A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘musings’

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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What I learned about aged oolongs

November 29, 2007 · 5 Comments

Ok, I was going to talk about the Wuyi Qizhong that I got along with the aged Tieguanyin and the aged shuixian that I got…. but that got derailed, because the tea turned out sour, enough so that it’s no longer pleasant to drink. If made lightly, I can probably get something out of it as an occasional beverage, but that’s about it.

So…. instead, let’s talk about aged oolongs in general.

As those of you who’ve been reading the blog have probably noticed, I’ve been on a binge for the past few months drinking various sorts of aged oolongs. Much like what I was doing with youngish puerh, I’ve been trying to get my hands on a wide variety of aged oolongs and drink them, becuase I think that’s the only way I can learn about them properly. What other people tell you is all fine and good, but nothing replaces actual drinking experience.

So with that in mind I went around Taipei looking for them. I asked about them no matter what tea store I walked into. The first thing I’ve learned is that everybody has some “laocha”, or “old tea”. When you say old tea here, you are usually talking about aged Taiwanese oolongs. Some people have assumed I was talking about puerh, but that’s often because I’m young and young people usually don’t drink old oolongs. Puerh is more fashionable to drink.

Just because everybody has them doesn’t mean they’re all real, or good. First of all there are very very roughly two kinds of Taiwanese teas that are often aged, at least among the stores I’ve been to. Baozhongs come in abundance, but there are also a number of places that sell aged oolongs — the rolled kind, often from Dongding, but sometimes from other places.

There are roughly three types of aged oolongs, I think. One is your “often reroasted” kind. Liquor from these will be dark and sweet, mellow, not too floral. One is the “dry stored from strong roast”, I think anyway, with a more puerh-like flavour and a residual note of floral quality. Then you have the younger, “still kinda green” aged oolongs. Those are actually nicer than current year stuff, I think, but I’m not sure how viable they are for long term storage. More honey like, some floral notes…. still quite nice.

This is, of course, discounting the fourth and most common kind – oolongs turned sour. These are teas that are usually stored improperly — picked up moisture, or itself had too much moisture when stored. Reroasting will take care of it, sometimes, but not always. There will also be people who tell you that some sourness is natural in an aged oolong, and some might even say it’s the mark of a good aged oolong. Take that with many grains of salt. A hint of it can be a nice thing, but…..

And… there are also the fakes. Since there is simply no way for you to tell with certainty (at least I haven’t discovered a surefire way) just by observing the dry leaves if the tea really has been aged or not, fakes happen. Most often, they are just heavily roasted teas that have been, one way or another, doctored to make them seem aged. I’ve been to stores that gave me a few aged oolongs that are obviously just roasted oolongs with no age behind them. I’ve managed to avoid most of those, but still, a few slipped through because I couldn’t taste the tea or because I wanted to make sure. For people who haven’t had a lot of exposure to this type of tea, it’s an easy trap to fall into.

Because of aging, firing, etc, no two aged oolongs are exactly the same. Especially since there are no identifying marks of an aged oolong — there are no wrappers, neifeis, etc (unless your tea came from a competition with the accompanying documentation) so stuff from store A will always be different from store B.

This gets us to the question of price. Prices for these things vary wildly. Among the types of teas I’ve tried, they range from something like $50/600g to $300/600g. Yet, stuff that are on opposite ends of this range can taste remarkably similar. I’ve also had stuff that taste better but are cheaper than the more expensive counterparts. Obviously, taste is taste, and some others might disagree with me with my preferences, but generally speaking, when the price difference is, say, 3 or 4 times, and when the tastes are very similar…. one starts questioning whether the more expensive tea is worth the extra cost. It is also worth noting that the places with the high priced aged oolongs are generally speaking of the more “arthouse” variety — nice decor, good location, etc, that means you’re paying for a lot more than just the tea itself. In fact, some of these teas are probably sourced from the places where I’m buying the cheaper varieties — many of these arthouses haven’t been around long enough to store the teas all the way since their birth.

