A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries categorized as ‘Teas’

Zhengshan

September 5, 2007 · 4 Comments

I buy samples sized things a lot because it’s fun, and because it exposes me to different kinds of tastes. Oftentimes they are educational in one way or another, while other times they’re just…. bland and boring. That, and all the things people end up sending me, means a lot of oddities and small bags of tea that are left around to drink. It’s part of the fun.

Today’s another one of those “leftover bag of samples” day. This is a tea that is sold at an old tea store in Hong Kong, labelled simply as “Zhengshan”. It’s basically a very (and I do mean very) wet stored cake that was supposedly raw puerh when it was first made. It’s hard to tell for sure given the way the leaves are

These are some pretty hard little nuggets of tea. They’re not cha tou though.

I used up the remaining bag, maybe about 10g or so. The first infusion was particularly interesting — it had a very strong taste of Chinese almonds (which are apparently apricot seeds). I don’t know how a tea can acquire the taste of almonds… but here it is in unadulterated form. That in itself is quite interesting.

The tea, however, will probably scare any novice tea drinker by the way it looks

Yum. Some of you are probably thinking “you sure this is not cooked tea?”. I’m not 100% sure, to be honest, but the owner has no good reason to lie to me, since it’s not expensive at all. Other stuff that is priced higher he tells me are cooked, so it would be odd for him to try to lie to me about this particular tea. I do think, however, that this is tea so wet stored that it is effectively cooked over the years that it’s been in the storage (I think he said 10+).

After the almonds went away in 2 infusions, the rest of the tea tastes like very sweet, mellow, and rich puerh, but not really like a cooked tea. It doesn’t have that nasty cooked taste, and it also lasts much longer — this is what it looks like in maybe 12 infusions

It’s not a particularly lively tea. It doesn’t have a lot of qi. It doesn’t have that exciting factor that a well stored raw tea will have. But as a drink, I’d take this over any regular cooked puerh any day.

There are better offerings at that store, such as the broken Jiangcheng bricks, so there’s no good reason to buy this tea again. But for what it’s worth… it’s kinda fun. I think I’ll drink some more tomorrow morning when I get up, since I definitely haven’t exhausted it yet, so it’s being left alone in the pot for now.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Baozhong revisited

September 4, 2007 · 1 Comment

I wanted something light today, so I figured drinking the baozhong again, this time in my little pot, will be a good thing. Last time’s double tasting means I couldn’t taste each tea very well, individually. Those tasting sessions are great at alerting you to differences in mouthfeel, flavours, etc, but are not so good if you want to really examine a tea on its own with no interference, because the other tea there is interference.

I opted for the more expensive one to drink, but as I noted last time…. when dry, they look basically identical. When brewed:

They also look pretty much the same.

I tend to brew light Taiwan oolongs delicately. Temperature of water is still kept high, but poured from high up and in a small stream, but that depends on what’s going on and can change… There are different schools of thought of what makes a good cup, and as I’ve observed it really runs the gamut, but I find it just fine like this usually. Add to the fact that my body generally doesn’t like a large amount of Taiwan oolongs that are not roasted, and it makes perfect sense why I brew it this way….

The resulting tea is overwhelmingly sweet, with a soft floral aroma and just a slight hint of grassiness if I overbrew it a bit. There’s some qi there, as I could feel my body reacting to the tea after the first few sips. The body is thick enough, and all in all, quite a pleasant drink. It’s a bit mellow, and perhaps less strong than some of the better stuff could be, but those are sometimes too punchy for me in their flavour, making it taste almost artificial. There’s a sort of saccharine quality to that kind of aroma/feeling that I don’t personally enjoy.

The tea passed on with about 6 infusions. It’s not an overly complex tea, but once in a while… it’s good for what it is.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Yangqing Hao 2006 “Hundred Years Fragrant Tea”

September 3, 2007 · 6 Comments

This is a sample I received from somebody on a Chinese forum. The guy was generous enough to send me two samples of Yangqing Hao teas. One of them, the 04, was once available on Hou De but has been long gone. This one, the Baisui Xiangcha, or “Hundred Years Fragrant tea”, I don’t believe has ever been sold there…

The leaves are quite dark when dry. It’s supposed to be a mix of six mountain tea, so not all Yiwu like many of his other cakes. I think this is a lower grade cake, relatively speaking.

The tea brewed a golden colour — quite pretty

The first cup was extremely smooth and soothing. There was a fair bit of bitterness, in a very subdued fashion, in the first cup. It’s an interesting feeling — the bitterness is simultaneously there and not there. The smell on the bottom of the lid was a reassuaring grassy/green smell, while the fragrance lingered in the bottom of the cup. The tea, however, gradually got a little more rough as time went on. There was not a lot of qi, and the aftertaste/throatiness varied in degree, depending on which infusion. Sometimes it’s stronger, sometimes it’s weaker. It started turning sweet around infusion 5, and then got sweeter, while still remaining a bit rough.

