Visiting California Part 2: Tea with LATA

Way back when, a few of us tea enthusiasts in the greater Los Angeles region met regularly to drink tea together. Most of the original crew have moved or moved on, but some of us have stayed in touch. 

During my recent trip to California, I had a chance to meet up and drink tea with some of them.

We drank a handful of teas, including some well aged liu bao sent from Su, our friend in Malaysia who has been drinking and collecting tea for many years (Su, the pic is a shallow amount of a very late infusion, so don't think we messed it up! It was good).

We also drank xiao huang yin (little yellow label), a tea now upwards of 40 years old. I thought to myself, "Bears, we are aging, too: I remember when this tea was in its early thirties!" Another measure of time passing, I updated my New to Pu'er? post, and realized how many years went by since I last tasted fresh raw pu'er productions. Pu'er and other teas I've aged now bring me nostalgic pleasure in part because they have aged with me. Remembering when I bought this or that tea in China, who I was with, where our lives have taken us thereafter: some teas have become a consumable part of my past, a medicine for remembering to remember.

Sentiments and tea philosophy aside, the visit reinvigorated my passion for tea, which I rue to admit had smoldered. Our drinking gave me fresh inspiration to write this blog again.

Thank you for reading. Expect new content at least somewhat regularly. I will be reviewing a book and maybe a website or two, and I'll update on how some of my teas have aged, including my own production.

7581 from Su

This was a Chinese New Year gift from our favorite munificent Malaysian, Su. It's a 7581, a brick whose recipe is normally shu pu'er of a lighter fermentation, but this incarnation is sheng. In the picture above, you can clearly see all sheng leaves in the brick: the leaves are greenish-purple, but more importantly, each sits individually with well defined edges. Shu pu'er tends to have reddish brown leaves with more golden colored tips, and in shu pu'er the edge where one leaf ends and another begins is blurred. 

I don't recall what year it's supposed to be from or how it was stored or with whom it was stored for most of its life, but at first waft of the rinsed leaves, a few things become apparent: this tea had dry storage, almost too dry for my tastes, and the leaves are probably not from Xishuangbanna. The fragrance smells very strongly of hay, not at all floral, and more savory than sweet. The first taste has me guessing the leaves come largely from Dehong, and perhaps the purple on the dry leaf indicates a local, nonstandard daye varietal. Flavor-wise, it shares features with Pingxiwangfu brick Su sent me previously, but with more unpleasant bitterness.

The leaves quickly shed their dark colors and turn brighter shades of olive green during brewing, and this, along with the orange brew, makes me think it's been rather dry stored.

It hits me in the stomach, and I wish I'd eaten something before drinking it. 

It offers little aftertaste, which is mostly metallic and herbal. The liquor feels very soft, but  this could be my water. The brew tastes best when piping hot and in later infusions, when it becomes a little sweeter.

This 7581 is something I'd want to put away for another 10 years before revisiting!

2003 Changtai from Su

Su, being so awesome, mailed me two samples of tea to try from her stash in Malaysia: a 2003 Changtai factory sheng and a 2006 sheng brick by Pingxiwangfu. Today, we drink the 2003 Changtai.

The brown-gray-green leaves with leaves distinctly separate from one another show the tea aged in a drier environment. The dry leaves carry a strong, sweet fragrance.

Once rinsed, the steaming leaves smell like suede, then like raisins. The first infusion is biscuity and sweet: carob, Darjeeling, fresh cut wood. It lingers on the soft palate and the back of mouth with an evaporative effect. Tasty, but the liquor is a bit thin.

The bitter flavors in the next infusions reminds my guest of the smell of dried pine needles. The Darjeeling muscatel flavor continues, very pleasant, and with cacao chalkiness underneath. In terms of flavor and aroma, Changtai has done well by these initial infusions.

But then, something changes. The sweetness disappears, replaced by the kind of bile-tinged flavors so strongly associated with leaves from Lincang. For a few infusions, its musky and alkaline flavors show some Lincang leaves are in the mix, and they thankfully bring a stronger mouthfeel and aftertaste to the tea, softening eventually into savory, bready flavors and more chalky sweetness.

