A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries categorized as ‘Teas’

The retaste project

July 8, 2011 · 6 Comments

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This is the sum of the teas I have here in Hong Kong, minus a few things already in the cupboard that I didn’t bother taking out for this picture.  Almost everything here was purchased a few years ago while I was working in China and then Taiwan.  Many of those things were bought when I was still very much in the experimentation phase, and during much of the time coincided with a lot of what was going on with the puerh bubble of 06/07.  Many of these teas were chronicled on this very blog back then, with a blow by blow account of how I bought them and what I thought at the time.  I think it will be an interesting thing to do to go back to every single one of these teas and see where they are now, five years later after some regular, Hong Kong dry storage at home.

I’m pretty sure that when I drink some of these now I’ll think they are terrible.  In fact, some of them I knew were terrible even back then.  I guess this can at least put the theory of “bad teas will age into something better” to a test for a 4-5 year time frame.  Let’s see where this goes.

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Old tea

June 28, 2011 · 5 Comments

I’m in Beijing at the moment, visiting my friend L and drinking tea with his friends.  One of the teas I had today was a mixture of a some bits and pieces from a Mengjing mushroom tea from Republican days, and a good chunk of leaves from a 60s Blue Label iron cake.  While the tea is quite nice and has obvious qi, at the same time I can’t help but think that all the cost of this tea is not necessarily worth it.  After all, at over $100 USD for that brew if you were to pay for it, the tea is nice, but not that nice.  The qi is certainly something you don’t get with younger teas — an aged tea of enough years is going to be different from your young stuff, no matter what.  Yet, I’m really not sure if this is really worth it for a lot of people.  So many people chase this stuff so that now they are priced out of pretty much everyone’s range.  But if you drink it, and compare it to something like say 1960s Guangyungong tea, the difference is not so earth-shatteringly big that it merits the many multiples of price that it commands.

This is really a dilemma not only of aged tea, but all teas in general.  Is that dahongpao that is very good really worth 10x that dahongpao that is only so so?  Sure, perhaps.  At some point, however, every individual will hit a threshold above which they will not go in terms of cost/benefit.  While it is not always a good idea to measure a tea’s worth in how much pleasure it gives you per dollar spent, at some point that does come into play, and at this moment, for me, I think that many of the aged puerh on the market today are simply not worth the amount of money they command for me to want to actually buy them for drinking purposes.  I’m quite happy with my current selection of tea that I possess, and find little compelling reason to chase such expensive teas.  To buy them is to buy something rare and unique, something not easily found, especially if we’re talking about pre-1970s tea.  That rarity, however, commands a huge premium.  The reasons for purchasing these teas quickly leave the realm of “this is a good tea and is tasty” to “this is something that I can use to show off with” or “this is something that displays my knowledge of tea” or something similar.  In my opinion, those are not good things to pay for.  Nor, I think, should we expect that any tea produced today will command a similar level of prices come their 40th or 50th anniversary – the production level is so much higher now than it was back in the day, and so much more care has been put in to preserve these teas, that I think decades from now we will still have a relatively large supply of such things.  The only good reason to buy a tea is because you like to drink it.

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The one that got away

June 15, 2011 · 8 Comments

Today’s tea is probably my last, seriously brewed tea I’ll have in the United States for quite some time.  Tomorrow the movers will be coming to pack my things up and send them on their merry way to Hong Kong.  So, to commemorate the occasion, I thought I should drink something different, something interesting.  After some dithering and going over the many teas I have, I settled on one that has special meaning to me, because it’s the one that got away.

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Back in 2007 when I was still in Taiwan, I was a frequent visitor to the various old teashops in Taipei to look for aged oolong.  At that point I don’t think many people were selling aged oolongs online, aside from a handful at Houde, and there was very little information on such things.  I hunted high and low for these things, good, bad, and everything in between.  It was a fun experience, and I learned a lot just by tasting the different teas and talking to different people who sell them.  One store in particular, as my old-time readers will remember, I affectionately called the “Candy Store” because buying things from there made me felt like a kid in a candy store – lots of goodies, and the thrill of having to hunt them down.

