A Tea Addict's Journal

I bought two cakes today (same make). Will post more when I get around to taking pictures. I also bought an oz of loose puerh (the last ounce they have) for half the price they asked for, mostly because it was quite broken.

I should really stop myself before sinking too much…. I still have Beijing to go to!

I finally made my way to Sunsing today, as I thought I was going to do for quite a while now.

They sell lots of cakes, at prices that are not TOO expensive, but certianly not cheap. I was looking for newer cakes (can’t afford the old ones). I tried two today, both newer cakes that are their own private label. One’s a 2003, the other 2006. The 2003 one is a little weak — mild, pleasant, but not enough strength. It’s apparently a Dadugang cake, whatever that means.

The 2006 one is overwhelmingly smokey. The smoke lingers on, but I think beneath the smoke is a tea that has a lot of decent characteristics and doesn’t make you feel nasty after drinking it. I like that. The leaves are big and fat, and look quite nice. Price tag is a little high — $20 USD a cake. I’m not sure if I want to pay that much for some new tea….

I did, however, buy something — two issues of Puerh Teapot.

Well, I had a tea date today with YP at 4pm. I went on time, and she was a little late because she got held up.

While waiting, we drank the cheapest puerh on sale at BTH. It was about $1 USD an ounce. None of us (including the storekeepers, Rosa and Helen) have tried it before. Some cooked, some raw mixed together. None very good, but I guess it is ok drinkable. At first after two washes it still had some odd tastes that it acquired throughout the years. I suppose if you air the tea out a bit it might taste a bit better. YP came in halfway through our tasting session of this tea. We asked her how much she’s willing to pay for this at the BTH without knowing the price. $1.50 USD was the answer. We were all impressed she won’t get gibbed.

But of course, we weren’t there today to drink $1/oz puerh.

YP is a lady with a big goodie bag when she’s in the mood. It’s basically a big paper shopping bag full of stuff — tea stuff. The first thing she pulled out was this

With a closeup

This is the REAL Zhenchunya hao tea. Why do I say real? This is the first batch, apparently. Mr. Chan of BTH got only 40 cakes when he first sold it. YP scored a cake and half (limited quantity for everybody). This is NOT the same thing as the Zhenchunya I saw in the BTH the other day (of which I took some pictures). As you can see, this one has golden tips in it, and the leaves are browner, while the other one is greener and dimmer. The leaves of this one is very shiny, very oily, while the other one is dull. I was quite impressed by the differences.

Then she pulled out this

Yes, a lady who carries around a whole cake. This is the wrapper

This is an 80s Sheng+shou mix cake, commonly called Traditional Character Zhongcha brand because it has traditional (rather than simplified) characters on the wrapper. Going price in BTH is $3800 HKD, or $400 USD.

Onto the tasting:

We had the Zhenchunya first. It’s remarkably mild mannered as a tea, very smooth, very subtle. The taste lingers forever, but isn’t overpowering. I think we could’ve added a little more leaf, but she got a little protective of her stash. It was really quite good, and the tea shows its age as a 10 year. Not as harsh and bitter as the Zhenchunya at the BTH that they sell now. I might ask Tiffany to give me a try of that again to see the difference using similar leaf to gaiwan ratio.

This is how the leaves look brewed.

Then… she pulled out more goodies. Two newer cakes, to be exact. I didn’t take pics of both, but I did take pics of a corner of a cake that she gave me (along with pieces of the Traditional Character Zhongcha as well as the leftover Zhenchunya sample she took — all mine!!!)

This is a 3 year old cake. Reminds me a little of my Taiwan cake, but this one is more silvery, although both are very buddy cakes — mostly buds and not much leaves. The tea is sweet, not quite green anymore, has a raw edge to it, tastes wild (rather than very tame and boring) and is quite tasty now. She said she’s buying these to see how they will age over time as these buds only cakes are a fairly new phenomenon. She bought at least a whole jian, afaik. Maybe more. All from Guangzhou.

This is how it looks brewed. Looks almost like white tea.

We were going to taste the Traditional Character cake, but I had to run soon already. Didn’t really have that much time left. So… she pulled out the other goodies she brought.

and

The top pot is for Wuyi, the bottom for aged high fire TGY. The top pot is a real Mengcheng. The bottom is by a maker called Songsui or something. I wasn’t really sure.

