A Tea Addict's Journal

I drank a sample that was in some brown paper bag today. I don’t know for sure where it’s from. The brown paper bag suggests my friend YP, but then… I don’t remember getting something like this from her.

The colour didn’t come out right

But the leaves are actually relatively green, with some redness. The tea’s obviously been dry stored. There’s no hint of wetness in there, but there’s a beginning hint of age. It’s very broken up, made up of mostly small leaves.

It brews a decently dark brew

My guess is it’s about 7 years or so. It actually reminded me a little of the 2000 Xiaguan tuo I had recently, but this one lacks a bit of that greenness that one gets from Xiaguan products. There’s something Menghai-ish about this tea, although with zero labeling and zero memory…. I honestly have no idea what it is. It’s a little rough on the tongue, and the way it behaves suggests it’s probably mostly plantation leaves. Not much qi or anything too exciting going on… an entirely average tea, I think.

The leaves, as you can see, are quite chopped up

I can’t remember for the life of me what this is. It could actually be a sample of something else that I just stuck in the bag. Oh well… I should really be better about labeling things.

I decided to drink two teas against each other today. I picked the 2004 Yangqing Hao sample that I got recently, and the 2005 Fuxing Zhangjiawan as a comparison. I thought the Zhangjiawan, while not from Yiwu area, tastes similar to one. i want to see how (relatively) similar it is, and also how it compares with a tea that is slightly older. Since the YQH was stored in Taiwan (albeit Southern Taiwan), I figured it’s a closer match than anything else I’ve got at this point.

I took some pictures of the dry leaves, but then realized that they were poor quality, and that they don’t look any different — not discernable through a camera anyway. Just remember — left cup is YQH, right cup is Fuxing 🙂

Here are infusions 1, 4, 7, and 10

It’s always interesting when one tea outlasts the other. Flavours behaved similarly to the colour of the tea. The 2004 YQH is starting to taste a bit aged, and has a bit of that spicy aged taste to it — it’s obviously more aged than the Hou De sample I bought last year. One year difference, plus more Taiwan storage, probably did the trick there. The Fuxing, by comparison, tastes more green, with more fruity aromas and a generally lighter feel. It is always difficult to tell which tea in particular is giving you the throatiness, qi, and the coolness in the mouth when drinking two teas together, so I won’t try to comment there. The body of the two teas were similar. The general trajectory were also similar, and not a lot of roughness came out from either one. In fact, there wasn’t a huge divide separating the two. Except, of course… in the fact that the Fuxing simply lasted longer. The YQH started feeling a little weak by infusion 7 or 8, and when I pushed them late, it petered out.

That was also when a difference in throat feel was noticeable. The Fuxing went deeper, whereas the YQH didn’t. Of course, it could be because the tea died, but I don’t remember it being particularly deep last time I tried it, and I think this is just confirming that impression.

Even the wet leaves look somewhat similar, although the YQH has, relatively speaking, more easily unfurled leaves, while the Fuxing is rolled tighter and didn’t always unfurl. That, however, is not necessarily a bad thing at all. The jury’s still out on the rolling and the amount necessary. In fact, there are those who claim that some teas that unfurl too easily are actually not being rolled enough — that you need a bit more to release the juices and to break down membranes for aging to happen properly. I don’t know the answer to that, but it is food for thought.

There was also this little thing I found…. is that a tea leaf, the small one?

I can’t tell, but something about the way the veins are…. don’t look like any of the other tea leaves I’ve seen.

I tried the other sample Lew of Babelcarp sent me. It’s a tea he pressed in Yunnan while he visited there this spring. The leaves are from Nannuo, and the neifei he uses says

“Lew” sounds a bit like “Liu (six) in Chinese, and “liuda chashan” is the usual phrase for “Six Famous Tea Mountains”. Quite clever 🙂

The tea is quite aromatic even when dry, and I can smell it clearly. The leaves are robust looking

Sorry for the shaky hands.

