A Tea Addict's Journal

Some sort of wuyi yancha

October 8, 2007 · 3 Comments

Yeah, I don’t really know what I drank today. More precisely, I can’t remember, as is so often the case, what it is that I drank today.

This is a sample from Aaron Fisher when I visited. He gave this to me, along with a few other things. I know this tea is a Wuyi tea of some sort, fired quite high by an old (since 1890) Taiwan shop. But I can’t for the life of me remember what it is exactly. Since I am not good enough to tell all the varietals apart, I will rather not guess. I don’t think it’s a shuixian though, nor is it a rougui. A dahongpao? Maybe a beidou? Not entirely sure.

He did give me a lot of it though, so I used up a good bit

On second thoughts, I should’ve used less, because the tea is rather broken up. Wuyi teas get broken up when they roast it and re-roast it — naturally, obviously, as they have to move the tea around while roasting. This is probably also remains of a much larger bag, and as usual, the stuff nearer the bottom will be more broken.

The resulting tea was therefore strong

It was by no means nasty, although a bit of sourness came through, probably because I haven’t stored it very carefully since I got it (and weather was very humid with typhoon and rain). It tastes like a dahongpao. Solid, roasted flavour, some age, not a lot though, and some sweetness. The tea turns more mellow after a few infusions, and becomes nicer and sweeter. Sourness also toned down. The broken nature of the leaves probably contributed to the very strong first few cups.

I’ve been meaning to go visit some older shops, but on the weekends when I have lots of time to go, the weather inevitably turns nasty, and many such places don’t open on Sunday (in fact, many places in general don’t open on Sunday). That complicates things. I’ll have to find a weekend to head out and look.

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Menghai 1998 tuo

October 7, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This is a tuo I got at a local tea shop when buying stuff with Action Jackson while she was visiting town. We went to this place and tasted a few things, and she bought one of these. I helped her get a few more, as she is obviously no longer in town, and got one for myself, which I broke up…

The shop owner says this is from 1998, and compared to the 2000 Xiaguan tuo that she also sells, this tuo obviously tasted more aged. It also has a darker hue. There’s this little piece of paper that comes along with the wrapper that has 1998 stamped on it, but as any puerh collector knows…. these things aren’t very trustworthy and are very, very easily faked.

The tea looks like what it was in the store

Somehow though, it tastes a little different. I seem to remember in the store it tasted a bit more aged — there’s a little more of the “aged” taste of a puerh that showed through. It does still taste like that, but somehow not quite as obvious as I remember. It was, after all, almost two months ago. It was also right after we drank some pretty young stuff, so perhaps my tongue was picking up more on the aged notes of the tea. There’s also water and other things to consider. Who knows, but it’s always a little frustrating when a tea tastes a bit different at home. It’s also a bit on the rough side — considering that it supposedly has 10 years of aging in it, the tea was still rough. Roughness, after all, doesn’t go away very fast, and perhaps in a tuo it’s even worse.

If this is what a tuo tastes like in dry storage after 10 years in Taiwan…. one really wonders if there’s a point in dry storing a tuo at all. I’ve never been sure, so I have never been a big buyer of tuo, opting only for a few pieces here and there as a sort of curiosity more than anything else. Action Jackson, though, said she went for the tuo during her recent bout of sickness, which is how she decided she wanted more. Maybe it’s just this particular one that I’m drinking? Maybe I’m brewing it all wrong?

It’s probably worth revisiting this one.

The leaves are… like leaves in a tuo

I played with the white balance a little…. but I’m not sure whether this is a little too red. Digital cameras can really lie sometimes.

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Chenguanghe Tang 2006 Spring Yiwu Chawang

October 6, 2007 · Leave a Comment

There was a very strong typhoon that hit Taiwan today, so the whole day was spent indoors since going out was a real hazard. There were at one point debris that were flying and hitting the wall/window of my apartment…. and I live on the 8th floor. My friend’s house got part of its roof ripped open. So yeah, it was strong.

Perfect day to sit home and drink tea though.