The wet leaves are …. interesting

They come in all shape and sizes and colours

The blending is obvious, both in the way the leaves look but also in the cup. While it does taste like the six mountains area, there is a fair bit of change going on in the cup and in that sense, the tea is quite interesting. I don’t, however, believe the leaves are of very high quality. I think it is a blend of old and new tree teas, and while the body is fair, the strength, in terms of aftertaste, qi, and that kind of thing, are not quite there. The blending part can does make up for some of the deficiencies in other areas though…

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Jingye Hao revisited

September 2, 2007 · 3 Comments

This is a sample I bought from Hou De probably a year and half ago. I remember trying it once, and then forgetting about it while it sat in Beijing. I discovered it today while looking for things to drink… so I pulled out a few grams of it

The leaves look big and are quite long, not too hardly compressed and easily broken off. The leaves are on the reddish side of things. They look very clean — dry stored.

I brewed it normally


(Still trying to figure out the lighting, sorry)

The tea has a dry stored taste for something 6 years old, with a lot of high aromatics, a bit of that sweetness, some roughness, and in the second infusion, a clear flash of sourness. The tea is not very thick at all — in fact, I’d say it’s a bit thin. This is a bit of a contrast to what I remember from my last tasting, when I thought it was quite good. It could be the fact that much traveling and a year of Beijing storage in a paper bag did some damage to the tea, or maybe a year more of drinking teas actively and thinking about what I’m drinking has made me notice these problems. I have noticed that by blogging about the teas I drink, I’ve gotten more sensitive to things I see in tea — perhaps because I actively process them while drinking, rather than just drinking them.

The leaves of this tea are quite green, still

And more importantly… they are a little on the thin side

As well as oddly shaped, I might add.

I still have more of this. Maybe I’ll keep it and see what happens after another year and half.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Tea spirit… in practice

September 1, 2007 · 3 Comments

In a recent entry Hobbes has talked about the fact that some tea companions are better than others, and speculated as to the reasons why that is so. Today I had an interesting experience that made me think of this very topic.

I went back to the Yongkang area, since I haven’t really explored a lot of it yet, and there are places that were on Corax’s list of places that I haven’t visited. Why not? It’s a saturday when stores are still open (many shops close on Sundays in Taiwan) and the library is not open today.

I was tasked by a friend to look for some aged baozhongs specifically, so with that in mind, I went and hunted.

The first place I stopped at was Yetang, a secluded little place tucked into a back lane in the Yongkang area, completely unmarked, and impossible to find unless you knew the exact address. The place was a little dark, tastefully decorated, and very calming. You do feel like you’ve walked into a sort of urban sancturary, with the cups lining the wall and the dim lighting giving the place a warm glow. It just rained heavily, and I was soaked (even with an umbrella), so it was nice to walk into the place.

It was empty. There was only the proprietor and who I presume is his partner. I asked for an aged baozhong, and he said they ran out, but they have two other aged oolongs, a dongding and a shanlinxi. The dongding, he said, tastes more like the aged baozhong he had, so he’ll make that for me first. Sure, why not? I walked around the place (it’s not a store — at least it in no way feels or looks like a store, at all). There are some interesting teas there, but not a lot of it. I think most of the things he sells are hidden, only offered when you ask, or when he knows you better. The stuff on display are, I think, more likely to be stuff for the tourists who throng Yongkang.

The tea brewing area is a little medicine cabinet looking thing, and the chairs are on another side of the … space. He put down the cup for me on a table, and went back to his tea brewing cabinet. I think he was trying to let me drink in peace, although coming by myself, it was odd that way.

The tea itself is very nice. It feels like a dongding in the mouth, but tastes very aged with that unique sweetness and aroma that only aged oolongs will have. It has a long finish, and is a little numbing on the tongue. Very pleasant. Good qi. I really liked it.

I, however, slowly moved to the little work table that they had that was right next to the tea brewing area, because I needed to talk to somebody. It felt increasingly strange sitting there sipping the tea by myself while they did their own things around the cabinet. We chatted a bit, and I asked him to brew me the shanlinxi for comparison. It was much lighter, not too aged tasting, even though it’s only 3 years younger than the dongding. It’s mostly because of the storage condition — the shanlinxi was stored in a very well sealed container, while the dongding was not. Makes sense.

