A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘aged oolong’

A moving tea

December 15, 2007 · 6 Comments

I went to the candy store, and other stores nearby today. The first stop was uninspiring — a few nice teapots, but nothing in the way of tea.

The second was a store right next to my usual candy store. I’ve been in there once, but didn’t get anything interesting. Going back this time, the lady owner was pretty nice and approachable, and it was a slow afternoon, so I poked around. They were selling some puerh. Feeling like trying the puerh… I sat down.

I tried two puerhs. The first is a cake that I’ve seen before — supposedly 04 or 05 Yiwu. It’s…. very bland in a way, but it has a nice throatiness. I don’t know what to make of teas like this. There’s something, but then maybe there isn’t. It’s an elusive tea.

Then… on to a factory tea, supposedly 03 and from Menghai Factory, but not in the Dayi label. I am not a wrapperologist, so I don’t know if Menghai produced any (or many) 7542 in CNNP wrappers. The shape of the cake and the taste of the tea actually seems right — they look, feel, and taste more or less like Menghai Factory stuff. It was dirt cheap, for what it’s worth…. so I picked up some.

Then I asked my usual question, “do you guys have old tea?”. Yes, of course, lots. What do I want? I asked for tieguanyin, from China (as opposed to TGY from Taiwan). “What price range?” A dreaded question, as always. I never know what to say. We went with the cheapest first…. I loooked and smelled, and it doesn’t pass the test. So… let’s try the more expensive one. Looks good…

The owner of the store brewed it, and a brownish cup of tea was served. I drank it…. and wow, I thought to myself, “I haven’t had tieguanyin like this for…. a long long time”. Memories of when I first started getting interested in tea came back. Even then, the stuff wasn’t as good. This is an aged tieguanyin, so it’s fuller and rounder, and sweeter, but that power and feeling of drinking a good tieguanyin, I really haven’t had for a long time. Tieguanyin these days are horrid, especially the greener stuff. They didn’t used to make them this way. This tea brought me back to that kind of taste … and it’s such a pleasure to drink. The throatiness is incredible. There’s a tiny bit of sourness, but entirely managable, and the throatiness…. if you don’t know what I talk about when you feel something in the throat, this is it. The guanyin yun (aftertaste) that is so hard to find in tieguanyin these days.

So of course, being the sucker I am, I bought some of this too. Got some other stuff at the candy store, but it’s just stocking up more than anything else. This tieguanyin though… I think I will always remember that first sip.

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Evaluating an aged oolong

December 13, 2007 · 3 Comments

How do you tell a good aged oolong from a bad one? After drinking a few months of this stuff, I at least have some tentative thoughts on this issue.

Let’s take today’s tea — a bag of tea I picked up yesterday in exchange for the bad aged oolong I got last time. I’ll get to why that one was bad later.

The dry leaves’ physical appearance will rarely tell you anything too useful. Colour of the leaves are almost always dark. Sometimes it’s darker than others, but that in and of itself is a very useless indicator of anything. The shape of the tea might tell you something about what it could be, but even then — not a very useful indicator.

The smell of the dry leaves, however, can. For teas that have turned somewhat sour, you can sometimes smell a sour note in the aroma of the dry leaves. If you want to cheat, you can always breath into a little leaves (that you of course placed in your hands and don’t really intend on throwing back into the bag). That way you can smell the aroma much more clearly. Sour? Give it up already, it’s not worth your time.

Assuming it passes the initial sourness test, then there are the teas that are musty or not musty. The ones that aren’t musty are often re-roasted, the ones that are musty, as I find over time, are usually less re-roasted or not at all. Makes sense — the roasting will kill any musty smell. Sometimes you can also smell the roasted nature of the tea from the dry leaves. Now, done with the dry leaves. Let’s move on to making the tea.