So I pulled out one of the samples I got from Fuxing recently — the spring 2006 production of Chen Guang He Tang’s Yiwu Chawang.

Yeah, it’s a big piece I got. No, I’m not crazy enough to use it all in one session.

This tea, in the words of the store owner, is “two times better than the fall 2006”, and it’s the same price. There’s also a cheaper version of Yiwu tea from spring 06 as well. There are also a number of other CGHT cakes on sale there too — some looking quite fine. I wonder why Hou De didn’t get a hold of them to sell. They seem to sell out within hours these days.

The tea brews a medium coloured, medium bodied liquor

It is actually not THAT similar to the fall. The taste is actually lighter, although I do remember the fall Chawang having a slightly unusually heavy/dark taste to it. There’s a good huigan to the tea and it does give you a “throat feel”, but somehow I feel the qi of the tea is a little lacking. The body is good, and the tea, generally speaking, is really quite pleasant.

There’s one problem though. The tea came out quite rough after a few infusions, and the roughness was quite up front and obvious, which I found was rather distracting to the whole tasting process.

Tea Nerd has a post about astringency that includes roughness, and a brief explanation of what it’s about. I find roughness to be the most annoying of all these things, and generally speaking, a tea that is really rough can take a long time in dry storage aging before the roughness goes down to an acceptable level. I’m not sure if this tea is too rough or not — that probably depends on individual taste and all that, but I did find it to be a prominent feature of this tea.

It’s not bad, it’s just rough. It left the mouth dry. It had all the right makings of a good puerh, I think, especially if the roughness is a bit more subdued. I’m not sure what’s causing it — if it’s the tea itself, if it’s the mix of leaves, the storage condition, or what, but it didn’t produce the most favourable impression that way. I don’t seem to remember the fall version of this tea to be as rough, although I do remember it having some roughness. I know some Hong Kong tea friends will just frown upon this immediately and say this is making their tongue hurt — and will wait years before drinking this. Maybe it’s like bitterness — it’s good to have some to show strength in a tea that will age. But how long will this take? I’ve had 10 years old teas that can still be quite rough. So that’s obviously not enough. In fact, it’s probably the single most distracting thing, I think, in a tea. I still remember trying that tea in Beijing that made me gulp down a whole bottle of water right after tasting it… it was rough and drying to the extreme. It’s funny when teas do that to you. This isn’t nearly that bad, but it did leave a rough taste in the mouth.

The leaves are quite pretty though — and very long stems

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Random sample

October 5, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I drank a sample that was in some brown paper bag today. I don’t know for sure where it’s from. The brown paper bag suggests my friend YP, but then… I don’t remember getting something like this from her.

The colour didn’t come out right

But the leaves are actually relatively green, with some redness. The tea’s obviously been dry stored. There’s no hint of wetness in there, but there’s a beginning hint of age. It’s very broken up, made up of mostly small leaves.

It brews a decently dark brew

My guess is it’s about 7 years or so. It actually reminded me a little of the 2000 Xiaguan tuo I had recently, but this one lacks a bit of that greenness that one gets from Xiaguan products. There’s something Menghai-ish about this tea, although with zero labeling and zero memory…. I honestly have no idea what it is. It’s a little rough on the tongue, and the way it behaves suggests it’s probably mostly plantation leaves. Not much qi or anything too exciting going on… an entirely average tea, I think.

The leaves, as you can see, are quite chopped up

I can’t remember for the life of me what this is. It could actually be a sample of something else that I just stuck in the bag. Oh well… I should really be better about labeling things.

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So…brewing parameters

October 4, 2007 · 6 Comments

This was meant for yesterday, but it’s good for any day.

Many blogs out there post their brewing parameters. I did once upon a time, and once in a long while, I still do. Generally though, I don’t. But I feel like I should explain how I actually brew my tea… in case it’s not always obvious.