At this point, two tourists came in and walked around, tried a tea, and left. And then… some regulars started trickling in. I could feel more of them coming, so before more of them came, I bowed out, with a box of the dongding in hand. I felt awkward in that place, charming though it is physically.

Then I went to my second stop — Huiliu, barely 20 meters away from Yetang. Huiliu looks and feels a lot more commercial. I was at first mistaken as yet another Japanese tourist and was greeted with a friendly “o-cha desu ka?” (which is not really a correct way to ask this question… but no matter). I asked for an aged baozhong, which their new website (I was told it’s not entirely functional yet… they don’t know if payment and stuff works, and it’s a work in progress) advertises as being available. I was then told by the server (the place is more of a sit-down-and-drink-tea-with-friends-over-some-snack kind of place) that I have to wait for the owner to come back to try it, because they don’t know where that tea is stored exactly. While waiting, they kept me amused with this

A bowl of dongding oolong. It’s somewhat roasted. It’s new. It’s decent, and quite sweet when brewed this way.

The owner came back, a somewhat middle aged woman who looks very kind. She said no problem, let’s try it… and started rummaging through various things to find her aged baozhong.

As she was making the tea, a woman came by who the owner obviously knows… turns out she’s the person helping them to write the webpage. We started having a nice discussion of web buying practices, her upcoming travels (to SE Asia) and the like, and the owner chimed in… and I think that broke the ice. It was a sharp contrast from Yetang… where things were so quiet it was a little unsettling. I think it is partly a matter of personality, but also a matter of just the compatability of the people involved, the topics that come up, and the way the interaction has proceeded. We drank quite a few infusions of the aged baozhong, which tastes actually rather similar to the dongding, but a bit more aged and a little less powerful (all aged oolongs, if aged properly, start tasting broadly similar, IMHO). It was a good conversation.

While the web-developer left, I tried another tea that they had — a “medicine tea”, as the owner called it, made by a man who now no longer makes tea (he’s in his 90s). This was the last batch, 2006 stuff. It looks sort of like a baihao and sort of like a baozhong, but lighter in colour. It’s hard to figure out what it is, but looking at the leaves, it doesn’t look very high grade.

When she brewed it… the taste is very similar to some green teas I’ve had. It has reminders of biluochun in it, but not quite. It’s very sweet, and mellow in the mouth. It’s a bit rough. But what is very interesting about the tea is the qi. It hits you very, very hard. I normally can feel a tea’s qi, but the reaction on me is usually mild. This one, however, started making my heart pump right away, and I could feel it creeping up my back and it forced me to sit up more properly. I was a little light headed — but not in a bad way. It was probably the closest I’ve been to getting a high from anything.

Ok… confessions aside, it’s a tea with very good qi 🙂

We drank some infusions of this, while still chatting about tea and what not. I left the place with a few small bags of the baozhong, but also feeling like I made a friend in the place. I think, reflecting on it, that’s what was different about the two places. Even though Yetang is very non-commercial looking, I felt like I was treated as another tourist-customer who was just in and out. Perhaps the owner is naturally more reserved, and if I go back a few more times he will open up more. Then there is Huiliu, facing Yongkang park and very touristy, which is usually not a great thing, but somehow, it felt much more hospitable and welcoming. Maybe you’ll be writing it off as a matter of the quality of the teas, but really, the teas at both places were quite decent. I think it was more of a matter of a match in personality and expectations… and somehow, it just clicked better at Huiliu.

Both places, however, are worth repeat visits, as I haven’t tried all the stuff they’ve hidden away yet, so I’m quite sure I’ll go back to both in the not-too-distant future.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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When teas turn sour

August 31, 2007 · Leave a Comment

… you should finish it quickly.

I opened up a canister of Wuyi yancha today, some stuff I bought early on last year when I first arrived in Beijing. I know I don’t have much of it left, and figured it’s time to drink it up.

It’s quite broken — partly because this is nearing the bottom of the pile. It’s also a little more broken to begin with, given it is heavier roasted.

When I brewed it though….

I noticed that it was sour 🙁

It wasn’t terribly terribly sour, but it was definitely not sour when I had it last time, maybe two or three months ago. Now, however, it’s turned sour, a bit. There’s a puckery taste to it, and you can feel it pretty well. I adjusted the brewing time and managed to keep it under control. I also noticed that the sourness faded after about two or three infusions, so the damage is limited, so far.

However, it is probably only going to get worse from now, especially given the more humid climate here. A sour tea that isn’t too sour can be salvaged by roasting it again. A sour tea that is sour all the way through though is hopeless. Some people actually like a tiny litle bit of sourness to their yancha. I find any sourness to be detracting from the overall experience… which means that I should really drink the rest of this tea up quickly before it turns for the worse.

