A Tea Addict's Journal

BBB already posted this up, this link came byway of Action Jackson

http://shanghaiist.com/2008/11/27/video_used_tea_repackaged_and_resol.php

The video is purportedly of some workers in Guangzhou who were drying out large bricks of “puerh” that were pressed from used tealeaves.

These are cakes that say “Puerh Tea Brick — 1958” on them. They look like this. I’m not saying this store’s tea is the same — at least the number is diffierent.

There’s, of course, no way to know for sure if it’s just some tea sitting on some concrete out in the middle of nowhere. There are a few things that are clear —

1) the place is rather dirty
2) tea is sitting outside
3) the guy narrating is speaking proper Cantonese, saying pretty much that this is some guys drying out pressed tea and then reselling it since they are right at a tea market. This is all fake, etc.

Anyway, there’s been a comment on BBB’s blog that this is nothing more than a shaky video with unverified claims. True. But, in the land of melamine filled milk and fake salt (yes, using industrial salt to fake table salt…. with dire consequences, of course), anything is possible.

The solution? Buy from reputable sellers, and try your very best to educate yourself. Teas that are faked often have very telling signs — a flavour that is rather off, or strange, or too intense. The leaves will look funny. It’s difficult, of course, if you don’t have all that much experience or have a lot of opportunities to see different kinds of things, which is also why it is important to diversify your suppliers — don’t just buy tea from only one or two stores, and see the variety of stuff out there. The people I’ve met in China who were most screwed by their tea suppliers are usually the ones who stick with one or two because they thought they could trust them.

Which is also why I don’t drink things like jasmine, which are often flavoured with some kind of artificial flavours — they might smell great, but you have no idea what’s going into your mouth.

Unfortuantely, that’s the world we live in now.

One of the things we do when we blog is to talk about teas we’ve tried. I have been slowly drifting away from that, as I find less and less interest in dissecting a tea. The reasons are manifold, but mostly it’s because my opinion is only that — my opinion. You have to try a tea for yourself before it means anything. The same is probably true too for teapots, teaware, water, and all that other stuff. I might like something, but a big, big caveat that runs through the entire blog is — just because I like it doesn’t mean you’ll like it.

Sometimes though, it turns into a bit of a service. Jim at Puerhshop recently contacted me and offered to send me a sample of his new tea. The tradeoff, of course, is that I’ll talk about it. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll talk about it positively, but I’ll talk about it. If it’s something that I think is worth looking into and letting other people know about, I will be happy to do so.

The tea in question is his “American Hao” or Meiguo Hao. The name might sound slightly unfortunate — it is a mix of the Chinese usage of “Hao” as a trademark name, and the obvious connotation that this is done by somebody from the US of A. Interestingly enough, the wrapper on the cake does not say anything like it — instead, it says “Mengsa Yuanyexiang” with the date 2008, April 20th stamped on it. Mengsa Yuanyexiang evokes the name of the now slightly famous (or infamous) cake that has been sold through a number of channels and which made some people a pretty penny when it got famous. These days you can find all sorts of cakes named Yuanyexiang… Supposedly, the 200g and 400g versions are the same thing, just different sized cakes.

The name of a tea of course doesn’t really say much of anything, especially those of you who are more experienced with puerh and know that what’s on the label rarely, if ever, matches anything within the wrapper. How does the tea hold up?

The tea is a somewhat typpical looking young puerh, green with some tips, not too broken. When it hits the warm pot it smells a bit like a green tea would, but I’ve found that to be quite typical these days of puerh made. The first thing I noticed is that it brews cloudy — I tried the tea three times, using the whole sample Jim sent me, and it has brewed cloudy every time. Cloudiness is not, in and of itself, a problem. From what I have learned, it might imply issues with humidity and should clear up with some time resting.

The first time I brewed the tea, I made it a bit too strong, and the tea turned a little sour and too bitter. The next two times I adjusted, and I think overall, the tea is a bit understated — nothing too fancy, nothing too interesting, and nothing too obviously bad either. There were ome signs of activity, but it’s not too pronounced. It did, however, make my stomach ache a little, but that’s almost par for the course these days. It might be slightly on the green side of things, but again, that seems to be more common than ever. You can tell I don’t drink much young puerh anymore. My stuff have been sitting in a box waiting to age.

I think this is, personally, not my type of tea, but then, lots of young puerh are not my kind of tea, so that’s really not saying much. I do think it might be something worth a try, given its price point and interest factor.

