A Tea Addict's Journal

Two years ago I bought this cake off Davelcorp when he had a sale of excess goods

I think I got it for some rather low amount, certainly low by today’s standards. Ever since getting it, it’s been sitting in one closet or box or another, and I somehow never found time to drink it. Then I went to Beijing, so of course I didn’t get a chance to drink it, until now.

The cake looks all right, rather loose, not the most handsome out there

I didn’t expect much when I bought it, but I’m about to find out.

The tea turned out to be extremely pleasant. Sweet, some bitterness that fades very rapidly into a huigan, good, strong minty taste in the throat, qi, hints of aging, taste of Yiwu somewhere in the middle…. it’s got everything. It’s not the best, mind you, but it’s certainly not bad. I’ve had many a “premium” tea from the past two years that are not half as good. Of course, this cake has had some aging, but I somehow doubt some of these “premium” cakes will do as well in 5 years’ time.

And for the price I paid, it’s worth every penny. Davelcorp, regretting your sale yet? 🙂

The leaves are stemmy

I wondered if this might be a fall tea, but it doesn’t really matter much. The tea claims to be wild arbor tree, and there are definitely signs of that in the cup (and consequently, in the mouth). In fact, this is the kind of young puerh that I like — has strength, but not the nasty, knock you out kind of strength. Instead, it’s like a firm grip of a hand, vigorously shaking yours, making its presence known. Firm handshakes are always good, fists are not.

Yes, yes, it took me a while, but I finally dredged up this sample from the LJ Community 2006 tasteoff. First, the name. “King Tea Biscuit”, in case it’s not obvious, is a nasty translation crime that nobody should commit. The tea’s name is “Qing Dynasty Thousand Years Ancient Tea King Cake”, which, if you literally translate the last three words using a dictionary (looking up word by word) will get you “Tea King Biscuit”, which is actually a little better than the mysterious “King Tea Biscuit”. How we got there is anybody’s guess.

Reading those reviews from 2006, it seems like the tea received a relatively positive reception. It’s been almost two years. What has time (spent in the same plastic ziploc bag it came in) done to the tea?

If we use colour as a judge — not much

(By the way, you might have noticed recently that there is an annoying line of purple at the top of my pictures. My camera, I think, is getting on in age, and has served me and this blog for more than two years… and is now protesting. Sorry for the quality)

Looks just sort of like the same tea as those pictured in the thread I linked to, maybe with a slight yellowing of the silver tips, but if it changed, it didn’t change much. The tea has been stored in relatively stable conditions for the past two years, in one box or another in the comforts of a heated apartment in Boston or Ohio. It’s probably nothing too different from most American homes.

The colour of the tea, when brewed, also doesn’t say much, but it never does anyway. My cup’s tall, whereas the one BBB used looks much flatter, so it probably accounts for most, if not all, of the difference in colour.

The tea…. hasn’t aged well with time. The first cup is rather bland, almost tasteless. A bit of sweetness in it, but nothing too remarkable. Maybe the tea hasn’t woken up yet. As I went on, however, the bitterness really shines through. Bitter, astringent, coupled with some minty effects and a bit of a floral note here and there. The tea never got to sweetness in the aftertaste, nor did it brew out into a sweet water tea that I hoped it might eventually turn to. Instead, it just remained bitter — a weaker bitter, but still bitter. Maybe I’m spoiled by the vast amounts of un-bitter aged oolongs recently, so perhaps my tolerance for bitterness has decreased, but I don’t think my tongue has deteriorated so much that I can’t detect notes of huigan coming through, or some sort of sweet water ending for the tea.

One of the comments in the LJ thread is made by Guang of Hou De, who was obviously questioning the processing method for this tea. BBB’s observation that this tastes more like a white tea is also a note of caution. I am quite certain that teas that were processed improperly in a method that resembles white/green tea processing will, over time, degrade and turn into nasty, astringent, bitter teas. Walt, if you’re reading this, I’m curious how this tea tastes now in your collection (or, for that matter, if anybody else has it, feel free to share your thoughts). I don’t think I made it improperly, since my pot is usually ok with this amount of tea, and in any case, using the pot does tend to absorb some of the impact from the bitterness.

