Still Drinking Tea

It's been a while. Here's a picture of some pretty Bairuixiang yancha leaves, a sample from an LA tea friend.

2008? Ban Tian Yao (半天腰) Wuyi Oolong

Like so many teas randomly found in small bags in the various boxes where I store samples, I cannot remember where this one came from, exactly. I can say with some certainty it came during a large yancha order as an extra sample, hence why I place the production year around 2008.



Just opening the bag, the tea offers a smell of roast and raisins. And upon tasting it, I felt glad that I had waited so long; whoever made this tea did a heavy high fire roast. I imagine the roast flavor even stronger two years ago.

The first two infusions offer strong flowery notes with equally strong--too strong--roast, making the florals turn toward bitter/charred flavors. Subsequently, the tea has a combination of roast and flower flavors that remind me of very "bright" coffee.

The energy of the tea and the texture are both good. It has a soupy, brothy thickness to it, something thicker than water but thinner than milk.




Eventually, the roast calms to an enjoyable level and becomes part of a complex group of flavors: grain, floral, raisin, whiskey. But this lasts for only three or four infusions before it becomes bitter and thin.

I have enough of this left to try it once or twice more, and I hope airing out the tea will alleviate some of the less desirable traits. Also, some extra brewing practice would probably help, too. I still feel my gongfu skills are rusty after brewing no gongfu teas during my last two weeks in California.

China Cha Dao Da Hong Pao AAA+

The last of the China Cha Dao sample pack!

Da Hong Pao is the berobed king of Wuyi tea. Its origin legend says a tea farmer saved the emperor of China from a deadly illness with the leaves of this tea, and the emperor showed his thanks by giving unto the tree his robe, hence the name of the tea, translatable into "great red robe" (or "big red robe" by those with less poetry in their translation--"Grand Scarlet Cloak" for those with too much poetry in their translation).

Other origin stories say that the only real Da Hong Pao tea comes from the varietal Bei Dou Yi Hao ("Big Dipper #1" or more poetically, "North Star #1"), "discovered" by a Da Hong Pao researcher named Yao Yue Ming, who spent much of his life trying to determine the origin of the original Da Hong Pao bush. He narrowed his search down to a few locations on Wuyi Mountain, including Bei Dou Peak, took cuttings from two bushes there which he named #1 and #2 after the location. More on his story as summarized by Guang of Hou De Asian Art here. Legends heaped upon legends, two stories of men saving the dying: one man the emperor via tea, the other man the very same tea bushes via his courage.

Excellent tea legendry aside, what Chinese tea wholesalers and retailers then do shows less magnificence and self-sacrifice. Much tea is passed off as Da Hong Pao that simply isn't. Some of it is crap; naming Da Hong Pao one of China's ten famous teas means it's often the only Wuyi oolong variety most Chinese can name, and much low grade oolong is made under the moniker of Da Hong Pao to supply the high demand for the tea.

Others passed as Da Hong Pao are blends, aspirations by the producer or vendor to balance the best aspects of their best teas, hoping for a gestalt. Yet others simply take their best Wuyi oolong and entitle it Da Hong Pao, as to say, "it doesn't get any better than this, folks!"

Yet other vendors, perhaps catering to a more elite or snobby tea clientele, tell customers that Da Hong Pao is just Bei Dou, quickly relate the story of Yao Yue Ming and explain that for this reason they sell Bei Dou and not Da Hong Pao.

And whichever vendor you ask will point to their tea being the "true" thing: all DHP is really blended, all DHP is really bei dou, all DHP is just the best Wuyi on offer.

For those of you familiar with these stories, what's your take?



So, onto my thoughts on China Cha Dao's higher grade DHP (for thoughts on their lower grade DHP, click here).

Fragrant leaves in the bag have a dark dried fruit smell, which turns into a wheaty/grainy roasted smell when the leaves are rinsed.

I was struck by the very smooth mouthfeel and the oil visible floating like a slick on the top of my cup. The roast and grain/fruit flavors harmonized well. It became sweeter in the second infusion but backed off thereafter, combining fruit with a mild sourness to taste like stone fruit, like apricot. A mineral/rocky taste supports these other flavors.

As far as the body traits of the tea, its thick body oddly left with only a medium-long finish. In fact, I would say has a "medium" sense about it: medium-dark flavors, medium acidity, medium-light fragrance, medium-length aftertaste. Very well balanced, and it really shined in longer infusions, never becoming bitter despite using the entire 10.4g sample in my 100ml gaiwan. Its only flaw is a lack of gan, perhaps caused by its lack of bitterness.



Although rather "medium" in strength, it lasts many infusions without weakening, becoming fruitier in later infusions.