I usually fill the gaiwan with 1/2 to 2/3 full of leaves when I make this stuff, at least for a first try. Sometimes the sourness is subtle, and if you brew it with less leaves you don’t always notice the problem. Now, teas that don’t smell sour can still be a bit sour, but usually, those are sourness that go away in an infusion or two. That, personally, I find acceptable. I also find that teas that don’t taste sour at all when hot can sometimes take on more of a sour note when cooled a bit. That’s something to look out for.

For the really roasted stuff, you have to feel the body of the tea to see if it’s aged or not. Sometimes that charcoal taste masks a lot of things, including age. A highly roasted but not very aged tea will lack that nice sweet note at the end, and it will also be less thick, at least in my personal experience. Some of the really roasted stuff will need a bit of time to mellow out and let the charcoal taste go away a bit before drinking, but even for current consumption they can be good — if you are into that kind of thing. I don’t buy a lot of that stuff, but I do have some. It’s fun.

I personally like the less roasted stuff. They take on a puerh-like note the first few infusions, then mellow out into a sweet tea that will more closely resemble a young oolong. In the end you will get back the young oolong taste/finish without much aged note at all other than the extra sweetness. It’s very interesting that way. Even aged and somewhat roasted stuff can do this. The tea that I originally wanted from the store is exactly like this — the first few infusions taste almost like a liu’an, and then into a softer, sweeter aged oolong taste, and then ending up as a younger tea would taste. I like this kind of tea the best. Today’s tea is sort of like that — I felt almost like I was drinking a new oolong near the end, without the harshness of a young tea. Also, aged oolongs tend to go on forever. You should be able to get 10+ steepings from it easily.

Wet leaves says a lot about what you’re drinking. In fact, I think wet leaves tell you more about what you’re drinking than anything else other than the physical act of drinking the tea. It will confirm what kind of tea you’re actually drinking, usually, and it will also tell you the condition of the tea, whether it’s mixed or not, etc, things that aren’t always apparent in a cup but usually more apparent when you can spread out the leaves. Today’s tea hasn’t been reroasted much — that much is obvious. The leaves unfurl easily, with a greenish scent. Decent tea.

So, what was the tea that I rejected like? It was roasted — tastes like charcoal the first infusion. But the body of the tea was thin and died fast. It was not aged, or not much aged. I’d venture to guess it’s less than 5 years old, which is why I was so unhappy about it.

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A mixed success

December 12, 2007 · 4 Comments

Well, I went back to that store today. The owner was nice enough, and I think it could’ve been a semi-honest mistake. What I think actually happened is this: this store has basically three labels for their teas. Not old, 35 years old, and 60 years old, it seems. This is more of a marker of price than actual age (or quality). Age inflation is also at work here. As the 35 years old I took home yesterday showed, some aren’t so hot, while others (like the one I actually want) is actually pretty good. The thing is, she has no idea what I got the first time, I think. Even though it looked like she knew who I was, she didn’t really, or, rather, she has no idea which particular tea I picked up last time. I actually lucked out that she gave me the right bag last time. Instead of actually trying to figure out what I got last time, or whatever, she just gave me the 35 years old that she has handy — even though it’s actually a totally different tea (and I think she knew it). Oh well

So… I told her my problem, basically having been given the wrong tea. She started saying “oh?” and when she brewed the two, she knew she couldn’t fool me — she had that “hmmm” look on her face. We searched around the store… in the back, in the front, and couldn’t find a single bag of the stuff that actually tasted the same. In the meantime, we tried probably 10 different kinds of aged oolongs of various quality. One or two was decent, some were ok, and others were crap (sour, weak, or a combination of the two). Her teas taste more aged than the candy store teas, although I think it has to do with roasting (her teas are more repeat-roasted than the candy store stuff) and also storage condition (in big plastic bags just sitting in the storage area, instead of inside big canisters that are pretty air tight). That might also explain the loads of old, somewhat sour oolongs she has.