Late in my stay in Taipei, perhaps a week or two before I had to leave, I went to the Candy Store again and found a few things that looked interesting.  One of them was a small, perhaps 2-3kg bag of rolled oolong with a label that said it was from the 80s, a Dongding competition tea.  I only got to try the tea after I left Taiwan, because I had no time to do it before flying out.  By the second or third time I tried the tea, it became obvious that this tea is really good, and I wanted the whole bag.  However, it was too late, and when I asked a friend to visit the store again for this tea, it was all gone.

This is what spurred me to buy in bulk whenever I like a tea now – I think back in the day I felt less confident in my ability to tell good from bad apart, and tended to buy in smaller quantities because of it.  These days, I’m more sure of what I like and don’t like and also my ability in telling good from bad, so when I find something that I think checks all the boxes, I tend to buy in bulk – a few kilos at a time, so that the misfortune of not having a good tea when I want it is no longer there.

What I drank today is the very last bit of this tea, the last of the 4oz that I bought when I first visited the Candy Store.  Drinking it today, there’s still that nice, peachy taste to it, but it had also gotten a darker taste, a more aged flavour, if you will, that wasn’t there when I bought it.

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The tea looks a lot darker, although I think at least part of it is because there was a lot of dust in the bag, and that the cup is much deeper than the one in the original photo from three years ago.  Nevertheless, this is still a great tea, with depth, fullness, and qi.  I wish I have more, but I don’t.  It was one of the first teas I drank after coming back to the US from my long sojourn in Asia during 2006-7, and it is the last serious tea I’m drinking before I fly back to Asia, ending almost fifteen years in North America.  The next two days I’ll have to subsist on grandpa style teas, and then, back to home base.  See you on the other side.

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Revisiting the dahongpao

June 8, 2011 · 1 Comment

I went back to the same graduation dahongpao yesterday to try it again, since the last session was really not all that inspiring.  I wondered what brewing it in a single person pot at home would be like, versus a much larger pot for multiple people.  So, I opened up the bag that The Mandarin carefully sealed for me (thanks!) and took some leaves out.

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Normally speaking I think the optimal ratio for yancha is about 3/4 full of dry leaves.  In other words, for the empty vessel the leaves should fill about 3/4 of the space, after shaking and settling.  Less, and the result is often somewhat insipid and the true essence of yancha doesn’t show up.  For this purpose, a flatter pot is generally preferred for ease of pouring in the leaves, if nothing else.

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I was tempted to say that the colour of the tea coming out is darker, but I don’t think that’s actually true.  For one, I fill my cup with a whole pot of tea, since the pot is small.  Because the cup is relatively tall, teas often appear darker here.  When I was in New York the cups we used were the tiny ones that held about two sips.  They are really not that comparable.  Colour, in fact, is one of the most useless indicators of quality of tea, because it is affected by so many different variables, from the type of water used to the shape of the cup.  There are exceptions to this rule, such as the hue of the tea, which could tell you certain things about stored, aged teas, but that doesn’t apply here.

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Many infusions later

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The tea seems thicker this time around, and not as thin.  My water probably has a lot to do with that.  It also seems to have more complexity, owing to the same issue of water source.  I am also a believer that smaller pots always beat larger pots in terms of the quality of the brew – it is both easier to control and also, if you believe in such things, retains the qi of the tea better.  One of the Qing period tracts I’ve read talks about how the optimal size is really a one person pot, and everyone should bring their own to a gathering.  There’s some truth to that, I believe.

The most startling thing about this tasting though is the colour of the wet leaves.