A stellar trait of this tea is how it made me feel. It was the only sample with a noticeable qi, and it was a very strong one. It made me tea-tipsy and was a good complement to my newest music download, an oddball percussion album by Slagwerk Den Haag that's 55 minutes of guys hammering on two-by-fours cut to give different pitches, their staccato hammering creating secondary melodies in the overtones. Trippy stuff for a trippy tea.


Given the look of the wet leaves, which show two distinct colors of leaf, I guess this is a DHP of the blended genre. Also supporting that guess is the balance of the tea, which struck me as an achievement of blending rather than processing.

Da Hong Pao AAA+ costs the same as the Golden Key, which is at the high end of China Cha Dao's Wuyi range.

To recap the sampler, I'd rank them:

1. Shi Ru AAA+, Da Hong Pao AAA+ (tie)
2. Shui Xian AAA+
3. Qi Lan A
4. Golden Key AAA+
5. Da Hong Pao

Thank you again to Jerry Ma of China Cha Dao for offering this sampler pack.

China Cha Dao Golden Key Grade AAA+

Continuing on with the oolong samples from China Cha Dao, I decided to bring the remaining two along to tea with the LA Tea Affair group this past weekend. While tasting teas and writing notes and forming my own opinion forms the basis of this blog, writing about tea in a vacuum does eventually feel unnatural. Tea at its best is group sharing of simultaneous individual experiences of a tea among friends and friends-to-be.
We only tried one, the Golden Key Grade AAA+. The entire 10g sample was brewed in a 110ml yixing pot, making for an altogether different experience from my 90-100ml gaiwan at home.



Like the Shi Ru, the Golden Key is rather heavily oxidized and, likewise, reminded me of dancong in flavor and aroma: fruity, floral. Also similar to the Shi Ru, the Golden Key finished more like a wuyi oolong, roasty and masculine. Unlike the Shi Ru, the Golden Key began sour.

It was thinner and everyone commented that it was missing something, and I think this item missing was gan. The bitterness of the tea faded away without a returning sweetness, leaving only an astringent fruitiness behind. This struck some as having a "commercial grade" feel to it, tasting good but lacking some of the body characteristics that take good Wuyi oolongs beyond good and into great.



The Golden Key also gave out sooner than the other teas, giving maybe 4 good infusions before becoming watery.

One sample left, Da Hong Pao, the king of Wuyi teas, and an AAA+ no less! Great expectations...

China Cha Dao Shi Ru "AAA+"

The remaining three samples from China Cha Dao carry the grade "AAA+", including this Shi Ru ("rock milk"? Some have suggested "stalactite", but that's rushi (乳石) not shiru (石乳)). These kinds of grades, I'm finding, have either or both of the following psychological effects: it biases the drinker to think the tea is better or it really raises expectations. Will I be biased that this tea will meet my raised expectations?
The tea smells like passionfruit with vegetal green oolong smell and some roasted aroma, very balanced. The taste likewise sits in balance: fruitiness, vegetal, a little roast, ending oily and fragrant in the mouth. Over the infusions, the fruitiness and vegetal flavors take center stage, and the roast stands in the background. It reminds me of what good mainland China Tie Guan Yin used to taste like before it went "nuclear green": halfway between wuyi's thick roasted savory flavors and dancong's thinner fruitiness.


Unlike the other rock teas in the sampler, the Shi Ru has no sourness.

It tastes very well oxidized, and as the brews went on and on, I wondered if this is not a yancha at all, but instead a well roasted dancong! But then, it finishes mineral and thick like a wuyi, and the steaming leavees smell more like wuyi than dancong.


11g in 100ml held up very well to gongfu brewing: the tea lasted upwards of 16 infusions with punchy, very sweet flavor, a difficult task for most oolongs.

So far, this is the best of the bunch, more fragrant and interesting than the Shui Xian at slighly higher a price. I enjoyed being reminded of what Tie Guan Yin was like before contemporary Chinese tastes and modernized production gutted its flavor, but people who like the heavier roasted, savory flavors of wuyi might find this too oxidized/fruity and not roasted enough for their tastes.

China Cha Dao Da Hong Pao

The least expensive of the teas from the China Cha Dao sample pack at $23/500g and the only one without a listed grade, the leaves of the gradeless Da Hong Pao are broken/short and dark. It smells very heavily roasted, even when dry.

I used all 11g in my gaiwan, again "Brazil nutting" to put the bigger leaves on top.



To my delight, the brewed tea only a little sour, and although heavily roasted, the roasted flavor never crosses into the "tastes like charcoal" territory. While some interesting floral notes appear in the taste in the 3rd and 4th infusions, and the aftertaste is decent, the tea is monotone.

