2010 Dayi 7452

You read that right, 7452, not 7542. Reverse the 5 and 4 of 7542 and you get a shu pu'er instead of a sheng pu'er. Funny how that works!

7452 is probably my favorite standard Dayi shu cake, which means it's probably my favorite shu cake of all time. Some years are better than others, and in some years 7562 sometimes beats 7452 for "shu of the year" in the Bearsblog "Teas of the Year" Awards.

I haven't tried this year's 7562 yet, but 7452 clearly wants badly to hold onto its title. It displays some of its best traits this year: richness, smoothness, clean earthiness, mineral/"rocky" flavors, thirst-quenching throat "feel", tenacious brewing, and an aftertaste that lingers in the mouth for an hour or more after drinking.

My two complaints with this year's 7452 is a lack of complexity, maybe highlighted by having drunk the Nan Jian Tulin brick too near in time. Second, 7452 has little aroma this year, but this could be my sense of smell (?).

Nan Jian 2009 Tulin Organic Ripe Brick

I rarely stray from my Menghai/Dayi, Xiaguan, and Haiwan factory shu. More truthfully, I feel even those latter two can taste significantly less smooth and interesting than my classic standby Dayi-brand shu.

But after drinking only Menghai/Dayi shu for the past year--and only Menghai lao cha tou for the past 4 months--gourmet wanderlust overcame me when it came time to order more cooked pu'er, and I included two non-Dayi offerings in my lineup.

This post deals with one such purchase, the 2009 Nan Jian Factory, Tulin brand "certified organic" cooked brick. Known mostly as an "also-ran" factory, Nan Jian was at one point a conglomeration of three brands via the partnership of three individuals: Zhai Zi Po, Nan Jian Feng Huang, and Tulin. Something brought Zhai Zi Po out of this partnership, and currently Nan Jian only produces tea under the Feng Huang (phoenix) and Tulin (local forest...?) brands.

The brick is moderately compressed and, as shown above, covered with pretty face leaves that look like grade 1-2 material. One look at the side of the brick, however, shows that underneath the veneer lay less illustrious leafage, and a view underneath the face layer confirms the suspicion.

It also appears to be a darker fermentation, but this too is a trick of blending, though maybe not a purposeful deception, considering that lighter fermented shu pu'er is "of the now" in China...but more on this in the tasting notes.

First sip screams, "Coffee! Or an approximant!" The tea has a roasted quality, almost like instant coffee without the bitterness, insomuch as instant coffee has none of the acidity of fresh brewed coffee. Oddly described (I apologize), but the flavor strikes me as pleasant. Maybe they oven-dried this brick?

The texture is creamy, oily, soft. Stems and big leaves show their presence in the aftertaste, and while tasting I guessed they comprise 30-50% of blend. It dawned on me that this tea is not earthy, and instead the flavors variate "woody": stem in the flavor, sawdust in the aroma. Mulchy is as close to earthy as it gets. A fermented aroma appears in later infusions, not the fishiness of bad shu, but something piquant (read: pickle-y, umami...?).

You can see above that the tea is a blend of heavier fermented stems and leaves, with less fermented small to large leaves in the mix, too.

When it weakened after some 9 good infusions, only the stem flavor and sawdust aroma remained. So, I moved the leaves from the gaiwan to my pitcher, added some tea flowers, and prayed this concoction would counteract any caffeine in the tea.

Verdict: there's a good amount of complexity in this tea, but it tastes very little like the Menghai Factory teas I enjoy, which is appropriate considering the tea is from a region typically unused by Menghai Factory, Lincang. I don't remember much about shu pu'ers I've drunk from Lincang, so this this brick has provided an altogether different experience, thankfully a pleasant one!

2010 Autumn Yong De Cha Hua "Tea Flowers"

I haven't had much opportunity to buy tea lately. I bought perhaps three dozen samples of young sheng pu'er some time back hoping to drink through them, find good aging candidates (at least, by my standards), and buy in bulk.

While I found a few winners, I found myself without money to buy them before they became too expensive to merit bulk purchase. And now, I have three dozen half samples to add to my jar of "shake".

But, I have been regularly drinking through shu pu'er. Having drunk through 90% of my last two bricks of shu cha tou--those little nuggets left over at the bottom of the pu'er compost heap--I ached for variety. And variety I bought:

7452 and 7562, two of my favorite Menghai recipes. Lancang (Simao) 0081 and Tulin (Lincang "border tea") were recommendations of Scott of Yunnan Sourcing. Normally I don't venture far from Menghai, but one risks becoming too boring when consuming only one brand. Drinking only Menghai is the pu'er equivalent of wearing only Giorgio Armani: it's classic, always well made, but after a while your friends think you predictable and maybe a tad snooty.

More on those teas later--much later if my recent posting frequency is any indication.