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They somehow seem a shade darker than when I brewed them in New York.  This is pretty much impossible, I think, but nevertheless it seems that way.  Perhaps it’s because the leaves haven’t unfurled as much as they did in New York, owing to the smallness of the pot, and therefore lending more credence to the theory that there’s something that changes from large to small pot.  I’m not sure.  You can see though that the leaves are actually not very heavily roasted — many are still a dark olive green, rather than brown or even black.

Contrary to the colour of the liquor, the appearance of wet leaves tell you all sorts of information about the tea itself, and to this day I see very few vendors showing wet leaves consistently.  Reading tea leaves is actually possible, and can be highly valuable as a skill in buying teas online.

Categories: Information · Teas
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Variety is the spice of life

June 3, 2011 · 5 Comments

Many of us drink different teas every day, or even within each day, to keep it interesting.  Drinking the same tea, day in, day out, can get tedious, no matter how great the tea is.  I also find that tastebuds can sometimes go dull if drinking the same tea too many times.  Instead of just varying the leaves being brewed, however, there are many other things that you can do to change the way a tea tastes and how it appears to you.  Obviously, brewing method is a big one – a little leaf in a big bowl is going to taste very different from a lot of leaves in a little pot, but one that I think people tend to ignore is water.

I’ve talked about water many times before, and I think one of the key points I have tried to make over the years is that different water suit different teas, adjusted for different styles of brewing.  There are, I think, some general rules of what water is better for what kind of tea than others, but when it comes down to it, you have to find the right water for what you want from the tea.

Having said that, it is always interesting to change water sometimes just to give yourself a sense of what different water will do to a tea that you’re really familiar with, or for me yesterday, what the different water did to a tea that I was drinking earlier in the day.

My usual water here in Maine is from municipal sources, and from what I understand, water around here is pumped from underground.  The mineral content is high – the highest I’ve seen from municipal sources that I personally have experience with.  It’s the first water that leaves obvious, visible mineral deposits on everything I use from kettle to pots.  It is also heavy in taste, and when unfiltered, has a nasty sharpness to it that precludes enjoyable drinking.  There’s also a slight amount of saltiness in the water.

My tap water actually works rather well with most of the teas I drink – heavier teas, such as puerh and roasted or aged oolongs.  It’s really quite terrible for greens and light oolongs, but I rarely drink those anyway, so it’s not a real problem.  Yesterday, though, when I was shopping at our local organic food store, I saw that they had Iceland Spring on sale.  This is a water that I love – crisp, clean, refreshing, very tasty, and not too expensive.  So I got two bottles and intend to drink some tea with it.  It has low total dissolved solids, and you can taste the difference (note: I am not saying low total dissolved solids is good, but it’s different and it does what it does).

The tea I was having yesterday was a taobao purchase of a Yiwu cake from about 05 or 06.  It was one of many taobao lottery I purchased a while back.  I tried this cake once before, but wasn’t too impressed.  As I drank it yesterday first with the tap water, it seemed to have improved.  I came home with the Iceland Spring, and boiled the second kettle of water to use as a continuation of the initial brewing.  The tea changed – not just because it was weaker after a full kettle worth of tea, but also because the water changed.  You can think of a tea’s progression through infusions as being on a curve of sorts, and in this case, changing the water led to a break in that curve.  The tone of the tea lightened up, both in terms of the physical colour, and also the body, which is pretty consistent with my findings from previous experiments.  What’s gained though is a depth in fragrance that was rather muted with my tap water.  That took more of a center stage when I brewed it with the Iceland Spring, which gave it a nice, crispness that enhanced or at least brought attention to the fragrance of the tea.

This brings me back to my original point, which is that the water you should use depends on the tea you want.  A water that works for you is the best water for the tea.  It doesn’t really matter if it’s tap, spring, well, river, or rain – if it works for you, it works.  Now, on balance, I think some water types work better with some tea types, and I think there are generally broad agreements as to what water is better than others (distilled bad, spring good).  I also think that the only way of finding out, given all the variables there are in tea brewing, is to try it out yourself.  Using different sources, buying different kinds of bottled water, and comparing the results is really the only way you can find out if what you normally use is good or not for what you drink.  After all, water is the cheapest way to improve your tea.