I haven’t really tried any of the aged oolong offerings that one can buy off the internet, so I don’t know how they compare, or what categories they fall into, or if they’re even aged at all. But aged oolongs can be wonderful, and I think the good ones offer many nuances that can rival (or even beat) an aged puerh. This is especially true when you factor in the price of many older puerhs these days, and the high proportion of fakes out there. Anybody who makes a trip to Taiwan should at least give this stuff a try — I think it’s well worth the effort.

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A tea meeting

November 25, 2007 · 3 Comments

I went to meet some guy from the Taiwanese tea forum t4u today. He just posted an open invitation for anybody in the Taipei area to come. It was supposed to be a 3 people affair, but I was the only one who showed up at his place, so it ended up just being me and him.

The original focus of the meeting was to drink “Big Tree Tea”, referring to puerh. When I got there, we weren’t sure if the other person was going to show, so he offered to make some Taiwanese shuixian first. This is Wuyi varietal planted in Taiwan (these are mostly gone nowadays). It’s been aged about 20 years… and it’s a very good tea. I quite liked the complexity in the taste, and since I’ve been dabbling in aged oolong these days, it was an interesting contrast. I’ve met a tea or two that tastes like it.

The other guy was still a no show, so we went on to an aged dongding. This is a very different kind of aged dongding than the one I bought. It’s not as heavily fermented, and the agedness is lighter — it has a mild fruity sourness that is interesting instead of revolting. I think I prefer the style of the first instead of the second — not that the second is bad at all.

Still no show, so we proceeded with the puerh. I brought three samples, which we tasted in quick sucession. Nothing too interesting there, with one he thinks more like an old tree tea than the other two, which were more plantation-esque. It’s always nice to exchange views with somebody else on tea, especially youngish puerh. So much tea out there are called “old tree”, but yet very few actually are. I haven’t really devoted much thought to this problem recently, but now that I think about it… one of these cakes is indeed aging faster than the other two, obviously so, in fact. Aging faster in the first few years seems to be something that big tree tea is supposed to do. Maybe that gives me the explanation I needed… not that it really matters either way.

The other thing that we ended up agreeing is that the big tree teas are often less interesting initially — they can be very subdued things that only gradually show their true worth. They’re not teas that will wow your mouth — that’s the work of plantation tea. Instead, they are subtle but strong. The subtlety though can be mistaken for weakness. I know people who routinely think that these are crap because they seem weak.

Will it be better in the long run? This friend (let’s call him N) thinks it will. N thinks, from his experience of drinking teas from the 70s or before, that this is more like the sort of thing that was put into the old cakes. He thinks early spring puerh are a bad deal (the really buddy ones), which I concur as well.

We moved on to two more teas (that’s 7 for those of you who are counting). The first is a 2002 Yiwu which he has and likes… and tastes quite similar in some ways to the Yisheng tea that I bought a few of in Beijing, but only more aged, since the Yisheng is 05. It’s a nice tea, very mellow. The second is a 1996 Purple Dayi… a little more “big factory” ish. N thinks it’s mixed in with some (not a lot) big tree material. Perhaps, although the big factory taste still dominates. At today’s prices for this sort of thing, I’m not sure if it’s all that worthwhile. Interesting stuff though.

I was a bit high on caffeine at the end, but not too terribly so. Still, it was nice to meet somebody new who’s obviously interested and engaged in tea, and has that sort of intellectual curiosity in exploring different things. I wish someday I can throw a tea party for all the people whom I’ve met (and whom I haven’t met, like you lurkers out there), but alas, I’m not Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

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Blend vs single mountain

November 22, 2007 · 8 Comments

The blend vs single mountain debate is an ongoing one in the puerh market. There are a number of different arguments over this, but basically it boils down to “which one is better?”. The single mountain teas are generally produced by smaller factories. Sometimes it’s even by individuals. They often cannot afford the time nor have the resources to haul large amounts of tea with them from mountain to mountain, so instead they buy maocha at each place and then press them into cakes, making single mountain cakes as they go to each different place and collect tea. Blended ones, on the other hand, are more likely to be made by larger factories that have the ability to collect teas from far and wide and then carry them back to their factory to be mixed and then pressed. It requires more resources to do and thus are difficult for small producers to pull off, unless you are somebody like Chen Zhi Tong who spends a lot of time in Yunnan and who ultimately has the help of some big factory.