I generally use a high amount of dry leaves, relatively speaking. I think for a young puerh, these days my gaiwan is about 1/3 full of dry leaves. For Wuyi, it’s 3/4, and for high roasted or aged oolongs, about 1/2. It of course depends on the day, and what I feel like, but those are generally the parameters. Infusions are kept extremely short… maybe a few seconds, and it barely lengthens — until I notice it can use a bit more time, which varies for the tea. Water temperature is generally very hot. I never use a timer, and generally don’t use a scale (although sometimes I do use one to prevent me from misjudging compressed tea and how much I’m actually drinking).

I find this works for me. Bitterness disappears in this way. I tried an experiment yesterday with the Baisui Chawang from Yangqing Hao. I used a smaller amount of leaf and longer infusion times, more typical, I think, of how many others brew their young puerh. I find it to be rougher, more bitter, and I didn’t get that incredibly interesting note early in the first few infusions. Instead, the tea is very non-interesting, at least compared to the last time I tried it. Perhaps I should’ve used cooler water, which would’ve helped with the bitterness and the roughness, but lower temperature would further dampen the complexity factor.

I’m not saying mine’s the best way. There are certainly merits to the other, but I do think that for me, this works well. I’ve recommended this to a few people, and I think, for example, that Hobbes found brewing one of the samples I sent him this way brought out much better results than otherwise. I think it brings out the nuances of different teas more clearly, and also their complexity better than otherwise. Using very few leaves and low temperatures can make almost anything taste decently good, but it is impossible to tell which one’s the better tea and which one’s worse when made that way.

There are, of course, teas that I don’t brew this way. I brew my greens (the few times I drink them, anyway) very light. I also tend to brew my light oolongs with a light hand. But since I don’t drink much of those anyway…. it almost doesn’t matter these days.

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Potheads

October 2, 2007 · 6 Comments

It’s an interesting thing going to a store that focuses on its pots, rather than its tea. Yesterday there was a crowd of potheads gathered around the table with the owner sitting there, casually brewing some aged oolongs in a big well made pot that I’m sure is a few thousand dollars, at least. The discussion (to the extent that I could understand when they spoke in mandarin — most of the conversation was in Taiwanese, which is hopelessly difficult) was all about pots. Who made what, which one’s nice, if it’s a real one, how much, look at that nice clay, the good calligraphy, etc etc

Connoisseur pots are, of course, not quite the same as our everyday stuff. For one, they’re big, usually around 500cc, which is only really usable when you have a bunch of people. A 300cc one is already too small, and the stuff we usually use — around 100cc, is not for them at all (although some do like to play with a few of these as an aside). These people are often not too knowledgable about tea. One man thought the aged oolong we were drinking was a puerh at first (it should be immediately obvious). They tell me they just drink tea, but they really, really love their pots. They get custom made brocade boxes for them that are shaped just for the pot, so that it is safe. They take them out, carefully wipe them, put them back, take pictures…. you name it.

And they are expensive. The few nice ones that were being passed around yesterday were ten or twenty thousand USD, per pot. Even the “cheap” ones are a few thousand dollars. There are ones that are even nicer, but those, I gather, are rarely taken out for show. They hide them in the house.

One of the guys who were there, a man in his late 50s, I think, said he’s been collecting pots for a few decades now. I’m sure he’s got a nice collection, as you can tell everybody in the group respects him. He then tells me something which I find a bit startling — he can’t tell a fake from a real, at least for the “masters” pots which he generally collects. “Masters” (mingjia) pots are the ones that are made by living or recently dead pot masters, and are not usually antique. This stuff has a high rate of fakes, and when a guy who’s got a lot of experience playing with this stuff doesn’t know for sure if something is real or fake, there’s something wrong.

The owner of the store said that for them (the dealers) it is possible to get a sense of whether something is real or fake, but even they cannot be 100% sure and sometimes have to hunt down connections to find proof. They know, generally, because they’re the ones who sees the most out of anybody in the pot-food-chain. The makers don’t really know each other’s works. The buyer/collector only knows what they are told by the dealers. The dealers see both sides, and see each other too (as they trade stuff). So, a pot from Master X might have certain characteristics…. this they know.