After a lot of searching and no luck, she said she will call up to her storage (or is it home?) on the mountains and ask them to bring the tea down. That’s where they do the roasting, apparently. Ok, sure, but I have to return at 8pm to pick up those teas. Fine. I did, however, swap half my teas with her for another oolong we discovered while rummaging through the stacks of stuff. It’s different. It’s a strange puerh-esque oolong. Taste more aged than the candy store stuff, but not bad. It’s got that puerh musty smell. I haven’t gone wrong with aged oolongs like those yet, and it isn’t sour.

So I did go back at 8pm… she lined up some tea on the counter. Two bags she said she found in the back that should be the same batch as the one I got. I opened them and lo and behold, it is the same tea. The other stuff (the 8pm delivery stuff) however…. are not. Roasted, with a roasted taste. The stuff I bought completely lost the charcoal roast taste long time ago, so it’s not the same. No way, Jose.

So, I did end up returning some of the tea I bought, swapped them for some of the real stuff, and some other random aged oolong. No idea what any of them really are, at this point, as I think she makes things up as she goes along. If I had the time and money, I’d sit there in her store, drink through every bag, and buy up whole bagloads of this stuff if it’s any good. There are bargains to be had here (although the same can be said of the candy store…)

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Screwed

December 11, 2007 · 6 Comments

I went to the store that sold me the claimed 35 years dongding to get some more of the tea. I got the bags, paid, left. I even got a sample of something she claimed to be 60 years old, ok.

I came home, made the 60 years old which tasted more like 16 years old. Well, no matter, that’s free.

Then…. I started having second thoughts about the other bags of tea I got, and decided to try them out….

Hmmm

I think I got screwed. The tea is definitely different — not the same thing I bought last week. I haven’t opened all the bags, but among the ones I did open, they all tasted the same, and none of them taste like the one I bought last time.

Now, I hope this is an honest mistake, but there’s also the possibility that she thought I wouldn’t get to these teas until it’s way too late to go back and go argue with her. Heck, in a way, it’s already too late as she can claim I switched teas on her. I don’t know if I’ll get my way tomorrow, but I know I’m going to be going back and trying to get my money back.

Any suggestions on particular tactics?

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Random aged shuixian

December 10, 2007 · 4 Comments

Another sample from my candy store.

This was some random tea from a random bag with a random (obviously wrong) label. Looks like shuixian though — big leaves, rolled, not too roasted….

The tea tastes like shuixian, aged some. It’s a bit…. bland, which I find to be true for a lot of older shuixian. Maybe the tea just isn’t very good for long term aging? Maybe I should try crushing the leaves and then piling it in. With a normal amount, it just doesn’t pack enough punch. Sweet, mellow… good for big pot brewing, come to think of it.

You can see the big leaves. She quoted a higher price for this than anything else. I have a feeling she is trying to test to see if she can get away with it. I’m afraid she picked the wrong tea to do it with.

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Old Dongding

December 8, 2007 · Leave a Comment

On the way to my candy store yesterday, I passed by another tea shop that is old looking. It’s terribly shabby. From the door of the shop to the table where the owner, his wife, and some guest were sitting, there was a corridor formed by boxes (some empty), bags, and what not… on both sides stacking taller than me. It was full of junk, literally. The whole store, in fact, was filled with junk. I walked in to look at some of the oldish teapots they had there (70s/80s stuff, I think). Most of it was crap.

At a place like this, they usually serve you a cup of something — whatever they happened to be brewing. I got a cup, of course. It was dark, blackish. I drank it… and I was thinking “hmmm, what is this? Liu’an?” It tasted old, not really puerh like, but not really old oolong like either…. I asked what it was, and she said it was an old (35 years is the claim) dongding.

Hmmm

I went to the candy store first, but when I was on my way back, I couldn’t resist, and picked up a little of this tea to try for myself at home.

