April 2013 Southeast Tea Affair

Now finally back in the swing of my addiction habit hobby, I decided to risk a caffeine binge and hosted a meeting of our local Southeast tea group.

Unfortunately, a Facebook event snafu created a duplicate posting that made one member get the day wrong. So, there were only three of us.

We drank an unreroasted 1980s baozhong that reminded me why I don't seek out aged baozhong. I have drunk a few good ones, but the other two dozen or so have been like this one, rather bland and single character. Still, with no off flavors and good storage, it could have been worse.

We moved onto a more recent dong ding from Houde, that bryandrinkstea bought the last of, and we could see why. It was punchy, delicious, and didn't want to quit. Beautiful strong leaves with great structure.

We had a 1999 Dayi brand tuo sample given to me by a tea friend who travels regularly to Xishuangbanna. It was dry stored—authentic dry stored, not American dry stored—and quite well on its way. I was sad I waited so many years to finally try the sample.

Then we dug into some liubao, a 1990s liubao I bought in Guangzhou's fangcun market in 2006. The shopkeeper had it in a large tin that said "aged pu'er" on it; one of the older vendor tricks still alive and well! The tea still bit back, but it's definitely mellower than when I first bought it.

We ended with an early 1990s 7542, also authentic dry storage, that still needs a lot of time.

All in all, very good session.

If you're in the Southeast US and would like to join us sometime, leave a comment with your email address and I'll add you to our Facebook group!

Two Teas from Tearoma: 1996 YCTT Ye Sheng Brick & "1999" 8582

Will of Teadrunk.org gave me two samples he ordered from the new vendor Tearoma.us: a 1996 "Wild" leaf tea brick and a 1999 8582. Oddly enough, I decided to brew the former Sunday morning, just before the LA Tea Affair group was scheduled to meet, and one of our number had a full cake of the 1999 8582 that he had purchased from Tearoma.

1996 YCTT Wild Tea Brick
This was the tea that appealed most to me when I browsed Tearoma's site. Appearing visibly aged and at an unbeatable price for its age, it seemed almost too good to be true.


The dry tea confirmed it had some age with a hit of the "mold smell" concomitant of 15 years of aging in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and this stinkiness was echoed in wafting steam from the brewed leaf.

This storage smell became a storage taste, the telltale "mold taste" ("mei wei"), along with the straw underpinnings of the "wild" variety leaf. It tasted salty at times, with some youth to the taste in a bitter herb/fennel note. The flavors were fleeting on the tongue, the feeling of the tea remaining on the tongue moreso and longer than the flavor.


The storage taste did not wash away with subsequent brewings; perhaps it will air out over time. This made for a "one note" experience. Not a bad tea, but not a great tea, worth about what they're charging. Perhaps it was just aged poorly or needs more time to air out. Wild leaf is darker to start with and given how wet the tea smells, I still expected darker brewed leaf. The emerald/purple leaves are common for the "wild" varietal.



"1999" 8582
Hobbes of The Half-Dipper already reviewed this tea, and rather than expand upon his review with my own writings, I'll simply leave it with "he's right" and some photos.

One thing I will add is that the "butteriness" he detected I also detected, and it's a marker I associate with "green tea pu'er". There is some green tea/poorly processed sheng pu'er in this blend; the real pu'er flavor kicked in after infusion 4 with longer steeps.

Please note the following signs as to the tea not being from 1999: the stainless, bright white neifei; the 100% fresh, bright, unfrayed ribbon; the neifei being added on later, as though the tea was pressed and marketed with different nei fei for different buyers; the bright green of the leaves; the bright yellow of the liquor. I've had 2003 teas from dry Kunming that look more aged.

Pu'er Competition Tasting - Three 1999 Menghai Factory Qing Bing

This past Sunday, Will of the Teadrunk Forum, Roy, Davin and I met up to taste a lot of sheng pu'er while drinking as little of it as possible. After doing a a blind competition tasting of eight young sheng bing, we moved onto these three 1999 Menghai factory teas:

Sample A:


Sample B:


Sample C:


The setup was three competition tasting sets. They were preheated with boiling water and decanted in the succession they were filled. We used 3g of tea brewed for 5 minutes. We attempted to create roughly equal samples in terms of the proportion of chunks to loose leaves.



This is the result, from top to bottom the teas are A, B, and C.

Sample A
We all remarked that A's darker color probably meant it underwent the most humid storage. Unsurprisingly, it gave off some mold smell on the tasting spoon. However, it did not taste as wet stored as it smelled until it cooled significantly, which was nice. Will and I instantly felt a rush of energy on our first sip, but otherwise the tea didn't offer much. Its flavors were relatively flat.

