A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘young puerh’

Xizihao fall 2007 Nu’ercha

January 14, 2008 · 8 Comments

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.

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Gan’en Factory Yiwu 2005

December 20, 2007 · Leave a Comment

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…

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2004 Hongyuan Hao Yiwu

December 18, 2007 · 1 Comment

I bought a little puerh through Yahoo Taiwan auctions. I’ve found that there are potentially some cheap bargains to be had there, should one be patient and willing to try. I bought a cake of Yiwu to try, and I asked for a sample to go along with it for another cake the guy sells. This Hongyuan Hao (nothing to do with Longyuan Hao, which is usually crap) is the sample.

The sample arrived very broken. It’s too bad. I got some real pieces of tea, and commenced brewing. This tea is advertised as old tree puerh, but as we all know, a lot of stuff out there is advertised as such. I usually take this claim with many grains of salt, and I find that most of the stuff out there that claim to be old tree puerh are not. So, I usually don’t go in expecting anything.

This tea smells a little funny in the bag. I didn’t use too much leaves, as throwing the whole sample in would entail having lots and lots of small tiny bits. I didn’t want to do that.

It brews a normal colour for a 2004 tea stored in Taiwan

I’m very glad I had the 2003 Menghai tea the other day, because now I have something to compare this tea against. Not having had many young puerh these days, my tongue is a little out of practice. While it’s always easier to pick up the tastebuds to acclimate them to young puerh again, it’s always good to have something to compare it against.

The overall impression of this tea is actually quite favourable. The aromatics are quite full and the tea penetrates the mouth and throat. It seemed weak at first, but strengthens, which is a good sign, especially in the aftertaste department. Yiwu-ish taste. The tea’s quite ok!

Now I am not sure if it’s just because I haven’t had a bunch of young puerh lately, so my tongue feels more inclined to think this is decent tea, but comparing it, say, to the tea I had in the tea store a few days ago, this tea is clearly superior (at a lower price, to boot). I actually bought another Yiwu cake from this guy though, and I haven’t had time to try it, so perhaps comparing these two will be interesting too.

The wet leaves are robust enough, but too much chopped bits from the crushing of the sample during mailing. Oh well.

Alas, I am leaving Taiwan soon, so I might not have the ability to arrange everything before I go. It is quite possible that I’ll only end up with this one cake that I bought, as I won’t have time to get anything else from the guy. If the other cake turns out to be good stuff, that’ll be a shame. I wonder if he will ship overseas.

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2003 Menghai cake

December 16, 2007 · Leave a Comment

So I tried the Menghai cake today

The tea brews dark for a supposedly 03 tea

It’s quite all right…. sweetish, losing some of that really young edge already, decent flavours, pretty typical big factory stuff… nothing fancy, nothing too horrid…. a bit rough later on, but that’s to be expected. It was probably stored a bit wet early on, but storage is fine too.

Chopped leaves…. stuff like this can sell for quite a bit of money these days if you go to the wrong stores. It’s amazing what people sell things at these days. I just bought a couple to see what happens to them over time, since I have very few big factory tea. We’ll find out

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2005 Chenguanghe Tang Menghai wild tea

December 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I haven’t had a young puerh for so long, I almost forgot how it tastes.

Today’s sample’s been sitting around for a month or two now. This is a cake from Chen Zhitong, owner of Chenguanghe Tang, author of the Profound World of Chi-tse (among others). The big chunk was given to me by the owner of Fuxing, when I expressed some interest in this tea. The tea’s supposedly Menghai area wild old trees, with a lot of Banzhang materials. For the price… it’s a steal, if that’s true.

I didn’t use much tea, as I haven’t had a young puerh for quite a while and I don’t know how my body will handle it. I also don’t think my body will like it much because it’s winter… and winter usually means I don’t drink as much young tea. Last year was sort of an exception. I think the heavy food in Beijing, plus the drying weather/heater made young puerhs more acceptable.

It brews a golden yellow colour, and the tea is actually somewhat aromatic. I almost wonder if there’s some leaves from sweeter-tasting regions mixed in. There’s a bit of that Banzhang taste to it, but it is a mild one. I’ve noticed that sometimes when I brew a young puerh lightly the throatiness is actually more noticeable, and today it was pretty clear that around the throat area there’s a feeling of minty coolness. I could feel the qi — it’s strong and obvious, and my body reacted strongly to it. Good thing I didn’t use too much leaves.