Oh well, at least I don’t have another 200g of this to go.

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Mystery cake

August 29, 2007 · 2 Comments

I bought this cake a week and half ago, and haven’t tried it yet since my purchase. Given that yesterday I had a 90s tea, I figured it would be a good thing to do to compare it with this cake. I know they’re not very comparable — this one being younger by a good bit, but it’s good to have a reference point sometimes.

The wrapper is a CNNP one — since I’m no wrapperologist, I am not sure what it is. The owner of the store said it’s a special order cake from Menghai. I have my doubts based on the way the cake is shaped. For people like us who are only buying the tea for personal consumption, factory provenance doesn’t matter too much as long as the tea is fair (and the price too, since Menghai and other big factories command a premium).

This is what it looks like unwrapped

With a closeup

And the bit that got bitten by the mouse…. no, it was me 🙂

It’s odd, but under this lighting it looks better than when I am staring at it live.

The tea is probably around 5 years of age, or thereabouts. I’m not sure.

The first thing I notice is that the aromas are “higher” than the tea yesterday. It being younger and less aged probably has something to do with it. The liquor is also lighter in colour

The initial infusion was very sweet, with a bit of an aged taste showing. It gradually got a little rougher as I brewed it on, but the aroma also intensified. In fact, it took a good 3-4 infusions before the tea really hit its stride and I could feel the strength of the tea that I remembered trying in the store. The bitterness was kept well under control, but I know if you overbrew it (as the owner of the shop deliberately did) it will come out quite bitter. When it was good, it showed me some throatiness as well. It’s also got some qi, as I could feel my body reacting to the tea.

At the same time, there were a few infusions of this tea when I felt it was a bit watery — not thin, but watery as in lacking an obvious taste. The roughness was also a downside, although I suppose that can be remedied. The tea did eventually return to a sweet water state with no roughness, which is good, and after 10+ infusions.

So I don’t know exactly what to make of this tea. Maybe it’s in that transition phase between different stages of aging, and so tastes a bit like an awkward adolescent?

Here are some wet leaves

The cake comprises leaves of all sizes…

It might be interesting to drink this again after a few more years. I can see it changing, although I’m not sure in what direction.

Categories: Old Xanga posts · Teas
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1995 Shuilan yin

August 28, 2007 · 3 Comments

Before I start babbling today — congrats to Lew Perin, whose Babelcarp is now 2000 phrases strong. It’s a wonderful tool for those of you who don’t know Chinese and are (rightly) confused by all those funny phrases that annoying people like me sometimes throw out, or the strange spellings of teas you don’t recognize on some vendors’ sites… so if you haven’t yet, go take a look there and play around with it.

I went out for stinky tofu today for dinner, and after coming home, I wanted some tea, not having had any today (apart from some sweetened instant tea type thing with my lunch). As usual, I was looking through my tea cupboard and noticed a bag — a really flat bag. It was the sample bag of the 1995 Shuilan Yin from Hou De that I bought …. more than a year and half ago now, or thereabouts. There’s still a little left in there… 3.5g. Enough for a drink for post-dinner in my small gaiwan. Why not?

The dry leaves were mostly very very broken little bits. It’s not terribly interesting. It is, after all, the remains of what used to be solid chunks of tea. When I made it… this is what came out

Looks good to me.

I remember thinking this tea being a bit sharp, thin, and metallic in its aftertaste. Oddly enough, I didn’t find much of that this time. It tasted fuller than I remember the past two attempts. I also noticed that it has mellowed — less bitter than before. I think the fact that it’s been so broken up and sat around in a bag might have aired it out a bit? The taste is that of a tea that has at least been through some wet storage. Dry stored teas don’t taste/feel like this, I think. Not a problem though. Given its slightly bitter nature (there’s still a bit there — as well as a bit of roughness on the tongue) a pure dry stored tea might be rather harsh.

There’s not a lot to say about a really broken sample. It didn’t last too long — 6-7 infusions and the tea was getting pretty weak. The broken nature of the leaves, again, definitely has something to do with that. You can see it for yourself…. another 1/3 of the leaves were stuck to the bottom of the gaiwan, since they were all little fannings that don’t come off easily

It served its purpose. The thing is no longer available in any form anymore anyway. Anybody still has some? How does it taste now?

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Roasted baozhong

August 27, 2007 · 3 Comments

Along with the two green baozhongs I got was this roasted baozhong. I generally like roasted teas. They’re easier on the body (stomach and otherwise) and usually also require less attention to make, which enables them to be teas that can be drunk without too much attention being paid to how you make it.