Wet leaves, as Guang noted, is awfully uniform in colour, and quite green (in person anyway). I checked — no signs of pan frying. Doesn’t look too traditionally processed to me.

Ok, so with my last shipment from puerhshop, I also got a sample of this puerh. It has this clunky name because the brand, “Qingcheng Feng” is literally “blue-green city/town peak”. Rest assured, Green City Peak is not a peak in Yunnan…. as far as I can tell anyway.

So they say this is the best Mengku cake they’ve gotten this year. I got a 5g sample, which is, truth be told, a little less than what I normally use for one session, but it’ll have to do. One cannot complain about free samples.

The leaves look normal. Actually, they are brighter coloured than the picture on the site suggests. At first I was a little nervous about this being one of those “wild wild” puerh out there which can be fairly disgusting, because of the dark coloured picture. Thankfully, that’s not the case. The tea brews normally.

The tea…. is interesting. It is bitter, but not really. It is strong… but not really. It is flavourful and active… but not really. The only thing I’m sure about is that it hits the throat and leaves a mark there. The reason I said “not really” three times is because it is one of those teas that seem strong, but yet the strength seems a little elusive. I definitely feel that there’s a sort of coating around the mouth when I drink it, but then, it is almost ethereal, sort of there, but then you question yourself as to whether it is really there or not.

Instinct tells me this is a good tea, but I need to try it again to be more sure — preferably with a little more leaves so I am not feeling like I have to juggle amounts of water in order to make the water/leaf ratio be closer to my “normal” amount. As is usually the case these days, whether it is worth its price or not is really up to the individual, although I can say that it impresses me more than some more expensive teas I’ve tasted recently.

The leaves are big

Which might indicate that some, at least, are not spring leaves, but summer, or whatever, pickings. There are, however, no wooden sticks in there or extremely long and old stems, which is good. The leaves are well done.

Interesting tea, at the very least.

I spent a year and half in China and Taiwan, and during that time, it seems like many online shops have opened that sell all sorts of tea, most of which were not even in existence when I left for Beijing. Being there, I obviously had no reason to buy anything from any of these shops. Now that I’m back, I thought I can give things a try.

The first one I decided to try my luck at is Puerh Shop, which, as I just noticed, has a sales going on right now (I wonder if I can get a retroactive discount?).

They shipped the tea very quickly, and within a few days it landed here, since they’re only one state over in Indiana… the tea I bought to try is a 2004 “Manzhuan Old Tree”. I bought the last one, so don’t bother looking for it 🙂 The reason I thought I should give that one a try is because I’ve found myself liking Manzhuan tea given past experiences. There’s also a bit of calculation at play here — Manzhuan, at least a few years ago, is something that you don’t really advertise. Unlike Yiwu, which is everywhere (and most of those are not really Yiwu), the likelihood of somebody falsely advertising a Manzhuan cake was much, much lower. So, given that this is a few years old, I thought my chances were pretty good at getting the real deal.

The cake looks unremarkable

And it smells and feel a little dry. I wonder what kind of storage these folks have. I used mostly the shavings from the cake that are already loose in the wrapper, plus some leaves that I pried off.

The tea brewed a darkish liquor

It’s quite thick and strong. There’s a hint of sourness in there somewhere, but it’s in the back end, reminding me of a bit of the Manzhuan fruity taste that I have experienced a few times. There’s definitely strength in this tea — I can feel it strongly in my mouth and body. The taste is not the most enjoyable, but it reminds me of the feeling I used to have (and don’t have as often these days) of puerh that feels very raw and strong when young. These days, a lot of the younger cakes taste more like a mixture of green tea and oolong, without that punch that I used to associate with young puerh. This tea had that, but not in a nasty Xiaguan way. I actually liked it… and rate it above yesterday’s tea, even though yesterday’s was surely more refined. I’m not even sure if yesterday’s tea was any better than this in terms of raw quality — there was something too refined about yesterday’s tea. I didn’t feel that coating of my mouth that I do today.