This post actually treats with a tisane I have come to adore: tea flowers. No, not the little balls of green tea with globe amaranth, notoginseng, and strands of jasmine flowers tied into ornate shapes by the tortured hands and strained eyes of Chinese girls: these reproductive organs of the tea camellia require no more than picking and drying to blossom into a beautiful product.

In my conversations with Scott online, I requested he find me some fresh tea flowers. I drink these pearl colored gems at night because they have insignificant caffeine content--if any--and help me sleep. After running out of some 2006 vintage, I had to dig deeper into some 2003 vintage, and although they still did the job, their taste had morphed into something like "tastes the way dry sycamore leaves smell", and not in the good "earthy pu'er" way.

Scott replied that he had found some 2010 autumn flowers from Yong De county in Lincang prefecture.

You can't tell from the photo above, but these flowers are so fresh, they yet hold enough moisture to bend when touched. Their color is another fine indicator: compare to this less fresh, golden brown-yellow bud of a previous post.

They taste most like honey (appropriately for a source of honey!) with a bit of orange zest. Light, crisp, subtle, never going bitter and delightfully free of mouth-drying tannin.

And here I sit, drunk on tea flowers, half sleepy, wondering how I'll stay awake until my proper bedtime.

Sue's 1950s Liu Bao

A love of fine tea connects people across the globe. I recently met a friend online--Sue, from Malaysia--who sent me a munificent collection of tea samples. Primary amongst them was an aged liu bao purportedly from the 1950s or earlier.

I say munificent, because here in the USA, there are no vendors reliably selling liu bao tea, much less very old liu bao. Even in China, it suffers the rarity of teas popular only amongst a few. A ragtag "true black tea" (hei cha) from Guangxi province, few Chinese tea vendors I met had any experience with the tea. Many commented dismissively: "it's medicine for constipation" "it's difficult to drink" "shu pu'er is better".

Like most hei cha, liu bao yields earthy, old hay and mushroom flavors, but the best aged green liu bao stands apart from its brethren: earthier than qian liang cha, more delicate than aged sheng pu'er, sweeter than liu an, and cleaner than shu pu'er. It becomes more earthy over time but, if stored well, maintains a fresh, light flavor without becoming sharp.

My apologies to poor Sue, who has been waiting for months for me to drink this tea. When receiving such aged tea, I believe that drinking it with others is the best way to "pay it forward". So, after much delay, six of us gathered to share some good tea, and Sue's sample was enjoyed along with a 1980s traditional characters cake, a 2003 Xiaguan "blue mark" remake, a 1997/8 bulang, and a competition tasting of the 2010 offerings from Essence of Tea.

Sue's tea set a good example for liu bao. Earth and hay in the flavor, mushroom in the nose after two rinses. The tea made all of us gathered extroverted and gregarious, and the best infusion, as Sue predicted, was the 4th after the rinses. Like most liu bao, the flavors dropped after the 6th infusion. We compensated with longer steeps and were rewarded with sweeter, if weaker, flavors.

Our gratitude to Sue for the experience!

1997 Menghai 8582

In the mood to drink tea tonight, and not in the mood to stay up late, I pulled out an acquisition bought via Will of teadrunk.org, a 1997 8582 he purchased on my behalf during his recent trip to Asia (thanks, Will!).



Upon inspecting the tong of tea Will bought, we quickly discovered the tea housed some insects. Evident in the photos below, but also by a couple of live ones found crawling around the packaging, and even a little critter in one of the cakes. Pictures of bug damage are below.

From upper left to lower left: wonky compression (my guess is, wonky decompression from stuff crawling around and/or wet storage), bug holes in wrapper, bug egg (?) casing on leaf, bug holes in nei piao. (click for larger pics)




Evident in the photos far above, the cakes face and back show the clear evidence of Menghai blending: tiny buds on front, big chunky leaves on the back. Da huang pian (big yellow leaves) and the occasional twig show the blender wanted to round out the tea. Forget your two-leaves-and-a-bud, sans-yellow-leaves, twigless, single-mountain fancy productions of today: this relic of the 1990s looks to have a bit of everything.

As far as the taste: the tea tastes younger and less wet than it looks. 13 years later, there's still a hefty amount of bitterness that ends in a classic hui gan. The woodiness of age appears early, sweet and aromatic, but not yet dark enough to have become earthiness. It gradually fades to a sharper floral note, which combines with the woodiness into a cedar flavor that reminds me of adolescent banzhang/bulang teas.

The tea makes me hot; perhaps the materials, perhaps the bug droppings, but something has made my hands into fleshy radiators and my brow perspire.



12+ infusions in, this 8582 continues to yield potent infusions. The tea is good, but needs more time.

More interesting photos: a dry huang pian leaf in the middle of this pic shows signs of being eaten; a wet leaf in the pot shows the telltale hole of feeding larvae.