We had the TGY first. Very nice — 98 TGY from BTH, stored in good sealed condition for 8 years. I think she has bucketloads of this stuff. Somewhat sour as she brewed it extremely strong, but the aftertaste… on it’s great. That’s the taste you can’t get with new tea. It’s a round, full tea, with something I can’t really describe. Similar to the other aged Gongfu tea I had at BTH a week ago (from some other guy who has lots of stuff stashed), but this one’s a little more powerful (less age) and the tea quality itself is higher. She only makes 3 rounds of this and stops — she says anything more is a letdown after the goodness.

They were going to keep drinking — the Wuyi, and maybe other things. I had to go to dinner with dad, so I had to run. 🙁

I did come off with lots of goodies — four samples of teas, as well as lots of good advice on tea drinking, gaiwan using, etc etc….

A few action shots, as she brewed the ones where her pot was used (others were brewed by Rosa, a very experienced sales at BTH)

Today’s my lucky day.

I bought the pot from the Best Tea House that I talked about a few days ago. It’s nice, and I like it, and it’s the right size. Small enough for one person, but not overly small.

I went to their main store today, where Tiffany is currently stationed. I got there at around 3pm, and started tasting again the Fengqing tuo (the 500g one). I think I might buy one of them, not sure. Anyway, I paid up and bought the pot there, and I also got a box of cheap aged puerh and got a small (50g) tuo as a free gift. Not too bad, I guess.

Then apparently Tiffany has to make a delivery run to somewhere else, and since I don’t like the other salesperson there, I decided to leave as well. As we went out, though, she asked if I wanted to go to their other branch, in a place called Taikoo Shing, and she might ask a very experienced tea friend to come along. I’ve been wanting to see that tea friend (a married woman probably in her 50s) since I got back, so I said yes. She called, and the arrangement was made.

We all went, got to their Taikoo Shing store at around 5pm. There was someone else there, a merchant from Quanzhou in Fujian province, tasting a 18 year old shou tuo (100g) from Xiaguan. We had it. It’s not bad for a shou, not great, but rather expensive (30 USD). Then again, apparently he can sell it for something like triple the price in Quanzhou, so more power to him.

A bit later, when we were still tasting the shou tuo, the older tea friend came in. Let’s call her YP. YP is a puerh-head. She’s the one who once treated me to a Yellow Label and also some Iron Cake. Very good teas in general… We chatted for a while while drinking the shou tuo, and was generally having a good conversation about what makes a good young puerh to buy.

And after the Quanzhou man left, she pulled out some stuff…. lo and behold, it’s broken bits from her two cakes of Grand Red Label (50s tea). I’ve taken a picture of one of these in plastic wrap in the Best Tea house a few days ago, going for $5000 USD. Here she was, pulling it out to let us drink it.

Too bad she wasn’t prepared, since she was called in a hurry, so she didn’t bring her zhuni pot along. So we ended up settling for a gaiwan. Apparently, she only drinks this thing once or twice a year, so this is quite special and she sort of brought it for me. I felt rather honoured today.

Needless to say, the tea was great. The initial explosion of flavours was overwhelming, giving way in later infusions to a spring water like clarity, and then finally the sweet undertones of a puerh after many brews. It was about 9 brews later when we left and went for dinner. I paid, the minimum I could do for having tried such a tea. I don’t know if I will get to drink a Red Label again. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy to get.

We have another meeting planned tomorrow. She has apparently never heard of those Taiwan puerh cakes that we’ve been oogling over. So I’m going to bring her a few sample of those tomorrow, to let her try it and see what she thinks. In return, she will bring probably some super high fire gongfu tea and tieguanyin and the like.

Too bad I didn’t have my camera today…

Many thanks to Toki for letting me know that there was a sort of tea display at the Yuhua Chinese Products store in Jordon. I went to that place today, on the 6th floor, and found quite a few stalls selling tea.

This is shot from one of the stalls.

There are also enticing displays like this

From which I tried two cakes

The first is an old growth tree cake, from Wuchidao. It was quite nice, somewhat complex, sweet, drinkable now. Decent cha qi. The price, however, was not friendly. They wanted $30 USD for one cake. I balked. It was way too much.

The second cake was a little more reasonable. It also tasted a lot worse. The colours are a bit dark, although in this picture it looks almost cooked puerh like. The tea, compared with the old growth, is not very good. $15 USD. No way Jose.

The biggest stall at this place was the place that Toki was telling me about. They sell lots of pots, some of which are nice. At first I had my eye on this one

An imitation Mengchen pot. Zhuni. You can see the lines where the Zhuni sort of contracted, and there are also marks on the pot where you can clearly see the clay contracting, leaving small cracks of sorts. It’s been used, so these are accentuated with the tea stains. The price was not too friendly — list price was something like $900, although I could get it for a decent discount. Even then, it was a bit steep, and the pouring of this pot was not the best.