But then, you have fakes. Fakes are really good these days. Fakes are also a parallel industry, apparently. Pot makers in Yixing have specialities — this guy specializes in fake antiques, that one fakes Master X’s pot really well, and this woman fakes Master Y’s to perfection. These people have good skills, obviously, and sometimes even better than the so called masters. But… they’re not famous. They can’t sell pots for thousands of dollars, not until they’re famous anyway, which is never a sure thing even if you have talent. If they fake somebody else’s though, they can.

So unless you have a dealer who you can absolutely trust and whose knowledge is impeccable… finding a real pot (antique OR masters) can be a real challenge, especially when starting out. The owner of the store says her customers don’t have to pay tuition, because all her stuff are real. While there’s always a bit of advertisment in these proclaimations, I do think the stuff I’ve seen there are better than most. Maybe I can learn a few things from these people…. from simple issues like how they season pots to clay quality to everything else. Here’s hoping, anyway. Meanwhile… I’ll just drink my tea using my inferior teapots.

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Tea purchase

October 1, 2007 · 4 Comments

I bought some tea today, specifically, I bought a few tongs of the Fuxing cakes….

I decided I didn’t want to wait around for three reasons

1) I didn’t want a repeat of the Quanji Bulang experience, where they didn’t have the cake anymore. Fuxing only has less than a jian, total, of the two teas left, so I didn’t want to run the risk of one or two people cleaning it up and buying everything remaining. Good thing they’re still there.

2) I didn’t want a repeat of the Quanji Bulang experience before they discovered they didn’t have it anymore — where I had to haggle down the price to what I paid for originally only a few weeks before. I don’t think this is the kind of shop that will pull such a nasty trick on me, but you never know for sure.

3) Most of the younger puerh I’ve seen around Taipei are either high priced, fancy maker stuff (doesn’t actually mean higher quality, mind you), or run of the mill, big factories stuff where they’re often cheaper in China. Older stuff, I decided, are too expensive for what they’re worth. I think I need more 90s tea together in order to store them well — one or two cakes just won’t cut it, storage wise. Given that, I’m not sure if it’s better to buy those now than to wait, say, 10 more years till they’re well aged, and just buy them for drink it now (or, perhaps, at that point some of my current teas will be drinkable)

So, I went there and got some stuff. While there, we had a few aged oolongs, variously of 15 years to something like maybe 25-30 years. I like this stuff, and I got a bag of the 15 years old tea for free as part of my purchase. I didn’t get a discount, but I guess this was sort of a discount.

I also got two free samples. One’s a Chen Guang He Tang 06 Spring Yiwu Chawang…. which the owner said in her opinion is way better than the fall production. Then there’s a 2007 cake made by another Taiwanese tea guy, which is outrageously expensive but which she said is quite good. Well, so those are the freebies I got to take home to play with.

Meanwhile… I am looking at my tea, thinking what I should do with them here until I take them back to Hong Kong with me. I wonder how the cakes in Hong Kong are doing…

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Trying two young teas

September 30, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I decided to drink two teas against each other today. I picked the 2004 Yangqing Hao sample that I got recently, and the 2005 Fuxing Zhangjiawan as a comparison. I thought the Zhangjiawan, while not from Yiwu area, tastes similar to one. i want to see how (relatively) similar it is, and also how it compares with a tea that is slightly older. Since the YQH was stored in Taiwan (albeit Southern Taiwan), I figured it’s a closer match than anything else I’ve got at this point.

I took some pictures of the dry leaves, but then realized that they were poor quality, and that they don’t look any different — not discernable through a camera anyway. Just remember — left cup is YQH, right cup is Fuxing 🙂

Here are infusions 1, 4, 7, and 10

It’s always interesting when one tea outlasts the other. Flavours behaved similarly to the colour of the tea. The 2004 YQH is starting to taste a bit aged, and has a bit of that spicy aged taste to it — it’s obviously more aged than the Hou De sample I bought last year. One year difference, plus more Taiwan storage, probably did the trick there. The Fuxing, by comparison, tastes more green, with more fruity aromas and a generally lighter feel. It is always difficult to tell which tea in particular is giving you the throatiness, qi, and the coolness in the mouth when drinking two teas together, so I won’t try to comment there. The body of the two teas were similar. The general trajectory were also similar, and not a lot of roughness came out from either one. In fact, there wasn’t a huge divide separating the two. Except, of course… in the fact that the Fuxing simply lasted longer. The YQH started feeling a little weak by infusion 7 or 8, and when I pushed them late, it petered out.