Eventually, in later steepings the "cheap restaurant oolong" flavor emerges, a sort of "unnatural" sweetness: not artificial, but out of place. It's not strong enough to be awful, but it distracts from the nicer flavors when brewed too quickly. To its credit, although it needs real pushing after the 5th infusion, it does hold up to many long infusions.



At the price, one could buy much worse, for certain. At an "everyday tea" price, it's an everyday tea. After brewing it gongfu, I wonder if using less leaf and longer steeps would be a better way to brew this particular tea.

China Cha Dao Qi Lan Grade A

"Qi Lan" means "Strange Orchid" and at grade "A" this yancha stands a good grade (and a half?) below the Shui Xian. A link to the tea is here.

The sample measured just over 10 grams, and I used all of it, tapping the gaiwan to use the "Brazil nut effect" to my advantage to sort the broken bits to the bottom of the gaiwan, where they would be the least agitated from pouring and decanting.

The dark dried-seaweed green of the leaves often indicates, in my somewhat limited experience with yancha, a higher oxidation combined with a middle-high to middling roast, my guess on appearances alone being the former. I enjoy higher oxidation Chinese oolongs and also often prefer a middle to middle-high roast, so despite the shorter and more broken leaves that have little aroma when dry, I am looking forward to this tea.

My expectations drop, however, when the leaves have little aroma even when wet, and very little aroma evaporates from the lid. The taste is tart and the texture thin. I want to disregard this first brew as a mere rinse, but I rinse my nose with a neti pot to rule out my sense of smell as the problem.

The second infusion was still tart, but offered a grainy flavor and some gan, a term best explained as "the return of sweetness to the back of the tongue and throat after swallowing something." The only Western food I can think of that has gan is coffee, particularly espresso, but an accustomed mouth can find it in foods like grapefruit and rapini. It's also obviously present in bitter liqueurs like Campari.



By the third infusion, the sourness has calmed down some, the texture has thickened some, and the aftertaste lengthens some. It is floral in the middle infusions (orchid!), tasting strongly floral of jasmine when cooler. The next infusion balances these tastes with the roast and finishes fruity, confirming my suspicions about the oxidation.



The remaining infusions, which brought the total infusions of this tea to only 7, were thin and mostly fruity, leaving me the impression that the tea was well oxidized but not well roasted, or too weak in leaf structure to stand up to the roasting process. The oxidation is visible in the purpling apparent on many of the wet leaves in the picure above.

I think this tea might improve some with resting, but I was unimpressed sufficiently to not want to find out.

The remaining teas from the sample pack are mostly all higher grades, so I am hoping they are more like the Shui Xian and less like this Qi Lan.

China Cha Dao Shui Xian Grade AA+

Jerry of China Cha Dao offered a free Wuyi oolong sample pack on Steepster recently, and always on the lookout for good yancha, I joined in.

I decided to start with the most generic and widely available varietal of this tea, Shui Xian. Shui Xian is highly variable in quality and characteristics, a trait it shares with its more illustrious brother Da Hong Pao. A suspicion bites at me whenever I see Shui Xian and Da Hong Pao that a particular store takes its least interesting yancha of any varietal and renames it Shui Xian, and takes its best tasting and thickest yancha of any varietal and names it Da Hong Pao. But I digress.

Jerry's Shui Xian carries the grade "AA+" which I interpret to mean "not just your average Shui Xian". I brewed it "gongfu style" using the entire 11g sample in my 100ml-but-functionally-90ml gaiwan and did very quick infusions to start.

The leaves above are long but not uniformly colored, meaning the tea is likely a blend of two roasts or oxidations--or more. I let them rest after their long journey from China, and they became more fragrant as they came to adore the dry, mild California climate, like any good tourist.



The brew has mild fruit flavor and a punchy sourness in the first brew. The sourness becomes less prominent from the second infusion onward, which offers cinnamon notes and has a longer aftertaste. Throughout most infusions, the tea tastes a bit bitter on the front tongue. Third infusion tastes more balanced--less roast, more florals, with an even longer aftertaste that is really pleasant.

The Shui Xian offers a smooth mouthfeel and a slightly cooling sensation after I swallow. There is a sweet smell under the lid of my gaiwan; in fact, the aroma is more interesting under my gaiwan than the taste of the tea. This average complexity puzzles me, because clearly something (grain? candy? malt?) wants to be in the cup, and perhaps my brewing is to blame.

It lasted a good 10 infusions.

One nice feature about roasted oolongs is that they improve with 6 months or more of resting after the roast, and if this tea is from this year, that means its roasty aromas and flavors of this 2011 tea may calm into something even nicer by the middle of fall, which is perfect weather for roasted teas.

$51/500g is a good price for a Shui Xian I would call an A+ tea. I think AA+ sounds over-the-top, but I suppose not knowing how these are rated means I should respect their hyperbole in classification.