Another thing that is very underrated but I think very important is to just try the water itself, in comparison with each other.  This is very easy and cheap to do.  Go find four or five different water sources, pour them into identical glasses, and drink.  Don’t just gulp, but drink like you’re drinking tea – taste it, feel it, and pay attention to it.  Water is actually quite interesting to drink on its own, and can taste great.  You don’t need abominations like this to make drinking water fun.

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Graduation

May 31, 2011 · 13 Comments

In 2004 I bought myself a box of Dahongpao from the Best Tea House.  I told myself that this was going to be a tea that I will keep for the duration of my graduate studies, and that, when done, I’ll celebrate by opening it and drinking it.  The original plan was that I will leave it sealed until then, aging it for five or six years, and have something nice to drink at the end of it.  Since my school’s official colour is crimson, I thought it’s the most fitting tea, in many ways.  I ended up opening the box for MadameN‘s graduation two years ago, but finally, after many years of sweat and toil, I have a reason of my own to do so.

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Now, owing to administrative silliness, I actually got my degree in November last year, but since it’s rather impractical to have three occasions a year that has people dressed in large, crimson coloured bags, everyone does it in May.

Likewise, the actual tea drinking didn’t happen the day of the ceremony.  Rather, it took place two days later, when I was in New York visiting the Mandarin’s Tearoom and friends.  It’s been two years since I took this tea out, and even when I was opening it, I was quite aware that I no longer hold this tea in as high regard as I used to – I don’t think it is that great anymore, certainly not for the price.  Whereas many years ago, when I bought it, it was something that I thought was truly good, now the tea seems merely decent.  The brewing confirmed it.  The tea still has nice qi, I think, which warms, but the mouthfeel is a little flat, and the taste slightly muted.  While I didn’t pack the pot to the hilt, it was enough leaves to make a decent cup.  Yet what came out seemed a little flat.

This, then, is also a graduation of some sort.  We all have moments like this at some point in our tea drinking career.  Teas that, when we were younger, we thought were great, full, and flavourful will almost always appear less interesting, less full over the years.  Some of us got started drinking flavoured teas but have long since swore off such things.  Others may occasionally return to the qingxiang oolongs or green teas that got us into tea in the first place, but find far more pleasure drinking different types.  Still others will turn to cooked puerh from time to time, but would much prefer aged teas, even though cooked puerh may very well have been the “gateway drug.”  The same can be said of vendors too.  Vendors who, early on, seem to offer great selections would often, upon closer inspection and more experience, look like overpriced teas for mediocre quality.  Drinking this dahongpao this time, some of these thoughts definitely crossed my mind.

While I don’t think I will buy another box of this dahongpao from the Best Tea House anymore, it doesn’t mean I will toss this tea — certainly not.  It’s still good tea, just not great, and factoring in the price, there are better options.  There is one more calculation involved though.  Even though it may not be the best tea, it was what I wanted myself to have all those years ago as a graduation celebration.  I have kept it all these years, hauling it around with me while I moved from place to place, and that sentimental value is not something that a far better dahongpao can replace.  Perhaps I’m overly sentimental, but even if someone offers me some dahongpao from the original three trees in exchange of what’s left in this box, I don’t think I’ll take that trade.  This is why many of us, even when we already have shelves full of teas of dubious quality aging, still have a hard time parting with them.  They are pieces of personal history and memory that, once gone, can never truly be replaced.

