wuhan in central China) started an uprising that eventually caused a domino effect that brought about the fall of the Qing dynasty, and with it, 2000 years of imperial rule in China. Although the name Republic of China is now under considerable debate in Taiwan, there’s no realistic way of dropping it any time soon, since it is essentially the most important defense against an invasion from the PRC, oddly enough. Should the government here ever decide to, for example, change the name to the Republic of Taiwan, missiles will fly over the Taiwan strait and all hell will break loose. Yet, this year at the celebrations, the president, who hails from the party that favours eventual independence, didn’t even mention Republic of China a single time. It’s a political mess that nobody knows how to solve.

The division of the country which happened when the Kuomingtang forces fled the mainland and retreated to Taiwan after losing the civil war to the communists in 1949 meant that there were two governments that claimed China as its own. This issue has persisted to this day, and is the reason why, say, wrappers with “Yunnan” printed on them couldn’t be shipped to Taiwan with the tea cakes they came with, or why yixing pots with “Yixing, China” stamped on the bottom had to be smuggled in using fishing boats during the 60s and 70s. While things are a bit more open now, flying from Taiwan to Shanghai, which should only be an hour direct, still takes you through a detour to Hong Kong, Macau, or Okinawa, and shipping stuff across the little Taiwan strait is still never a guaranteed thing.

Still, the division probably kept tea culture alive in a way that it wouldn’t have otherwise. While China went through the turbulent 60s and 70s, Taiwan was making quite a name in the tea trade with its high mountain oolong and developments of new techniques and processes to make tea. After China opened up in the late 70s, many Taiwanese tea makers eventually made their way across and provided expertise in tea making, capital, and marketing. Tenfu, probably the biggest privately owned retailer of tea in China, is run by a Taiwanese businessman, and they’re hardly alone. I was told that many farms in Fujian are Taiwanese owned, or at least have some Taiwanese involvement. Many well known Yixing pot dealers are Taiwanese. In the mid-90s, it was largely because of Taiwanese interest in puerh that drove it to what it is today. Whether that’s good or bad is up for individual assessment, but one cannot deny that it has been an important and close relationship between the two sides in terms of tea production and changes in the market. The fact that both sides share the same language and heritage (while some might argue this part) has made this all possible.

How this will eventually be resolved, nobody knows, but until then, let’s drink a cup in celebration, and hope for the eventual and most importantly peaceful resolution of a 60 years old problem.

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Beer substitute

October 9, 2007 · 3 Comments

It’s baseball season here, and the fans are all eagerly watching every game by the hometown team, the New York Yankees. As you can imagine, their (yet again) early postseason exit has been met with some grief.

I’m not joking when I say hometown team being the Yankees. See, Wang Chien-ming, one of the Yankees’ starting pitcher, is a Taiwanese, so they have adopted the Yankees as a sort of hometeam. The Yankees are covered here with zeal, and the game commentators have the obvious Yankees bias that one cannot miss. Every game they play is newsworthy. In fact, I suspect the coverage of the Yankees here is probably even better than in New York itself. Games are played live in the morning (night in New York) and replayed at prime time the same night. When I come home, sometimes I turn on the TV while getting ready to brew tea, and more often than not, I stumble upon the baseball game on the tube and stay there. That, and the news shows are the only things really worth watching in Taiwan.

As I watched the Yankees get kicked out of this year’s postseason with glee, I was brewing the 2006 fall Bangwei tea that I got last year in Beijing. I’ve mentioned this tea a few times before, so I won’t bother again. It’s a solid tea and I wonder why I didn’t get more of it, since it was only something like $12 a cake for what is obviously a good old tree tea. Now you can’t even get maocha at these prices. Sigh. I should’ve bought a tong, or three.

Drinking tea while watching baseball though made me think that I probably wasn’t the only person in Taipei doing the same thing today. In fact, I’m quite sure there are others out there who were probably drinking some tea, perhaps some Taiwanese oolong, with a few friends while watching the game together in agony as the Yankees simply couldn’t hit and Wang pitched a disastrous inning before getting chased off the mound. In the US, it would’ve probably been some nasty macrobrew. Here, it’s a brew, but not that kind. This isn’t to say beer isn’t consumed — I’m sure it’s consumed in large amounts, but I think alternatives are entirely acceptable too.

I remember YP telling me she used to drink Red Label with her husband while watching the World Cup on TV. This was in 1990, I think, when that wasn’t such a ridiculous proposition. Then, the tea got more expensive and it seemed unwise to drink something like that while just watching a game, so she switched to a Yellow Label. Obviously, that’s a little too rich now as well. I’m sure she’s moved on to some 80s tea. While what I was drinking tonight was much, much more humble… I couldn’t help but feel the same. If only….

Oh well, at least I have two cakes of this.

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