We have precious little experience of single mountain cakes aging — everything produced pre-1990s was blended. Expert opinion on the antique cakes (pre- Red Label) are divided, but generally speaking many agree that those are also blended — with different mountain teas, and not from a single region. So… there is a theory that single mountain cakes are no more than a gimmick for smaller producers to sell their tea. Just because a tea is from a single region has nothing to do with its quality being high or low, but somehow it is sometimes taken as such in marketing information or in consumer response.

Think about this: I think most whisky drinker will agree that a Johnny Walker Blue Label (blended) is going to be better than a poor single malt. It is not the most distinctive, but I think it does what it does very well — a smooth, enjoyable, and generally well regarded drink. There will be the malt-snobs who think any blended whisky is crap and refuse to drink such things, but that is more likely to be a status thing than anything else.

At the end of the day, very few of us (myself included) can say with any certainty whether or not something is blended. There are many who sell cakes that claim single-region status, and then consequently justify its existence by saying that single-region is better and pure and all that. There are also those who espouse the greatness of blends, how they are rounder, have less flaws, etc. If whisky is a guide, then what it really will be is simply that single-region teas are more likely to give you all the characteristics of that region, flaws and all. Blends will be smoother, easier to drink, and (at least to novices) tastier, but perhaps less interesting or less engaging for the devoted. Still, a blend made with top notch tea will always be better than a poor single region, and vice versa. There simply isn’t a quality correlation there.

And since whiskies are blended after they’re aged… what’s stopping us from blending teas after they’ve aged as well? Somebody told me he puts in a bit of very young puerh when he brews his wet stored stuff. It gives the tea more liveliness and makes the drink more interesting. I can certainly see how that’s the case, and there’s really nothing stopping us from doing so. Drink what you like, not what gives go status.

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The reality of tea…

November 20, 2007 · 6 Comments

Even though at times it does sound a bit like Taiwan has lots of good tea, good tea culture, etc etc…. the reality is that most people still don’t give much of a damn about tea here.

Today I went to a place called Cafe Lumiere, a little shop in a lovely old building that houses a theatre and is named after a famous Taiwanese movie. It’s your typical Western style coffeeshop kind of thing… cakes, etc. They served tea, mostly of the Earl Grey variety. What passed for tea was basically big teapots with round teabags — Republic of Tea, perhaps? The thing I had was a “Yorkshire tea”, which tasted like a weak version of English Breakfast. However, it had the typical problem of “drinking the last guy’s tea”. What I mean is… the teapots they used weren’t cleaned sufficiently thoroughly so that all the herbal teas that have been made in it has left a mark. So I ended up drinking Butterscotch Hibiscus Vanilla Cherry Black Chamomile…. a potpurri of flavours and smells that have been left behind by many a drinkers before me. At one point the lid of the pot smelled like detergent. Yum….

For dinner we went to Ding Tai Fung, a famous restaurant in Taiwan (best know for their xiaolongbaos). The generic tea they served was a really watered down stale green jasmine. Mind you, that’s just for the purpose of washing down your food as quickly as possible so that you will move out of the place for the next person (the waitresses had femmebot like efficiency) but you’d think watered down, low grade oolong is at least achievable instead of nasty stale green jasmine….

Tea is still very much just a beverage to be consumed in the course of the day while doing other things. Even here, where tea culture is perhaps more alive than any other place in Greater China, most people are quite happy with just a cup made simply, or even badly. Sometimes I think it is easy to forget that when reading about the latest thing, the strangest preparation methods, or arguments over the tiniest details.

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How do you learn about tea?

November 13, 2007 · 3 Comments

I was in a cab today and the cabbie started chatting. It got on the topic of tea, because I was picking some up for somebody. He then asked, “how do you learn what’s a good tea and what’s not?”

It was a tough question. How did I learn about tea?