Roasted baozhong, as the owner of the shop reminded me, are often teas from last year that weren’t sold. Since unroasted teas are no longer fresh and have lost some of their fragrance, roasting will enable it both to keep as well as to change its composition so as to make it marketable again. It makes sense. Why roast good, fresh crop when you have older stuff? Of course, there are teas that are made to be roasted by design, but in this day and age when lighter teas often command higher prices, it would be silly for a farmer to forego the higher income for a roasted tea.

I made this once before since purchasing the tea, but last time I didn’t use much leaves as I only wanted something weak and mellow. Today I decided to push it a little harder and use a Wuyi yancha proportion

Which basically means stuffing the gaiwan.

The resulting tea is quite dark

And initially there’s a strong charcoal roasted flavour. It’s not, however, so strong that you feel like you’re eating charcoal (I’ve had those kinds of tea before). It’s a very fine line between over roasting and just right — when it tips into the “I’m tasting charcoal” territory, the tea… really isn’t so good anymore.

This tea manages to stay within bounds. Not much of the original flavour of the baozhong remains, of course. Instead, you get a deeper, heavier scent, something like a dark fruity flavour. This tea is not aged, at least not that I can tell, so it can probably benefit from some aging — both to lose a bit of the charcoal flavour and to gain a little more sweetness. It’s not that it’s not sweet, but I find that roasted teas, aged a few years, can have a unique mellowness and roundness that newly roasted teas can’t.

This predicates itself on having been stored correctly. Unlike puerh, generally it’s not a good idea to have them exposed to much air. They can turn sour if it’s moist outside. At the Best Tea House, for example, boxes of Wuyi yancha and other roasted teas sometimes go sour because they’ve been opened for a as samples but not finished in time. Some people actually like it a touch sour, but I personally think sour tea is just nasty. This tea doesn’t have any sourness, no matter how long I brewed it for. Neither is it rough or too bitter. Pretty decent, actually, and not a bad find for a tea that didn’t cost too much.

The wet leaves are a bit stiff — a lot of roasting happened. Not the heaviest I’ve seen though. It’s very strange, but extremely heavily roasted teas, when done properly, are incredibly sweet.

I might buy a few bags of this before I leave and let it sit at home. I think it will be worth it to have some of my own supply of aged baozhongs.

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Jiangcheng brick, age unknown

August 26, 2007 · 2 Comments

Today I had some broken pieces of a Jiangcheng brick that is supposedly 10+ years old. This was purchased from one of those older Hong Kong shops. General consumers who are not tea fanatics like you or me generally don’t buy whole bricks or cakes. They buy broken pieces that were blended by the tea shops. Each shop will tend to have their own blends and different tastes, but generally speaking, they served their local neighbourhood. This is probably something in between — an unblended but nonetheless broken brick (actually, lots of bricks). The target audience is still the general drinking public. If you want to collect, you can probably ask them for the full brick, although I don’t remember them actually selling it.

The sample today is what’s left of what I bought (about 1 Chinese ounce… or almost 40g).

There’s about 10g left, not really enough for two satisfying servings, so I threw everything into the pot.

I remember last time trying this, basically when I first bought it, and thought it was a little too harsh — that’s strong words coming from me, I think. It was on the bitter side of things.

This time the tea is darker than I remembered

And the taste is similar — but somehow softer. I think brewing it in a pot (last time was gaiwan) helped. The tea is noticeably mellower. It’s sweet, but with an initial bitterness that is still there. It was entirely tolerable though, and not too nasty. In fact, the first two infusions made me think of dark chocolate — there are some aromas that smelled like chocolate, and combined with the bitter+sweet mix and the slight roughing of the tongue, it resembled a darker chocolate quite well, actually. Not the same, of course, but as far as teas go, this is pretty close.

A few infusions later the tea turned into something sweeter, with a “higher” fragrance. The chocolate notes were gone, giving way to something more perfumy. This is usually what I like best about drinking a raw puerh — even when aged some, the perfumy notes won’t go away. Cooked puerh don’t do this.

And finally, the tea turns into sweet water that is not too flavourful, but quite pleasant to drink nonetheless. At this point you’re drinking it partly just for the body and the feeling, and a little bit of that sweet perfumy notes remain. We’re talking 10+ infusions, of course.

The leaves still retain some vitality. They’re not at all dark or stiff. They are well compressed though.

A few individual leaves — the small one is a bud-sized leaf, while the bigger one is obviously more mature

Having tried drinking it this way… and perhaps with a few months of aging outside of the big canister that it came in, the tea seems quite drinkable and decent, especially when one factors in the relatively low cost. Something to keep in mind when I go back to Hong Kong again….

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