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Portion sizing

May 8, 2011 · 7 Comments

Tea comes in many different sizes — you can buy them in bag form, in boxes, in tins, and compressed.  There are the easy to distinguish sizes that are pretty common for everything we buy — 100g, 50g, 3oz, 4 liang, a jin.  Then there are the ones that are less common, and is sometimes more troublesome when dealing with them – gram incrementals, 7g packs, 25g samples.  None, however, have ever come in this format before

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Yup — a minibing of extremely mini proportions.  These are 6g cakes of a certain tea whose producer I bought from through Taobao.  When I saw them thrown into my Taobao order, I was positively amused.  After all, it’s actually a pretty good idea, but one that has never occurred to me (and as far as I can tell, anyone else).  Usually, when you buy samples, the vendor chips a little block off the cake and send it to you.  Not here, no.  These vendors know you want a sample, and so they pre-pressed them into sample sizes.  They are so prepared, in fact, they even printed mini wrappers, with the date of production, 2009 March, stamped on the back.  Talk about thinking ahead.

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I think these cakes are definitely a nice idea in terms of getting your tea out and giving them some attention.  At the same time though, they are slightly annoying.  I generally don’t like pre-determined portion sizes when it comes to tea.  The reason is that the amount of leaves used in any particular session has a huge influence on how you perceive the tea, and you have no idea how much tea leaves you need until you know what vessel you’re using to brew it.  Brewing tea in a 300ml pot is very different from brewing it in a 60ml gaiwan, but both are equally appropriate for somebody out there who considers drinking from such a brewing vessel a proper tea session.

This mini-minicake, for example, is really too small for my taste.  I’d like a little more tea than 6g, but at the same time, not quite as much as 12g, for my usual young puerh pot.  This is where the trouble is – if I brew apart the second cake I have, I will be left with a completely useless sample of 2-3g of tea.  If I don’t, then I will drink an underpowered tea.  I could find a smaller brewing vessel, but I don’t really want to use a gaiwan.  I also happen to think that brewing too little tea in too small a vessel is not always going to produce good results.  I ended up opting for just one cake, and saving the next for something else (or just to keep around for novelty value).  The tea is pleasant, but a bit bland in the cup, mostly because it is not as concentrated as I like it.

This is why I hate seeing tieguanyin or other oolongs packed into little individual packets.  While they are quite convenient to carry around, they are a pain.  I don’t like 7g for my oolongs — it’s always too little, but two packs is also almost always too much.  There’s really no happy medium, and nobody seems to make any packets other than the standard 7g ones.  Why do it?

I think there are two reasons these are done.  One is the abovementioned convenience.  The other is really something to do with the conception that freshness is at stake.  I don’t think I really buy that — unless you plan on leaving your 100g bag of tieguanyin around for years, freshness is really not that big of an issue.  Convenience, on the other hand, is, and I find myself increasingly disliking the small packets of teas despite their sometimes convenient nature.

Sample size is another issue.  25g is roughly two sittings for me, although depending on the mood, the tea, and the setting, that may vary considerably.  Of course, there’s an amount at which it no longer makes any sense to call it a sample.  Leftover bits from samples is basically a fact of life — there’s no way to avoid it, really, no matter the amount given.  Like division that has a remainder, it is what it is, and nothing can be done about it to get rid of the remainder, short of mixing them together to brew.   Some vendors, however, have odd sizes — 15g, for example, or even 10g.  I find those to be utterly useless, and 10g is sometimes not enough for even one sitting, depending on the tea (and the quality of the tea in question — really ground up leaves counting towards 10g is not really 10g of tea at all).  At the same time though, buying by the gram is a little odd, and not something I’m used to or prefer.  Set sizes, like 100g or 3oz, still works best for me.

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Smoke gets in your tea

May 3, 2011 · 3 Comments

Smokiness is a common thing in younger puerh, especially teas that were made a few years ago or earlier.  In recent years, I’ve found that processing has generally been done more carefully to avoid smoke — for good reason, because intense smokiness tends to drive down the price of the tea.