That was also when a difference in throat feel was noticeable. The Fuxing went deeper, whereas the YQH didn’t. Of course, it could be because the tea died, but I don’t remember it being particularly deep last time I tried it, and I think this is just confirming that impression.

Even the wet leaves look somewhat similar, although the YQH has, relatively speaking, more easily unfurled leaves, while the Fuxing is rolled tighter and didn’t always unfurl. That, however, is not necessarily a bad thing at all. The jury’s still out on the rolling and the amount necessary. In fact, there are those who claim that some teas that unfurl too easily are actually not being rolled enough — that you need a bit more to release the juices and to break down membranes for aging to happen properly. I don’t know the answer to that, but it is food for thought.

There was also this little thing I found…. is that a tea leaf, the small one?

I can’t tell, but something about the way the veins are…. don’t look like any of the other tea leaves I’ve seen.

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Bottled oolong

September 29, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This is what passed for tea today

Lengshan (Cold Mountain) oolong, it says. No sugar, the little red seal in the bottom right indicates. The little sticker sticking out (you can see the profile of it) says “2007 Yushan First Prize Tea winner (again)”. Ingridients? Water, oolong tea, Yushan oolong tea (less than 20mg/100ml natural caffeine). Retail cost is about $1 USD (or maybe $2 USD now the way the exchange rate is going, haha)

Hmmm, yum.

The “first prize” thing is obviously a gimmick. I bet there’s 1/1000000 in weight of first prize tea in whatever vat they use to brew this tihng. Most of it is probably cheap grade oolong…. leftovers from whatever else that was being made, or maybe liquid pesticide, or some such…

This actually is one of the better tasting ones out there, although it is a bit sour. The one thing it has going for it (besides no sugar) is that there’s no “natural flavours” in the tea. You can definitely taste it when they add flavourings. The tea would come out a little saccharin, with an odd aftertaste and something not quite natural in the way it behaves. This tea is ok by comparison, although I actually still prefer the Itoen Huangjingui. That is actually decent, for what it’s worth. This is merely ok…. good enough for the necessary caffeine for a day with no time at home for real tea.

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Lew Da Chashan

September 28, 2007 · 1 Comment

I tried the other sample Lew of Babelcarp sent me. It’s a tea he pressed in Yunnan while he visited there this spring. The leaves are from Nannuo, and the neifei he uses says

“Lew” sounds a bit like “Liu (six) in Chinese, and “liuda chashan” is the usual phrase for “Six Famous Tea Mountains”. Quite clever 🙂

The tea is quite aromatic even when dry, and I can smell it clearly. The leaves are robust looking

Sorry for the shaky hands.

The initial infusion was very light in colour, and then it deepened a bit to this

It’s a bit sweet, with an aroma that is identifiable as Nannuo, where the tea’s from. The sensation in the mouth is full, and one can really feel the tea in the back around the throat, also on the roof of the mouth (what do you call that?). I think this is a good tea. It’s got my head spinning a little and body sweating a bit. It does hit the back of the throat. The taste also lingers for a good bit after the tea’s been swallowed.

The leaves run the gamut in terms of size. While they look good, there’s one thing in the leaves (as well as something in the taste) that concerns me a little. There’s a certain greenness to the tea, and the bitterness in the tea got much more prominent around infusion 4-5 onwards and never quite went away after that. I’m not entirely sure this is normal or not, but I have heard a frequent complaint on Sanzui that teas this year are all rather green in nature. Perhaps it has to do with weather? I really don’t know.

Either way though, thanks for the sample, Lew, and I’m definitely interested to see how this tea changes!

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