The initial infusion was very light in colour, and then it deepened a bit to this

It’s a bit sweet, with an aroma that is identifiable as Nannuo, where the tea’s from. The sensation in the mouth is full, and one can really feel the tea in the back around the throat, also on the roof of the mouth (what do you call that?). I think this is a good tea. It’s got my head spinning a little and body sweating a bit. It does hit the back of the throat. The taste also lingers for a good bit after the tea’s been swallowed.

The leaves run the gamut in terms of size. While they look good, there’s one thing in the leaves (as well as something in the taste) that concerns me a little. There’s a certain greenness to the tea, and the bitterness in the tea got much more prominent around infusion 4-5 onwards and never quite went away after that. I’m not entirely sure this is normal or not, but I have heard a frequent complaint on Sanzui that teas this year are all rather green in nature. Perhaps it has to do with weather? I really don’t know.

Either way though, thanks for the sample, Lew, and I’m definitely interested to see how this tea changes!

Once in a while, I actually drink Xiaguan stuff.

I’ve never been a big fan of their newer things. I do like the Traditional (and Simplified) character bings from the 80s, but that’s a different story. For the most part, I find their younger teas to be harsh and quite unpleasant. It takes years for them to mature into something more drinkable, and even then…. they’re not that great. They’re harsh when young, but not actually particularly good — leaves you with a bit of an aftertaste, but I’m not sure it’s the right one I want for my youngish teas.

But I found this tuo with Action Jackson when she was visiting here, and I remembered liking it. I picked one up

As you can see… it’s been taken apart. No, this is not what’s left – this is only a portion of it.

The tuo is aged 7 years… from 2000. Back then, this stuff costs maybe twenty cents USD. Nowadays…. it’s many multiples. This thing still isn’t terribly expensive, I suppose, but it’s also not really cheap either when you compare it with what it was worth, back in the day.

It is starting to show a hint of age

The tea definitely smells a bit aged. It’s lost the “green” smell and has taken on a slightly changed, slightly musty smell. The taste is sweet — much of the bitterness has receeded, only there in a very subtle way in the background. The initial greeness of Xiaguan tea is also gone, but it is still detectable in the way the aftertaste behaves… it’s there, in the background, telling me that this tea is once upon a time a pretty green Xiaguan tea.

Is this great? No, not really. Is it interesting? Sure. I’m also curious how it compares with, say, the ITC tuos from the 90s. I remember Davelcorp & Co. saying that those don’t taste very aged. I wonder if this one tastes more aged than those, or less. If it tastes more aged than the ITC ones…. then it’s either because Oakland (where I think ITC stores their teas) is really too dry, or those tuos aren’t really from the 90s.

The wet leaves are pretty typical jia tuo stuff…. small leaves, some chopped, some not so chopped. The tea deliveres some caffeine buzz though, I can feel it.

The weather is really weird today. It was windy, sunny, AND rainy. When I was out for lunch, it started drizzling despite the strong sunshine. Everybody looked up, and saw only very scattered clouds. We all took a double take because nobody could quite figure out the weather. Strange. It’s a long weekend too, because coming up is the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated in much of East Asia. Taiwanese have somehow gotten into the traditional of doing outdoor barbeque on this day (and the weekend preceding it). It’s almost like Labour Day in the US.

Anyway, enough about the strange weather. This blog isn’t about that.

This is the other Fuxing cake I bought. I got one of each because at the store, I couldn’t quite figure out the two teas. The Youle seemed better there, but we were drinking a mix of many things, and by the time I tried the Youle, I couldn’t really tell anymore. All I remember at the store was that the aroma of the tea filled the mouth quite evenly, and I liked that. The Zhangjiawan felt a little weak in the store, but as I tasted it two days ago, it seemd quite fine a tea. Will this cake hold up?

It definitely passes muster in the looks department. One of the better looking cakes out there, I think

The little indentation in the center is actually slightly too deep — so much so that there’s only one layer of leaf covering the hole. You can even peek through and see bits of light in the middle. It’s kinda fun that way.

The first cup of tea was incredibly sweet. So sweet I wonder what’s going on. Maybe this is why I remembered it filling the mouth — the first cup is really quite good. The qi is not as obvious or immediate as the Zhangjiawan, but I do like the opening.