I didn’t, however, leave empty handed. At the same place where they sell pots, I saw some bricks that were rather cheap. From 1993, supposedly. I had a taste. It was nice and mellow, smells better than it tastes, but still good enough for regular consumption, and not too expensive for that purpose. I ended up buying 4, which means a kg of tea. It has enough of the aged taste, while there’s still a bit of rawness left in the brick. The brewed leaves are a bit green, still. The smell on the lid and the bottom of the cup is a strong medicinal fragrance, although the tea itself hasn’t fully developed it yet. I am hoping for a little more from these bricks. If they just stay the way they are though, I am ok with that too.

This is the booty of the day :). I was going to open it for some pictures, but it will prove to be quite messy, and I’m not confident I can repack it well enough, so I decided to leave it be. It’s rather browned in colour now. I don’t think it’s cooked, as the taste isn’t entirely cooked, and the colour of some inner leaves are still quite green.

I was going to go to Sunsing today to see what kind of puerh they have on offer. However, thunderstorm struck today. From noon to 3pm the HK Observatory counted about 2300 lightnings. Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly weather that’s conducive to go tea drinking.

So I stayed home most of the day and only went out at night for dinner. Tomorrow, I’m planning on (among other things) going to the tea exhibit that Toki’s been talking about. If there are interesting things, I’ll take some pics.

Let’s hope there’s nothing I want to drop money on…

I keep going back to the Best Tea House, but I am finally closing in on some potential purchases.

Two things, really

1) A pot that I like.

Among the many:

Is this…

What do you think? It’s a bit steep in price… close to $180 USD. It’s not very big (the coin is about the size of a quarter — slightly bigger than a quarter). The pot is nicely shaped, I think, and pours well. The lid obviously fits very nicely over the pot — very smooth worksmanship. You know how some pots, when you turn the lid, you can feel it’s slightly uneven? This one feels absolutely flawless.

But it’s not cheap.

I’m thinking of using it for puerh. I’m not sure. What do you all think?

2) Tea. Puerh, to be exact

More pictures:

This is a cake from Fuyuanchang, which, from what I understand, is a brand that is made primarily for export to Korea. This is, now that I’ve looked more carefully, probably a 2006 cake, as it has a round sticker about how it is a “no pollution” cake with the date 2006 on it.

The cake is a Mengku Spring tips. The leaves are mid sized, I guess, as you can see. The flavour is mostly sweetness, with a bit of bite and there’s some smokiness in there. It’s still an early cake, so I think that’s what you can expect. Not bad, pretty pleasant overall. The cake is not expensive — about $10 USD a piece if I buy the whole tong.

Comments?

Tea is everywhere in Hong Kong. From breakfast to dinner, if you go out to eat, you’re going to be served tea. If you go to have set lunches/dinners, you will also have tea (or coffee). You can buy bottled teas. They’re everywhere.

However, just like Phyll says, there is a problem with locating good tea in Hong Kong. It’s not easy. Most teashops are what Toki has described as either the corporate gift stores, or just your local regular tea stores. They might be fine for your regular tea drinker (and still beats most American tea establishments by a mile), they don’t really carry much that is interesting. Puerh is even harder to come by.

The reason I go to the Best Tea House often, even though they’re quite out of the way, is that the teas are good and there are lots of varieties. Good company aside, it is one of the few places where I feel I am learning something new every time I go just by drinking different kinds of tea. That’s unlikely to happen elsewhere.

I am also hoping to use this remaining two weeks in Hong Kong to give myself more exposure to other kinds of tea. Many of these I probably won’t even get to taste in the mainland, as selection there is actually worse, but what it does mean is that I have some sort of a reference. It gives me a starting point from which I can compare my tea tastings and eventual purchases. I fully expect to get ripped off in China, I just hope I won’t get terribly ripped off 🙂

Went to the Best Tea House again. I have really very little to do in Hong Kong. Most of my friends are working or not living in the city, so during the day, especially, I am basically on my own, which leaves a lot of time to drink tea. It doesn’t help, of course, that they have such a liberal pouring policy.

People seemed to have liked the pictures last time, so I took more today.

When I got there, there was already one guy sitting at the table, while Tiffany was entertaining some other customer. Two more came in during the sitting, and it will eventually be the 5 of us drinking.