The tea got rough after a few infusions, and stayed that way for a while, receeding into a sort of sweet finish typical of young puerhs. It’s a pretty decent tea, especially given what it costs at the store and what it might actually cost on the street, so to speak. I’m no big fan of Banzhang teas, but perhaps I should pick one or two up just to see how it ages…. it could be a useful comparison with stuff that I like more, such as Yiwus.

Robust looking leaves…. don’t see these too often these days. They’re more likely to be paper thin now.

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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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Hmmm, mould

November 23, 2007 · 5 Comments

I was examining the few cakes I have here that I keep as “taster” cakes, and noticed something funny — one of them, namely the Fuxing Zhangjiawan, has a little bit of mould on it.

It’s been pretty rainy here the past few weeks and I have paid very little attention to these cakes. In fact, I haven’t really bothered with them for a while now, and have just left them alone. I looked at all the cakes I have in the same area, in my living room (the non-taster stuff are kept up in a little loft). It seems like the Zhangjiawan is the only one with any noticeable mould. I think this makes sense. The Zhangjiawan was covered by the other cakes, and sat at the bottom of the pile. I suppose what happened is that any moisture accumulated in it was not easily dissipated, and so whereas the other cakes dried out a little when the weather turned drier, the Zhangjiawan never did. None of the other cakes had a problem, and the ones up in the loft do seem a little drier — I suppose moisture is heavy.

The other thing is that the mould is growing in one paritcular type of place on the cake — at the end of the stems. They’re not all over, nor are they on the leaves. They are at the end of the stems where the leaf was plucked. Could it be that the stems retain moisture the best, and therefore makes the best place for mould to grow?

YP told me that she noticed that aged oolongs are often very sour when it was never de-stemmed. She thinks the stems do retain moisture better and thus turn the tea sour faster. Perhaps the same effect is seen here?

Either way, this is pretty interesting. I am almost tempted to let the mould grow uncontrolled and see how the cake fares in a month’s time. But then…. maybe I should let it dry out a bit. I only have one cake of this with me now, and I’d rather try it as it ages slowly.

I think I made the right decision to store my tea in Hong Kong on shelves that are near the ceiling rather than near the ground.

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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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Aaron sample 4

November 21, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I tried Aaron’s sample 4 today

Small leaves from the dry bits I got. Nothing too interesting looking. Looks a little like a big factory recipe cake…

It’s reasonably dark in liquor, but that might be because I brewed it long. There’s a really weird note in the tea that I don’t know how to describe — other than just some massively “off” flavour in my sample. Plastic bag? Something else? Something wasn’t quite right, and it was definitely not a pleasant thing. It went away after a few infusions, but it was sufficiently strong to cloud my judgment. The tea is a bit harsh and somehow quite green. It feels like plantation tea and it doesn’t seem to be from 2001, or at least doesn’t taste like one — tastes a lot younger.

Strength of the tea is actually not too bad and it has a decent lingering aftertaste, but I just couldn’t say it’s a good tea based on the seriously off flavour and the greenness…. it’s also fairly bitter at this point.

The wet leaves are also quite green

Strange tea…

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Aaron sample 3

November 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Third in the series

I have more of this sample than the other two, but I thought I should use approximately the same amount anyway for consistency sake. The dry leaves smell a little familiar. It’s not too tightly compressed. Looks dry stored, more or less

The tea is a bit more intereating than the last two, I think. When I first drank it I thought it tasted somewhat familiar — I’ve had something like this before. I couldn’t, however, come up with what it was that it tasted like. I just know that I’ve had something similar.

It’s decent enough, somewhat aromatic, hits the throat a little, although a bit rough on the tongue. The leaves smelled ok, if a little “green”. No real faults, but neither is it a real standout. The durability of the tea is good though — it withstood quite a few infusions.

Then I sniffed the pot where I put the wash… smells a little like some Lincang tea I’ve had. I wonder if that’s what this is.

The wet leaves are sort of whole — mostly smaller leaves and buds.

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