Of course, this might have to do with the fact that I used more shavings and thus stuff came out faster as I brewed, but it easily lasted 10+ infusions without significant drop off. If anything, it lasted longer than the tea yesterday…. probably not a good sign for the Xizihao.

As you can expect, the leaves look broken

Not a very pretty tea at all, but one that I think can keep well over some years. I’ll probably pull it out again in a year or two and check on its progress.

Today’s tea is the last of the three samples of Xizihao that I acquired, the Puzhen Yuancha. Puzhen is actually a reference to the Chinese idiom, “Fan Pu Gui Zhen”, which means “return to innocence”. According to Hou De, this tea and the Daxueshan “Diangu Yuancha” are the two limited productions for this season, with, of course, a price tag to match. I haven’t had a chance to try the Daxueshan, and since the thing sold out in a flash when it came on the market, I didn’t see a reason why I should. I do, however, admire those with the courage to buy teas they’ve never tried before.

Looking at the poster from Xizihao, it seems like there were only 999 cakes of this tea produced, and so it’s even more limited in quantity than the Daxueshan cake. Hmmm

The dry leaves don’t look too remarkably different from the other teas, at least given the bits and pieces that a sample necessarily entail

The liquor also don’t look drastically different

How does it taste? Compared with the Xishangmeishao, it has better strength, more pleasant, less of the weirdness, thicker, and just overall a better tea. It does, however, remind me of some of the Mengku stuff from a few years ago, tasting like they did when they were very young. Back then, of course, those cakes were quite cheap.

The wet leaves also don’t look quite so mangled

If the Xishangmeishao was a 5 out of 10, then this is probably a 7.5 or maybe an 8, depending on my mood. It’s quite a bit of an improvement over the Xishangmeishao (the nu’ercha is quite different and I won’t really compare them). These days, it seems like one needs to pay big bucks for what is really just ok quality. I’d definitely pay the few dollars extra if I have to get one of these, but I really don’t know if either of them are that interesting. As I think I’ve said quite a few times already, I haven’t really found anything from 2007 terribly exciting, and this is, unfortunately, no exception. A return to innocence this definitely is not — if it were, it would be back to the prices that such cakes charged 2 or 3 years ago. Alas…

It’s taking me a while to get through these samples of the new Xizihao cakes on offer. After the nu’ercha I just haven’t really found the motivation and excitement necessary to get me to try the other two. Today I felt like maybe I should give the second of these a spin, so I took out the bag of Xishangmeishao, which literally means “Happiness that shows on one’s brows” (this is an awful and rough translation) and tried it.

Looks all right dry. There’s really not much one can say about a young puerh when it’s dry. However pretty it looks, it could taste awful. However ugly some teas might be, they can be fantastic. For puerh, looks don’t really mean much of anything. The only time it matters a little more is when it’s older and you can glean information about storage condition from them, or when the leaves are obviously chopped or poorly processed.

The colour of the tea looks all right too

When drinking it though, I couldn’t help but feel there’s really nothing to be happy about when consuming it. Aside from the fact that it’s got a relatively hefty price tag, the quality is not there to match the prices, never mind basic expectations of what is supposed to be an old tree tea. The flavour is…. subdued, let’s say. There’s a modicum of aftertaste in the mouth that lingers very slightly. There’s a strange sort of floral note that I felt was somewhat present in the nu’ercha, and also here, that makes me thing something strange was done during the processing of the tea. There is also a feeling that perhaps something is simply not quite right about this — is it overharvesting? Alternative processing? Or just bad tea? I’m not sure. It’s simply not very inspiring. Maybe I’m not in a particularly generous mood today, but at some point, I feel like the product description or basic expectations should at least be matched by the real McCoy, and drinking this tea… I just don’t feel it. When other, better teas can be had for less money, why buy this?