I did take one introductory course (5 lessons) way back when. That was when I didn’t know white tea from green. It was useful, and I think something like that is good for everybody who wants to learn more about tea and get the basics down. Just make sure the place offering such lessons isn’t providing misleading information that basically means only their tea is good — this is actually quite common among “lessons” that are taught from teahouses.

But beyond that… it was just drinking, drinking, drinking, and talking about tea with other people. I find books to be generally useful, but specifically useless — none of those words translate into anything physical. They’re good for general information, but not at all when it comes to tasting and judging tea. With tea, somebody (myself included) talking about it doesn’t even come close to the experience of drinking and feeling the tea. What is huigan, anyway, if you have no idea what it is and have only read about it? What’s the difference between a “rough” and a “smooth” tea? What’s a “wetstore taste”? Mustiness? But dry stored tea can still be a bit musty. What’s that Taiwanese finish that I sometimes talk about? And let’s not even get started with flavours. I have no idea how a “plum” taste is different than an “apricot” one, and I definitely don’t know the difference between male and female urine, but since somebody has used “male urine” as a description for a tea before on a certain blog, I suppose they must have their unique flavour profiles. Not that I want to find out.

I ended up answering “just drink a lot” to the cabbie’s question. He was obviously dissatisfied with the answer, and kept asking. I don’t know what he was trying to fish for, and it was actually getting slightly creepy. Thankfully, the ride was short and I arrived at my destination. Whew.

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Tea in a ceremony

November 11, 2007 · 7 Comments

There are tea ceremonies, and there are ceremonies involving tea.  A Chinese wedding is one of them, at least as practiced in Guangdong (I’m not sure about other areas)

What happens in a traditional wedding ceremony goes something like this — the couple walk into the main all where everybody is already there.  The parents of the groom are present in the house, sitting facing out.  The couple walk up to them, and then they bow three times.  Once to the heaven, once to the parents, and then the third to each other.  Then they serve a cup of tea to the parents (kneeling, of course), and in return they get some good luck money in a red bag and some sagely advice, and this is basically what it takes to get a bride to be accepted into the family.  I heard in Korea it’s not tea, but wine, that is served, but the idea is pretty much the same.

I don’t know if there’s a rationale behind the choice of tea other than the fact that it’s the most common drink and that many Chinese just can’t handle wine.  But perhaps there’s a sense of domesticity in drinking tea that wine doesn’t do — you drink wine to celebrate or some such.  Tea, however, is something you drink all the time.  Marrying into a family is going to be a full time affair — you become part of family, and so perhaps in this sense, tea is very appropriate.

These days (such as the wedding I went to today) the bowing no longer takes place, but at least in HK the tea serving gesture is still generally done, however haphazardly.  Except that nowadays, they are often wearing a tux and a qipao, usually (kneeling in a wedding dress can be a difficult move, methinks).  The parent of the bride also get served these days.  Even though circumstances changed though, there’s still some sort of symbolic power that this ceremony holds, so that even this thoroughly westernized society in Hong Kong still performs this.  It’s this kind of thing that makes Hong Kong quite unique — this is probably the only place on Earth where both Christmas and the Buddha’s birthday are both public holidays.  East meets West at its finest.

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Be your own tea master

November 10, 2007 · 7 Comments

I had some tea with Tiffany, YP, and a few others today.  We were talking about buying puerh, buying other teas… and such.  A few topics came up

1) How puerh used to be so cheap nobody wanted it.  Even just a few years ago, a really good grade cake would only cost about $5 USD (all prices here will be USD) or so when it first comes out.  It was pretty much unthinkable for a new, raw puerh cake to cost more than about $10.  Back in the day when YP bought her first 88 Qing (now quoting about $1200 or thereabouts, depends on when, where, and what) it cost her about $10, which was considered a high price already.  A Red Label maybe 15 years ago was something like $500 (now entering the $10000 territory).  Most green cakes back then were only about $1-3.  She said the first time she looked for the 88 Qing, she went to some wholesaler to try to get some.  Asking them, they were like “what? why do you want this stuff?  This stuff is so green!”.  She wanted a cake?  “No, you need to at least buy a jian!”.  Those were the days.  But even now, she agrees with me on this one point — no good reason to pay big money for aged cakes, because for the most part it’s not worth that much given the alternatives.  Of course, she’s in a position of somebody who has a bunch of old cakes to drink, but even then… food for thought.