This shot is from about 10 infusions after I started… the first shot I took turned out to be horribly out of focus

As you can see, still pretty dark. As I brewed it today, the liu’an like taste isn’t quite as strong, but I can still sense it being there. This is, I think, what Zhou Yu referred to simply as the “old taste”. He said such tastes you can get from the liu’an we tried that day, but also from old Taiwan oolongs of around 40 years or more. I am getting some of it here, I think. It’s a smooth tea, not bitter at all. Not much roasted flavour either, but it is definitely a strongly roasted tea (or repeatedly roasted one, rather). As the drinking went on, there is a slightly greenish flavour that crept into the tea — something that reminds me of the 1990 dongding and the 1980s tieguanyin that I’ve been drinking recently. It’s in that same family of taste, but here only as an aftertaste, a hint, rather than what was at the forefront. I suppose much of that flavour has been changed over time, through aging and roasting, into what is now the “old” flavour.

In some ways, despite its older age, I think I actually prefer the younger stuff — I like that strangely aromatic taste. This tea is a bit more mellow, very interesting, very calming, but lacks a bit of that extra push. Then again, maybe that extra liveliness will wear thin after a while, and stuff like this will, on the other hand, be always welcomed on a coldish day in winter.

The wet leaves are a bit of a mixed bag. There are a few leaves that are more flexible and brown, while some others are black and stiff.

Good stuff, and it’s not expensive either. Considering that this is definitely older than the 80s/90s teas I’ve had…. I don’t think people who sell this stuff are really making much of any money from it.

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Some theories apply to all

December 4, 2007 · 5 Comments

The above photo consists of two sets of leaves. On the left are the leaves of the roasted oolong I had yesterday. On the right are the aged tieguanyin I had today. Put together, I think the contrast is much more obvious. You can not only see the colour differential, but also the way the leaves are — one’s much more open, flexible-looking, and lively, while the roasted one is quite black, don’t really unfurl, and if you try to pry it open, breaks apart as it is very brittle.

Reminds me of cooked and raw puerh… or maybe wet stored and dry stored puerh.

Now, obviously, the parallel isn’t exactly. The tieguanyin in this case must’ve been roasted as well, as some of the leaves show evidence of that. However, it is the degree that matters… and I find, in the case of aged oolongs, that lightly roasted and then left alone, they produce the most interesting results. Lively and vibrant, they retain some of the original character of the tea while having changed enough so that you won’t recognize it. The roasted stuff are softer, mellower, but lacking in that liveliness that really spices things up (sometimes literally). I like it still better than cooked puerh though.

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Roasted oolong

December 3, 2007 · Leave a Comment

The second sample I got from the same place

“Old Oolong — recently roasted, 3000 (this refers to NTD/jin)”. That’s what I drank.

Today I was wiser and only put in about half a bag…. no more overfilling of the gaiwan

Looks roasted all right.

Sure looks roasted all right.

The tea actually is less charcoal-tasting than I thought, but still charcoal tasting, a bit. Cool in the throat, a bit, and when the dust settles, you can feel the aftertaste of an aged oolong. It’s not the most exciting thing, but it’s actually better than I thought. Some roasted stuff can taste more charcoal-like and less pleasant… sometimes that’s fixable by just leaving it around for a while. The charcoal taste will dissipate. Sometimes though the roasting is too much… and the tea becomes flat and boring. Thankfully, it wasn’t the case here.

I also put in exactly one pebble of the biyuzhu from two days ago in today’s tea — I noticed it was sitting in the other sample bag. Can you find Waldo?

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Biyuzhu

December 1, 2007 · 2 Comments

So I went ahead and tried one of the free samples I got from yesterday’s store.

ROC Year 77, Biyuzhu, which literally means “Bluish-Green Jade Pearl”, or perhaps slightly better, “Bright Jade Beads” or some such. There’s nothing jade-ish about them, since they’re now rather black, but I suppose once upon a time, they were really nice and green.