Haven’t done this for a while

This came through the mail from a friend. It’s still on sale, apparently, but quite a bit higher than I remember it used to cost.

The cake got a little beat up on the way here in the mail — some parts of the cake was pulverized.

The tea…. is a fairly standard one. There’s quite literally nothing too remarkable about it, but nothing bad about it either. It’s one of those reliable, clean tasting cakes. It did go for quite a while and hasn’t weakened too much after many infusions.

There was an initial floral note early on — in the first few cups it was quite obvious. I think I would’ve liked to see a little more punch to the tea, but it was relatively speaking a little subdued. Then again, nothing’s wrong with that.

Obviously I haven’t done this for a while.

Now I suppose this, too, will go into the “wait” pile and see what happens to it five, ten, or twenty years from now. Maybe leaving it out in the crazy thunderstorm outside will help speed up the aging.

I got some mail two days ago, and among the contents of the bag was a sample with a familiar neifei.

Wasn’t expecting to see this… and whose handwriting is that? I’m sure my readers can figure that out.

This tea, incidentally, was recommended by me to Hobbes, and then, I suppose, Hobbes sent a sample to this person, who then sent the rest of the sample to me…. it’s a small world after all. There are two versions of this cake, one with two words inside the red circle, the other with one. I bought the one with one word, having tried both, and they’re currently sitting in Hong Kong waiting to get better.

I should hasten to add, this is the same company that makes the Douji cakes now. They were having branding issues and couldn’t quite decide on what to call themselves. At that time, the brand was Yisheng, and nowadays I think they’re reviving that brand for cooked puerh.

It’s a nice tea — not too nasty to drink now, and I think has enough to go the distance. I wonder how my cakes are doing in Hong Kong.

Adrian L from the San Francisco area sent me a few puerh samples along with the aged oolongs (which have been consumed long ago). I tried these three over the last three days.

They were labelled A, B, and C. I tried them in order of A, C, and B, and liked C the best. None of them were, I think, small workshop tea — they all tasted sort of like big factory teas of one form or another to me, with C being most like that and perhaps A least like it. I liked C the best — it was the most balanced tea of the three, tasting more or less like Menghai stuff. A was ok, a bit weak, tastes like Taiwan stored tea. B was odd — sour, a bit unpleasant in taste initially, lacking fragrance especially compared with C, and so, in compairson, not that interesting.

Turns out A is a 2001 Fuhai Yiwu, B is the “Ancient Tea Horse Rd” Yiwu (I’m only told this was a YSLLC merchandise) and C a 1998 Fuhai Yiwu/Menghai blend. I wonder if the blending of the cake has anything to do with the fact that I liked it the best, or, for a simpler explanation, the extra few years made the difference.

It’s hard to say what’s what in this case…. but it was certainly fun trying samples of varying makes that are of similar age. Which reminds me — I still have some sort-of-aged samples from Aaron that I haven’t drunk yet. Maybe I should get to those….

I had a maocha from Beijing today. It’s been almost two years since I bought it, and it’s showing the first signs of age. However, it’s still very young, and in case the taste wasn’t obvious enough, my stomach protested.

My stomach doesn’t like young puerh very much. It never really has. These days, however, I can’t drink it more than two days in a row, or in some cases, even one day, without it protesting that I’m doing it eternal harm.

The tea people I associate with in Hong Kong (and pretty much any other Chinese tea drinker in Southern China) believe that young puerh isn’t very good for you. It’s harsh, and it can damage your stomach, at the very least. It’s also supposed to be bad for your kidney, but I think that’s more a Chinese medicine thing and longer term. You don’t always see the immediate consequences for that, but you definitely see immediate consequences for drinking too much young puerh. Tiffany, of Best Tea House, has long complained of having a weak stomach, especially after so many years of drinking too much tea. These days if you give her a cup of young puerh or green oolong, she’ll sip it very slowly, trying to basically not drink any of it (or at most, for a taste to see how the tea is). The same problem doesn’t really apply when it’s heavy roasted tea or an aged tea.

I find myself more or less in the same boat these days. I didn’t drink a young puerh yesterday, but the day before I did. It shows immediately. It’s just a mild stomach discomfort today, but it can become a full blown stomach ache if, say, I drink more young stuff tomorrow. It doesn’t really matter what kind of young puerh it is — the result is more or less the same.

These things are obviously also affected by your diet, etc, but that’s why you don’t see me talking much about young puerh these days, and if you’ve sent me a sample of something (especially those under 5 years of age) and I haven’t gotten to it yet — please forgive me for being slow 🙂