2)  How the conflation of “tea masters” and “tea sellers” is a dangerous thing and buyers need to be cautious.  This is something I’ve although thought about recently — how many boutique shops are opened by supposed “tea maters” out there who really don’t necessarily know anything more than anybody.  There’s no certification for such status, and there’s definitely no requirement for somebody to open a tea shop.  Many so called “masters” come from other trades; their former employment having nothing to do with tea.  Most of them did not learn their trade from some other “master” either — they acquired the knowledge (whatever there is) through drinking, reading, thinking — just like all of us.  Starting a shop doesn’t make you a master.  Sourcing good tea does not make you a master.  It does, however, make you a tea salesman.

YP and another tea friend present related to me how over time, they have heard 100% contradictory things from the same “tea master” who shall remain nameless.  At first, they’ll tell you one thing, and you, as student, will go buy tea (expensive tea from the same master, of course) according to that.  Then…. a few years down the road, suddenly the tune changed, and now they tell you another thing.  If you were around the first time, you’ll notice that it’s totally different and contradictory from the first.  They simply cannot both be true.  Yet… this sort of thing happens all the time (I’ve seen the same thing happen myself).  Why?  Because at these times, they’re not acting with the “tea master” hat on — they’re wearing the “tea salesman” hat.  When the two roles collide, the tea salesman almost always wins.  Another thing you will notice over time is that many “tea master” disagree with each other on some very fundamental points, especially when it comes to puerh.  This isn’t terribly obvious to those who don’t know Chinese and don’t have access to these people either in person or through print, but the fact that such fundamental disagreements exist means only one thing — nobody really knows the true answer and are all fishing in the dark.  Beware of “tea master”.

3) Which leads me to the third point — puerh production has changed significantly over time.  The few experienced people present agreed on one thing — puerh production has changed about once every decade — the leaves, the mix, the way they press the cakes…. everything’s different, and there are distinctly different tastes that come out of the cakes.  Theories of what made a good tea in the 80s might not apply to the 90s, and what made a good tea in the 90s will not apply to the 2000s.  As YP said today when I first walked in… “I can say I know something about 70s or 80s tea, but I don’t know much about 90s tea, and I definitely don’t know much of anything about teas made in the past five years”.  She’s not being too humble either — I think it’s more because nobody has had enough time to tell yet.

And at the end of the day…. tea is still a matter of taste.  Some people just won’t like a certain taste, no matter how refined it is, supposedly.  Two buck chuck has won blind competitions for wine.  I’ve tasted aged baozhongs costing $50/jin that are far better than stuff costing $250/jin, regardless of the price.  Do I have a screwed up tongue?  Perhaps.  But then… maybe it’s just because I am the only person who knows what I like and dislike, and whatever other people tell me… I will listen, I will certainly learn.  Everytime talking to somebody about tea is a learning experience, even if that person knows nothing about tea.  But I am the only one who knows what I prefer in my cup, “expertise” be damned.

I’d imagine the same to be true for everybody.  I know somebody who likes her tea be Twinings Earl Grey teabag dunked into a cup for about 15 seconds, add milk.  That’s it.  I liken it to sewer water.  But somebody thinks it’s great, so… who’s to say who’s right?  Just hope the Twinings Earl Grey teabag wasn’t sold for $250 and masqueraded as the Best Tea On Earth.

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Lies, damned lies, and sales pitches

November 5, 2007 · 11 Comments

If anybody I know asks me for advice in starting a business selling tea, I’d suggest they pick up a job in a kindergarten telling stories, because they’ll need the practice. I think there are few businesses out there that tell as many stories as a tea store generally does.