Smoke is a by-product of the processing of puerh, generally attributed to older frying techniques with pans and not-so-careful management of smoke in the fire, etc.  I remember back in the day, friends with far more experience would tell me that the older teas that are now worth thousands, such as Yellow Label, were intensely smokey when new, in addition to being sour, bitter, and generally quite nasty.  Since those turned out well (partly thanks to traditional storage, I believe) smoke was sometimes seen as a good thing by these friends, because it’s another additional character that adds substance for the tea to change over time.  With the advent of dry storage, however, I’m not sure if that mantra holds true anymore.

I had a mix of two teas today, because they were samples running too low for an individual sitting.  The two teas are a 2006 Yongde Organic from YSLLC, and a 2002 CNNP Bingdao from Puerhshop (no longer available).  I remember trying them a long time ago, but I don’t remember much about them.  I’m pretty sure neither were earth shatteringly good.  One, though, was clearly quite smokey, because it still is as I drank it today.  Both teas I’ve had for a few years now, sitting in small plastic bags in my samples box.  As airing-out goes, these samples are pretty aired out.  Yet, when I brewed it, the smoke persists.  It’s not as strong as it must have been, once upon a time, but it is still there, very prominent, obvious, and distracting.

Smoke eventually goes away, in the right kind of environment, but until it does, the tea is rarely enjoyable.  Since only about 1/2 of the sample I drank today contained smokey tea (I’m pretty sure only one was smokey, not both) it is important to note how they do, in fact, linger for years.  One tea is from 06, the other 02, so five years in North American storage did very little to the smoke.  It is a good reminder of how this works.

The tea is otherwise quite good — and because they have been blended as two components, I think the mouthfeel is quite full and luscious.  The tea has strength, and given some more years, will probably turn out to be quite decent.  On the downside, they are still quite young tasting, and are only beginning to show some age.  Dry stored teas require a lot of patience, and even then, the right environment.  Only engage in it if you’re ready and willing to enter a long term relationship with the cakes you buy.

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Three oolongs in comparison

April 28, 2011 · 17 Comments

I felt inspired to do a comparative tasting today, something which I haven’t done for quite some time.  This past March when I went back to Hong Kong I renewed my interest in tieguanyin, which for the past few years have been in the doghouse, so to speak, because most of the stuff you can buy in the US or in mainland China are so unspeakably bad.  They are, generally speaking, of the “nuclear green” variety where they are almost greener than green teas.  While some people like the fragrance of those teas, I personally find them awful.  Give me any traditional style tieguanyin anyday.

Having gone to a few stores that sold such things in Hong Kong this past break, including a great experience with a relatively cheap tieguanyin at the incredible Tim’s Kitchen (yes, restaurant tea can be good!) I was quite inspired.  So, I bought a bunch of things, and started trying some that I have leftover at home in comparison.  Today’s is one such tasting.

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The identity of the teas are not terribly important.  The one on the left is a highly roasted, slightly aged (my own storage) oolong that I bought a few years ago.  It’s electric roasted.  The one in the middle is a recent purchase on this past trip, with the vendor roasting using charcoal roast and blending the end product.  The one on the right is what I think of as a typical green tieguanyin these days, still not as green as can be, but pretty green nonetheless.  I tend not to drink such things these days.

Closeups of each of the three:

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You can see the blending in the middle tea – various colours are present in the dry leaves.  I brewed them in competition cups for five minutes each, and this is the result

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Competition style really brings out all kinds of stuff you don’t necessarily notice if you were brewing them normally.  The middle tea ended up being the darkest, and the nose has a distinct charcoal smell that the other two don’t have.  The right one is obviously the most immediately fragrant, with a strong vanilla note.  The left one is in some ways the most subdued, but has a nice roasted fragrance.