The tea was a spring pick, and the leaves are all very small and tender. The tea brews a darkish colour

Although by the time of the third infusion, I realized I had horribly underestimated the amount of leaves in the little bag, and had overfilled my gaiwan. I took a bit of leaves out of it, but I suspect I could’ve taken out more and still gotten a good cup. The tea is nice… very perfumy despite the long age, no sourness detectable, not too sweet, and in fact, still a little green in the taste — you can sense that this was once a green Taiwanese oolong. Now it’s an aged green Taiwanese oolong. The laobanniang said this tea was never re-roasted, and I sure believe that, because I don’t detect any sort of roasted taste. It’s a very interesting tea, although perhaps not an everyday kind of tea.

The wet leaves are still greenish-brown.

Definitely worth picking some up though. The perfume notes are quite alluring. I should try making it with even less leaves next time — brew it just like a light Taiwan oolong.

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Treasure troves

November 30, 2007 · 6 Comments

I had some extra time today, so I went back to the same tea shop that I visited last weekend today. Specifically, that was the one with the big tea canisters (picture in the bottom of the post) and where I picked up a few aged oolongs.

I wanted to get some of the tieguanyin which was so good, and hopefully, to find more stuff there that’s hidden in those big canisters.

The laobanniang (literally owner’s wife, or female owner, of a shop) was pretty happy to see me coming back, and when I asked for the tieguanyin, she promptly went to it. I also asked if she has other stuff — stuff that is more like this and less like the qizhong, which I told her is a bit too sour. She said there are lots of different stuff in her store, but she might need to spend some time looking for them. I think she could sense that if she finds anything good, I’ll be willing to buy them. I also venture to guess that she doesn’t sell much of this stuff normally.

Now, to give you an idea of what we’re talking about…. this is a closeup of one of those tea cans. This is the smaller sized ones (the ones you see lining up on the left in the last entry about this shop)

On one can it says “Pu’er Cha”, the other “Ridong Hongcha”, a type of Japanese red (black) tea (here’s a link to Nittoh Black Tea, their proper name). What’s in the can has nothing to do with the words on them, and this is true for pretty much all of them in the store — about 4-5 dozens of them.

Inside each of them are bags

Like this (this is a picture of one of the bigger cans on the right hand side). In each of these bags are kilos of tea — some more, some less. The little slip of paper indicates what it is, and how much it should be. Some of these bags probably haven’t been opened for years, and I suspect many of them are simply leftovers from stock they had years ago — half a kilo here, two kilos there, etc. Tea that is valuable enough to keep, but after a certain time passes, not easy to sell. How do you tell a regular customer that you have some three year old oolong you can sell them? They’d think you’re a crook. So in the bags they sit. Year in, year out, and the older bags probably sink to the bottom. The opened bag is the one with the tieguanyin that I want. The other two unopened bags? Other kinds of aged oolongs that I haven’t even tried. She opened one bag for me and got me a sample. The piece of paper says “ROC Year 77 (1988), Spring, 2400”, 2400 being the price of the tea. It’s a lightly rolled oolong. Not sure exactly what it is, but it sure looks old and doesn’t smell sour. Let’s hope it’s good. If I could, I’d spend a whole day at the store, opening each can, and looking through them, trying teas. I’ll be like a little kid.

She said she will prepare some more samples for me when I go next time. I told her I’d like to try anything she has and decide what I want. I know that other than Taiwan, buying aged oolongs is difficult, and so I should take advantage of the fact that I’m here to snap up enough for at least a year or two’s worth of consumption.

Not only do they have old tea… they also have old neglected teaware

Too bad teapots don’t age the way teas do. Most of the teapots are pretty mediocre anyway.

So…. I made off with some of the tieguanyin, and two samples. One’s that 1988 tea, the other is also an old tea that was recently re-roasted. I want to compare them and see. I think, though, that given what I’ve tried so far, I prefer stuff that haven’t been re-roasted.

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