The wet leaves give us some clues of what’s going on

Looks ok enough, but in fact, some of the leaves look old — leaves that aren’t really buds of any sort, but are rather just leaves that might be older than they really should be for the purpose of drinking. The stems are many, and some are quite hard — wooden, almost. This is generally not a good thing. The other thing that worries me is the excessive amount of redness in the leaves. Often this means that the leaves were left around in the picker’s basket for too long (sometimes because of a long trip from the trees to the frying pan) but it also means that the tea has undergone a fair amount of fermentation before it was processed. It is not a very good indicator of leaf quality or processing, but I do find that cakes with a high proportion of red in the leaves often don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The tea does brew a fair amount of infusions with no problem, but the general level of activity and content is just not there. When there are so many other options that seem to offer much more for less cost… I don’t see the value of a tea like this.

I got these in the mail the other day

I haven’t really tried anything new for quite a while, and definitely haven’t tried anything from Xizihao for a long time — since April, I think. Some of these cakes, especially the higher priced ones, have been selling like the world’s about to run out of puerh. I’m not sure who’s buying these things sight unseen, but it seems like a lot of money to spend on cakes that one hasn’t tasted at all. Now I’m curious to find out what they’re actually like.

I get the sense that the nu’ercha (daughter’s tea, literally) is the lowest grade of the three, so I figured it’s a good place to start.

The leaves are big and good looking. They’re quite green, which I’ve found to be pretty typical for 2007 teas. At any rate, looks deceive.

The tea brews yellowish green. It also tastes that way. There’s an interesting floral quality to it somewhere during the second or third infusion, which I tend not to associate with young puerhs. I found the tea to be generally a little meek, and the bitterness somewhat lingering. The tea hits the throat quite well, but in a way that some green tea puerhs have also done before. I’m not saying this is definitely problematically processed, but it does seem to raise some questions. Having tried some 2004 or 2005 stuff before, I have to say this tea, on the whole, behaves differently. The floral like quality to the tea especially makes me wonder if something is going on there.

The leaves are big, long stems, but largely in keeping with what an autumn tea might look like. Some leaves have some redness or what not to it, which is normal, but others are so uniformly green, it worries me. I hope puerh isn’t going through a change in process that tieguanyin went through in the past decade. If it is…. it’ll be a sad day.

When I went and met with the guy from Taipei whom I contacted through the internet, he mentioned how the Taipei tea drinkers don’t view the Tainan tea makers who have their hands in puerh very favourably. There’s a certainly difference in philosophy. He didn’t elaborate, but I get the sense that it’s about materials and processing. There’ve been a few times when I thought certainly Xizihao products are designed more for better current consumption than long term storage. Not all their stuff give me that sense, but this nu’ercha is one of them.

It’s weird to be drinking young puerh again when I haven’t really done it for so long. A totally different kind of taste and sensation. It’s a change of pace from those aged oolongs that I’ve been pouring down my throat the past month or two.

This is the cake I bought through Yahoo auctions in Taiwan

Supposedly Yiwu tea made by Gan’en Factory in 2005. It’s very cheap ($12), which is chiefly the reason I took a gamble on it. It was also a way for me to get a sample (the other cake I tried a few days ago).

In comparison with the other Yiwu, this one is weaker overall. The taste is weaker, the aroma weaker, and the throatiness weaker. While it does ok in the thickness department…. the tea overall just seems a bit on the bland side.

Even the colour is lighter

It makes me think summer tea, especially after seeing the wet leaves

Big, long stems, but thin leaves… the other cake is 25% more in cost, but 125% of $12 is still only $15, hardly a high cost…