In the mouth though is where they really differ.  I think with competition style, especially if you drink one right after the other, it is sometimes difficult to tell which one is giving you the strong, everlasting aftertaste, because you are drinking them in such quick succession.  However, it is possible to distinguish notes and especially body and mouthfeel very easily with this method.  Drinking it this way, it is obvious that the middle cup is in some ways the fullest — it has the most full bodied brew among the three.  It also has flaws, specifically it has a harsh and sour note, the harshness from the charcoal roast, the sourness from probably some improper storage.  The tea on the left is the most pleasant to drink for me, probably because it’s been aged slightly.  It has the beginning of an aged taste to it, and will develop it further if I were to leave it alone.  However, it is also in some ways the most boring, because the tea is more or less one-note, and is a bit hollow in the mouth.  The one on the right is clearly a different beast, and caters to an entirely different market.

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The wet leaves also yield some stories.  You can see the mixed nature of the tea for the middle one, as there are leaves of varying shades and stiffness, whereas the other two are more uniform in their appearance.  The leaves on the left are a bit thin in comparison to the other two, perhaps accounting for some of the thinness that I’m noticing in the cup.

It is difficult to find teas like the two left ones in the US, at least, and in China, even.  In a big tea market in a major city, you may find one or two outfits that have some stuff that might be somewhat roasted, but by and large, if you walk into a tieguanyin store you’re going to find various shades of nuclear green.  The reason for this is simple.  It’s both easier and cheaper to make really green tieguanyin — less work, less processing, and they sell for more in China, where the taste is predominantly for lighter tieguanyins.  The same, I think, can be said of the US, and it is usually only serious teaheads who drink the roasted ones, which make them a difficult thing to sell.  In places in Southern China like Guangdong province, the tradition of drinking roasted tea is a bit deeper, so you will find more of these types of tea there, but even then you have to look for them, because otherwise it is very easy to end up with inferior roasted teas.

I like the tea in the middle when I drink it normally — the sourness is quite manageable, as evidenced by my session with friends this past weekend.  This is the other thing about competition brewing — you want to start with a tea that is both strong and has a good body/mouthfeel.  Particular flavours that may be unpleasant are entirely manageable through brewing techniques, but it’s easier for skills to manage bad traits than to concoct a drink out of a bland and boring tea.  Likewise, it makes me wonder about the usefulness of drinking single estate teas for any genre — blending requires skills and is an art, and I’m not sure if there are really that many people now who can do it right.  I turned down the offer to buy some unblended tieguanyin from the same shop, I should go back next time to do that for comparison.

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My cat’s choice

April 18, 2011 · 6 Comments

For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, I have two cats who have been with me for almost ten years now.  Normally, they don’t care much for tea.  In fact, they ignore me when I brew tea.  Sometimes the male cat, Sunny, will come by and sniff, but no more.  He is, by and large, not interested in such things.  Smokey, the female one, generally avoids me when I make tea.  Napping is much more interesting.

Recently though, Smokey has shown extreme interest in one particular cake of tea I have sitting around.  This never happens, but the other day, she was positively pawing it and sniffing it, something which has never, ever happened before with any other tea.  I figured I need to give this tea a try again, since she’s generally quite selective in her food choices.

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The tea in question is one I sent recently to BBB for some tasting.  It’s a Bulang I picked up over Taobao for a not-very-cheap price.  The tea was shown without any identifier on Taobao — just a generic Bulang claim, pictures of the leaves, and that’s it.  Turns out it actually has a real wrapper

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The tea is pretty good looking, but nothing too special.  With dry leaves, especially in pressed form, there is only so much you can tell from the looks.  At the end of the day, it’s all about the liquor.

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My tea looks way darker than BBB’s for two reasons — lighting, and because I use a much deeper cup.  I think this tea is one of very few in recent years that I’ve tried that fit my criteria for a good, young puerh — one that excites the tongue, turns sweet very quickly, has qi, and does not give me hints of odd processing or green tea processing.  The last point is particularly important, as many teas these days are made in such a way as to yield immediate, bean like pleasure, but will, over time, turn to a bitter mess.  Nine out of ten samples of new teas have some version of that.  This is one of the other 10%.

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I might actually pick some more of this up, eventually, but it’s just expensive enough for me to think twice about it.

Categories: Teas
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