Let’s start with the simple ones that everybody buying tea has heard — Monkey Picked oolong. “They’re really picked by Monkeys!” I’ve seen a website saying that, which….. bothered me. Do they believe that? Do they think their customers believe that? Really? Do they consider what kind of message this sends to people browsing their website?

Then you have the “premium”, “reserve”, “special reserve”, “limited edition”, and that sort of thing. This is nothing unique, since most retail industries have them — they’re everywhere from cars to magazines. The thing with tea though is that very often I find these to be merely ok teas… if even. Tea is a difficult thing to judge. A top end longjing look very different from a low grade one, to be sure, but only if you know what to look for. Otherwise, they’re just some green hairy leaves (low grade, of course, has less hair and is darker, generally). Couple this problem with online sales, where you’re at best treated to a high resolution picture, and it becomes nearly impossible to tell one from the other. Kudos to the vendors who sell samples, and woe to those who don’t.

The same sort of thing happens in puerh, where cakes are slightly more distinguishable by production number, factory, etc. So what do you do? You commemorate. 66th anniversary of your brand? Why not. Trade fair? You need a commemoration cake. A China-US Summit? Of course. 10th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong even though you’re a factory in Yunnan? Hey, it’s a day of national significance. Except that when every year you have a commemoration cake for the same event, it gets old fast. I think when they first came out, these things did often mean something. Now, though, every other cake I see commemorates somthing… and they are often made of the same tea (or similar quality) but cost more because they’re “special”. C’mon. Time for a new pitch.

The more egregious and IMO annoying stories are the “this is a special tea only through so and so”. In some ways, this is an extension of the “reserve”, “special reserve” stuf, but with more specific details aimed at making you think this is somehow a special tea. The more common is something like “this tea is made/stored/found by Tea Master X and I have secured a bit for sale here”. The less common is “this is from a deceased Tea Master Y who had a secret way of making this tea taste so good”. Even less common are more convoluted stories such as “this was a tea that was stored in the warehouse of a factory in exchange for cash payment back in the day when puerh was worthless and the factory had no money to pay, and was just rediscovered last year by us and we bought up all of it”. All these, by the way, are stories I’ve heard in person. The first one you’re probably all fairly familiar with, the second conceivable, and the third are usually one of a kind, involving details that are so minute they almost have to be fake. Of course, back in the 70s or 80s, these stories could indeed be true, and I don’t dispute that even now some of these things could potentially be true. However, it is very important to remember that for tea, scarcity does not always mean quality. I can make 2kg of oolong by sneaking into a farm and picking tea at night and making it however I do. That tea will be very scarce, it’ll be one of a kind…. but it doesn’t mean it’s good.

It’s surprising how often the above happens — and I think quite frequently, the person pitching the tea to me him/herself believes the story to be true (told to him/her by whoever who sold it to him/her in the first place). It justifies the higher price being charged, but also helps give the store an air of quality, rarity, etc, all that. Sometimes, these teas are genuinely interesting or good. Other times… they’re just run of the mill. These pitches can also combine with the bait and switch — knowingly providing a tea that is quite regular (say, a Menghai cake or some middle grade tieguanyin) but dressing it up, mixing in something, changing the wrapper, putting it in a nice box… and here you go, a super special reserve limited edition tea provided only through me from some mystery person who I can’t tell you about (this is why I don’t have original packaging/neifei/bag/whatever for you!). Expensive, of course, but it’s worth it!

How many people pay good money for a bottle of wine that has its label obviously ripped out? Probably not many. How come people are willing to tolerate that kind of story when a neifei has been ripped out of a cake of puerh? More than a few, apparently. I’ve received a gift cake that’s sort of like this…. a store-brand cake that is obviously just some regular cooked puerh bing, but I bet the person paid big money for it because the wrapping is nice and the store is upscale (with a functional and pretty website — a rarity for a mainland Chinese store). They probably told him that the tea is very special and old and specially sourced, when it’s obviously just some regular brand new factory stuff that’s been rewrapped.

And don’t even mention Wulong for Life…. if I see one more of their ads when I check gmail, I’m going to kill somebody.

