Douji 2011 Red Da Dou (红大斗)

No manufacturer of tea, however well regarded, is infallible. Yiwu Zhengshan Tea Company, more commonly known by its (only?) brand, Douji, has produced many teas I have enjoyed. Even those Douji teas I thought un-spectactular, none did I suspect were poorly processed.

Unfortunately, today's tea is such an example.

I rather enjoyed the 2008 version of this blend, red "dà dŏu", roughly meaning red star, red north star, or red big dipper. The leaf grade/quality for this year's production compares poorly with it, however. Many small bits of leaf, twigs, and older leaf bits (huang pian) comprise the blend--material that was not hand-harvested.

The smells and tastes of the tea are green tea. This surprises me because usually tea blends' having multiple raw material sources usually results in any one poor source being balanced by other better sources.

How to tell? For one, the flavors say green tea: vegetal, buttery, mild. Young sheng pu can taste bitter, but the bitter of this tea appears in the wrong place: the front of the mouth. It also appears without the delicious feature of shengpu bitterness, which is that it fades into sweetness.

The most interesting note the tea gave was Parmesan cheese. The most interesting occurrence during the tea session was the appearance of this little stinker on our rubber plant.

Sort of appropriate.

Anyway, here are the leaves, which along with the soup, prove that looks can only tell so much about a tea. That is, they don't look bad.

2011 Mengsong Maocha (sourced from Douji)

Mengsong is a huge region comprised of the mountain range west of the Lancang River and east of Menghai city. It includes pu'er tea regions/mountains Nannuo, Hekai, Naka, and others. When I see a tea labeled Mengsong made in the past few years, I wonder if the tea leaves came from one village or many, and if this village was not famous enough to merit renaming it Nannuo, Hekai, or Naka, for example.



This 2011 sample was given to Jerry of China Cha Dao as a gift, and he decided to share a limited number of samples as part of a sample pack whose aim was to contrast presumably old tree tea with the lesser-regarded plantation tea.

If you were wondering about that odd orange twiggy thing in the photo above, it appears to be some sort of dried moss. Finding this stowaway lends the tea a "wild arbor" or other naturalistic feel, and, always skeptical, I asked myself if Douji included it intentionally (hopefully not fraudulently). Here it is up close:



As natural as these tea plants' environment may be, the tea itself disappointed me. Although the leaves are beautiful and the flavor pleasant, I had to brew this tea in long steeps to extract a decent strength of flavor and texture. 7g in a 100ml gaiwan (same as the previously reviewed Douji Nannuo) should offer up enough mouth feel, even if the flavor is lacking.

The tea tasted biscuity, like sheng pu'er tinged with some first flush Darjeeling, but only one or two leaves showed any visible reddening. The flavors are all "middle notes": no bright florals or heavy meaty/mushroom flavors, just middle cut-stem and ashen flavors.



The leaves completely unfurled look beautiful with their thick veins chunky stems:



No conclusion, as I have come to none myself.

Douji 2011 Nannuo

I have finally (finally!) made the transition to full-time living in Georgia. Now, if I could only find some others to join us for tea...

They could have enjoyed the 2011 Douji Nannuo, a pretty decent example of the region. By decent I mean: a well processed, tenacious example exhibiting the flavors of Nannuo Mountain with patriotic fervor.

Leaf from Nannuo is a smaller family member of the "big leaf" (dà yè 大叶) varietal, as shown above. Though small when dry, they expand to an appreciably larger size than plantation teas.

While I cannot say that fresh Nannuo tastes more delicious than aged Nannuo, not having had much of the latter, fresh Nannuo does have some traits I love: a distinctive herbal flavor, like sweet tarragon and anise, a fertile scent, and an easily controlled bitterness that lends the tea much flexibility in brewing.

This particular example's bitterness returns as a sweetness at the back of the mouth, and it even displayed some cool camphor on the lips in the later infusions. It outlasted a full kettle of water, becoming more savory with each infusion. It is very easy to like.

It lacks thick texture, unfortunately, and though it lasts many infusions, later infusions are, to borrow from hobbes, "namby-pamby." But such is the flaw with single-mountain and single-estate teas: strongly idiosyncratic performance that highlights the region's best and worst traits.

As a value question, I would only recommend this tea to someone seeking old tree Nannuo specifically, and I might not recommend more than a cake or two at the price. Douji's pricing always carries some brand inflation.

Though, it is selling on China Cha Dao for cheaper than you could get it in China at the moment. My thanks to them for the sample.