Then the tea turns a bit more to a more regular two or three years old cake, with a lot of “tea” taste that reminds me of the Youle maocha I had a while ago. The cooling effect is less strong than the Zhangjiawan, and it is also a little rougher on the tongue. In general, I think, this tea is actually slightly worse than the Zhangjiawan.. although I think this might very much have to do with personal preference than anything else. Some might prefer the bolder taste in this cake, and the slightly more aggressive way it acts in the mouth (but not necessarily the qi of the tea). An interesting specimen, to say the least.

The tea lasts a long time, and stands up quite well to some abuse late in the brewing session. I don’t think there’s any funny business going on here either… the tea isn’t “nice” enough to be that.

I don’t actually own any Youle cake, and have only tried a few despite its relative high availability. Youle supposedly has more of its old growth tea trees than some other mountains, so productivity is higher. On top of that, it’s close to Jinghong, a major town in the area, so traffic is more convenient. That means that people who go up to the hills to press teas can get there more easily, and so I think we tend to see more private label Youle than some of the other mountains. I think BBB pressed some Youle cakes as well, along with his Nannuo, the other favourite of private tea-pressers for much the same reasons.

The leaves, just like the dry cake, are arguably prettier than the other

With lots of bud-systems in the mix

I think I like the Zhangjiawan a little more, especially since they cost the same. However… I will probably hit myself if I don’t get some of this either, if only because it’s still a fine tea, and like I said… I don’t have any Youle! I honestly don’t know how I managed to avoid them so completely.

Well, I didn’t buy the cakes last weekend for nothing. I bought them so I can better try them out at home, with a view of making a purchase decision should either one of them (or both) turn out to be good.

So, here’s the first up.

This is a 2005 cake made with leaves from “Zhangjiawan”, which is literally “Zhang family bay/harbour”. There are obviously no harbours or bays in Yunnan, so it was probably in reality just near a small lake or some such with a place for boats to park. Many, many Chinese place names are like that — so and so family’s something. The most famous is probably “Shijiazhuang”, a big city not too far from Beijing, which literally means “Shi family estate”. No, most people who live there aren’t surnamed Shi, although, once upon a time, they probably did.

Zhangjiawan, after doing a little research, seems to be in the Mengla area, which is south of Yiwu near the border with Burma. I’ve had a few Mengla teas before, ranging from good to merely ok. The leaves used in this cake, at least from the surface, look quite big. The surface of the cake is also surprisingly dark. I suppose the fact that it’s been sitting on a shelf has something to do with it. No matter.

The tea, as I expected, still tasted quite young, but perhaps lost a little of that initial harshness you get in a brand new tea.

The first two or three infusions were almost fruity. A nice sweet flavour, little bitterness, and quite pleasant. Qi is very obvious — it started running circles in my body. After only a few sips I could feel the heat, which is not usually the case with most teas. This is definitely a big plus.

The tea is medium bodied, with a good depth and nice throatiness. The coolness you get from drinking a good young puerh lingers around the back half of the mouth, well after the tea itself is swallowed. Under the lid there wasn’t much aroma, although there was a faint hint of some floral notes in the middle infusions. Mostly, it was neutral or has a bit of that “green” smell. There was some roughness on the tongue, and some bitterness shown through in the middle infusions, but nothing too bothersome or out of line. In fact, if it didn’t have either of those, I’d be more worried.

The leaves look well processed

And there’s something from all sizes….

I must say I am rather impressed by the tea. The qi alone makes it interesting, because I rarely start sweating all over when I drink a tea. I can’t really find any fault with this cake. I remember when I tried it at the store, I thought it lacked something, but perhaps brewing conditions were not optimal so it was rather hard to say with any sort of certainty how it was like. Making it at home, under my own controlled conditions and using my own hands…. I have to say this is a very good tea.

Looks like I’ll be picking some of this up, unless, of course, the Youle proves to be far better. Even then, I will probably still pick a few of this up anyway, because it’s always good to have variety.