Don’t get me wrong, stories in and of themselves are fine. In fact, they give some “flavour” to the teas and make it more colourful, and I’m fine with that. It’s when things don’t add up, when quality isn’t there, and when they are way too common and transparent (like commemoration cakes) that’s when things start to bother me.

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Chayuan

October 27, 2007 · 3 Comments

There’s a tea mall in Maliandao called “Chayuan”. “Cha”, you all know, is tea. The word “yuan” ç·£ in this case can mean “predestined affinity”, or something like that, anyway. Chayuan, when combined, can mean something like “some natural affinity through tea”, either between two people, or between a tea and a person.

I suppose I had some of that today, when I went walking around the Chungking North Rd. area again where the old teashops of Taipei are located. There aren’t that many of them nowadays, and one or two that I went by looked downright imposing…. even worse than the “Grand Old Store“. They were so imposing, I didn’t go in at all.

Then I found this place that’s across the park from Youji. It still looked like a Grand Old Store — old decor, lots of big (I can comfortably sit in one) canisters for tea, all lined up along the store and two women sitting there watching TV. No customers. I walked in, and asked if they have “laocha”, old tea. This is parlance for old Taiwanese tea, usually, when one’s in Taiwan. Surprisingly, she took out some puerh — cooked, loose puerh at that. “No no no, old Taiwanese tea”, I said. “Ok, we have some”. She popped open on of those big cans, inside of which is a big plastic bag, and there it was… kilos of what look and smell like aged baozhong. It was then the owner of the store, a man in his 60s, came out. Wanna try some?

Sure…

The tea itself wasn’t very good. It’s a bit too sour — sour enough to make it unpleasant. The conversation, however, was going well. I think the owner liked the fact that I know a few things about tea, and that I am a young person seeking old Taiwan teas. These days, he laments, young people don’t know these things anymore. They just drink the new stuff, and all those new stores that are popping up — those owners know nothing about tea. You can’t drink that green stuff too much. It’s too stimulating, and is bad for you. This is what we drank in the old days, etc etc

Not surprisingly, he then brought out some better aged baozhong… they look better, and tasted far better. It’s a little sour in the opening, but it’s only a touch sour and is entirely acceptable. There’s an aged taste to the tea, although not a lot of the fruity sweetness, but the qi is strong and obvious — I was sweating profusely, and today was hardly hot. This rarely happens with me, so I know I’ve got a winner here.

So I got some of this, and then, the guy was like “want to try some of our gaoshan oolong?”. I think he likes educating a young man in tea. I’m a happy and relatively knowledgable audience, so he was having a good time talking and brewing. He took the stuff out — looks like good gaoshan oolong. Roasted about 8 hours, he said. You can’t really tell by the way it looks when dried, or wet. The stuff is still pretty good.

You can, however, tell by the taste. There’s very little of the grassy notes in this tea, which I loathe in a green Taiwan oolong. Rather, it’s fruity, smooth, with a nice hint of sweetness and also some floral notes. The difference between something like this and some of the unroasted stuff is quite obvious. It doesn’t have that nasty, green, and metallic edge to it that I really dislike in green Taiwanese stuff (and which generally makes me feel unwell after too much drinking). This tea was good… not awesome, mind you, but good, and I don’t say that very much about green Taiwanese oolong.

The best part was the conversation though. He was telling me a variety of things, some of which I knew, others I’ve heard for the first time. It’s always interesting to hear a man who’s spent his life in the tea business (since 13, he said) tell you his take on things. As I’ve said before, these are the real tea masters who really know their stuff.

So I got some of both, left…. picked up a gift along the way, and ended up at the place that sold me that $10 pot again. I couldn’t resist going back there to see if there’s one or two more pots to pick up that are cheap enough. I ended up choosing two…. he sold them to me for even less than 350 per pot. Amazing, eh?

So here they are. The first one is not bad, I think, the second a little more iffy (the nub on the lid, as you can see, is not well done). The clay on that thing though feels awfully silky and soft. You almost feel like you can push it in and turn it back into a ball of clay. Heck, it’s not even $10. All in all, a pretty productive tea shopping day.

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