Sample B
Sample B tasted dry stored and young. Despite its age, the flavor had developed some fruit and just a bit of wood. It easily tasted the most complex of the three and had a good aftertaste. The dry storage made Will remark that of the three, this was his favorite.

Sample C
I liked Sample C best. It underwent slightly more humid storage than B and showed more development of wood and earth notes, but still complex enough in young ways (straw, a little smoke, bitterness on the tongue root).



Here are their brewed leaves. It might appear the white balance is off between photos, but it's a trick of the eye. Sample A's leaves are darker, B's the lightest, and C's brown.

A:


B:


C:


Unfortunately for me, tea C is the most expensive, over $400. Teas A & B are roughly equivalent in price, around $150-$180.

The teas are:

A: 1999 Menghai 7542, Sampan Tea
B: 1999 Menghai Big Green Tree, Sampan Tea
C: 1999 Menghai Big Green Tree "Dark Blue Piao", Hou De Asian Art

An Experiment with Pu'er Flowers, 1999 Menghai Mini Bing (Silk Road Tea)

My guest reviewer from before, Davin, purchased some "Fleur de Pu Er" from Le Palais Gourmet. The same day, I received a package of tea I purchased from a friend who wanted to unload some of his surplus. He generously included a few freebies, amongst which was the 1999 Mini Menghai Bing from Silk Road Teas.

We decided to do a two-part experiment out of curiosity. Because some vendors have claimed that including tea flowers in pu'er cakes was "traditional" or the "indigenous" way of making tea (oddly enough, tea plants flower in fall, and pu'er is supposedly traditionally made in spring...hrm...), we decided to brew, side by side, the 1999 cake with and without tea flowers, to see how it fared.

Before the meat of the post, I'd like to mention that I have seen only one cake include tea flowers, the 2004 Rongzhen Factory cake formerly offered at Hou De, currently on offer at Puerhshop. I have never tasted nor seen any aged tea from the 1920s or after that included flowers. In fact, the only tea I've seen that does is the 2004 Rongzhen cake. I can't trace the documentation, because almost nobody seems to be selling these flowers currently (only Rishi Tea and Palais Gourmet, the latter may have sourced from the former, and neither gives information). If anyone has any source information on the history of the use of tea flowers in China, please contact me.

Another bit of information: according to a 2002 study at the Institute of Biochemistry at National Taiwan University, tea flowers have nearly the same antioxidant levels, but far less caffeine, than actual tea leaves. If you want the benefit of drinking tea but are caffeine sensitive or want to avoid caffeine, these might be for you.

We used competition tasting sets and identical weights of tea, 7 grams of the cake. In the tea flower mix, we used 1.5 grams of tea flowers, about 8 blossoms.

Parameters: 7g leaf, 7g leaf + 1.5g flowers, 120ml tasting sets, boiling remineralized RO water with bamboo charcoal. timing: 5s rinse. 10s, 10s, 15s, 10s, 10s



A couple of things stood out to me. First, the 1999 cake--looking far younger than 8-9 years old--had some aged taste to it. Second, the aroma of the leaves, without flowers, resembled bbq sauce: sweet, spicy, smokey. With the flowers, though, the aroma was floral, orchid, honey, and masked the smoke. Initially, the leaves-only mix tasted flat, and the leaves with flowers tasted rounder, softer, finished longer, and had a thick, syrupy texture.


Without flowers on left, with flowers on right

But which tea we preferred alternated from brew to brew. Some brews, the leaves-only brew offered aged flavor that hit the gullet the whole way down. Other times, the roundness and soft texture of the flowered pu'er softened bitterness and awkward adolescent flavors found in the leaves-only mix. Both, at times, were very astringent and drying, and both sometimes had none. In the fourth infusion, the difference in flavor and aroma was so subtle we couldn't distinguish one from the other. The fifth infusion then reversed this, and they were very distinct: the flowered version stayed on the palate much, much longer.


Without flowers


With flowers

Ask me which I'd prefer to drink, and I don't think I could say. Davin says the tea was more interesting with flowers, but not necessarily more enjoyable. I agree: the age of this tea gives it some strange pubescent flavors, so it was a weird comparison. Even without the flowers, this mini bing needs more time; it's not wonderful to drink, yet. With its interesting mouthfeel and relative power after 9 years of very dry storage, I think it has some promise.

As mentioned, we intend to experiment again. Next time we intend to test if the flowers, which overall lend a very muted flavor and subtle aroma, blend well with shu pu'er.