The first tea today was a magnificent 16+ years old gongfu tea, supplied by the guy who was already sitting at the table when I got there.

We were going to use the small pot on the right, but that was too small for so many people, so instead we used the big pot instead. Not ideal for gongfu tea, but good enough. The tea itself was a very high fired oolong, but over time, of course, it has mellowed out (without refirings). The tea was kept sealed for about 15 years, and the owner of it recently opened it and started drinking. I don’t know how to describe the taste, except that it’s very complex and very mellow. It has none of the high fired taste that resemble charcoal. Instead, it’s a very pleasant, subdued taste, but nevertheless quite strong and very fragrant. Excellent mouthfeel, and exquisite aftertaste. I think this is by far the best aged oolong I’ve had in recent memory.

Since we started off with this tea, Tiffany showed us another thing that the store has kept for a while. They no longer sell it, but it was an interesting comparison (also because the guy who owns the gongfu tea has some of this too). Picture speaks louder than words:

Looks like a melon puerh from afar, but if you look closer

Which turns into

Yup. It’s oolong. To be specific, it’s qingxiang Taiwanese oolong that’s been fired a bit. The whole ball is basically compressed oolong. It’s been sitting around for about 10 years, I was told, and was made on the occasion of some important tea personage visiting Hong Kong. Either way, we tasted this.

Compared with the gongfu tea, this sucked. The typical thinness of Taiwanese tea really showed, as well as a slight hint of sourness. The sourness went away after two brews, and it developed a better flavour, but after 4, it was already giving way. The aftertaste was most interesting — you can definitely taste the qingxiang Taiwan oolong in the aftertaste, but not in the immediate taste of the tea. On a whole, everybody agreed it was ok, but not great.

Then we took a bit of a break, and I decided to snap a picture of this:

Which is basically two stacks of puerh samples. They are all cakes that have been pried open or broken apart for taste tests. Some they still sell, others are out of stock. Most are just languishing there, not having been touched for a while. I was digging through a few of them and some looked rather good.

There’s also this:

The 500g tuo that Toki has been telling me to buy, from Fengqing factory.

Then, we drank a puerh. Tiffany pulled out a piece from a cake, and told us that this is the Zhongcha Brand Simplified Font. If I am not mistaken, this refers usually to the Iron cake from the 70s (correct me if I’m wrong here). The tea is certainly very nice. Complex, flavourful, full bodied, etc etc, all that you’d expect from a good, aged cake, including the price — $1000 USD

Then she told me about this cake they’re selling, and I looked at it, and I liked it. No time today for more tasting though, so that’s what’s on the list for the next visit — gotta go try it out, and if it’s good, I’m going to buy a whole tong. More pictures next time 🙂

Oh, and she posed once more after I told her that you guys all like pretty sales girls with access to a huge stash of tea

Today I went to a different tea store, one called Jabbok in Mongkok. The proprietor of the place is a self styled “Professor”. I think he was, at some point or another, appointed a visiting prof or instructor or some such at some university in China, and since then he has been called by that nickname. Talk about being pretentious.

Anyway, they do have some interesting puerh, although I think on the whole selection is better at Best Tea House (but prices are also higher). I tried three today. The first was a mid 90s 7582, which was a bit too mellow for my taste. It lacked any sort of real punch, and compared to, say, the Zhenchunya Hao, it’s no match (cheaper, of course, but really not worth the money)

The second is a proprietary cake that was made for celebrating the establishment of the Kowloon Walled City tea center or whatever it’s called. That one’s a 5 year old cake. The overall impression is sweet — very sweet. There’s some lingering smokiness, and you can smell some cigarette smell on the lid. The body is thin to medium. I think the main issue is that the lady salesperson brewing it isn’t very skilled, and does it in a sort of casual way. I don’t think she brings out the best in the tea. Tiffany can do a better job (because you can tell she really likes tea), and so can I :p. I am a little attracted to that tea however, but the prices is a little high as well.

The last I had is basically a cake of unknown vintage or origin, other than it is a Menghai factory cake, probably about 15 years old. That was by far the best one, and at something like $150 USD a piece, might be the best buy. HOWEVER, they said a mainland merchant just snapped up all the stock they had (about 1 jian). So, they’re out, and the only one left was the half-drunk sample that I was drinking. Oh well.

I’m partly doing this to educate myself further before I go to Maliandao and other tea places in the mainland. I don’t expect to find great stuff, but I do hope to find some decent stuff that I can age and be happy about 15 years down the road.