I enjoyed the tea for its flavor and aroma, although the Lincang elements surprised me. I wish it had a thicker body and more aftertaste early in the infusions, but these features improve in later infusions. The still-present bitterness implies that the tea has room to grow as it ages, I think.

The blend is a mix of many larger leaves and some broken smaller leaves, most leaves having thick veins and a healthy tensile strength. No bud sets in the blend raise a suspicion that none of the leaves were harvested by hand, or they were handled very roughly in transport and manufacture.

My gratitude, as always, to Su for providing me these little treats!

Wang's Sheng

This sheng sample came to me from BK a few years ago, maybe 2007 or 2008. The tea was sourced from a "Master" Wang Ming Yi who supposedly comes from the Himalayan part of Yunnan, which doesn't exist because the Himalayas stop well before they hit Yunnan. Maybe he's from the Gao Li Gong Mountains?

Zenandtea.com sells his teas and book, and what teas do list prices seem expensive for "three no" cakes (no wrapper, no ticket, no neifei). Apparently, Jessica Simpson tried his "total vitality" program, and so did the owner of Teance; both gave good reviews. The program involves hydration (good) and that old quack diet, the alkaline diet (pseudo-scientific nonsense).

However I may feel about his background, the tea will speak for itself. You can see in the photos above that the leaves are not stripe-rolled, an instant sign one or more of the following is true:

1. The tea is not from Xishuangbanna, Simao, or Lincang, where production is stripe rolled.
2. The tea is older leaf, which doesn't hold its shape in stripe rolling.
3. The tea is not Camellia sinensis.

The majority of teas I've seen in this style are from Dehong, which is where Gao Li Gong mountain is. However, there are some tea makers on that mountain who are using Camellia sinensis and stripe rolling. Other teas I've seen that have this effect are cakes of older leaf, like this one, but when this leaf is usually yellow green. The most common teas with this appearance are "yesheng" leaves from non-sinensis species of camellia, which share the dark emerald leaf color, like this one, but even they usually use more buds.

Huangpian sheng pu'er--raw pu'er made of older leaf--share some flavor traits with this tea: very mild flavor with an olive oil taste and soft, oily mouthfeel. There is little aftertaste, and the tea never tastes bitter, its tannins saved in the buds to deter insects from eating the tender new leaves.

But this tea was really, really mild, and here's why:



After 6 infusions, 5 of which were 60-90 seconds or more, the tea was not unfurling and separating into individual leaves. The flatness of the leaves and the high compression--evidenced by the iron press hobnails in the dry leaf picture above--created a brick of tea akin to plywood. The matrix of innumerable planes compressed together has resulted in a situation where the hot water cannot penetrate through, and only the leaves on the outside infuse well.

Try as I might to get a good steep, steeping this tea for 4+ minutes yielded an under-infused brew that tasted like weak black tea. Frustrated, I pried a layer off the tea and left the tea steep for 30 minutes, hoping to help along the unfurling. It didn't work.

The results are below. Two kettles of water and many long brews later, the leaves remain glued together.



My experience suggests to me that this tea used low grade (i.e. broken), old leaf from non-sinensis camellias and compressed them too much.

He appears to offer many other teas through the Zen and Tea website, and I hope the others are better. My recommendation, as with all teas one hasn't tried, is to purchase samples first.

Tea with New Friends

Tea with new friends or new friends with tea? New tea friends!

I recently had a chance to have Bryan_Drinks_Tea and Lerxst2112 visit. They live no small distance away, and in addition to making the significant effort to drive to me, they brought good tea and a fancy camera!

Enjoy Bryan's salacious tea photos below, which depict us drinking either a roasted Taiwanese gaoshan oolong (green clay teapot) or a mix of 60s-80s Guang Yun Gong pu'er (red clay teapot). We also drank a tenacious 80s 8582 that Bryan brought along, but he focused on brewing it instead of taking photos--to great success.

We ended the evening with a delicious dinner at a local Sichuan restaurant, where our guests were kind enough to try some of the stranger fare we offered them, alongside some "easier" menu items.

2009 Dayi "Dragon Pole" Shu Pu'er, courtesy of Shah8

The holidays for most Americans have finished, but for many Asian-Americans, they have yet to begin. Lunar New Year, aka Chinese New Year, aka Spring Festival (春节), aka Tet, aka Seollal (설날), begins on January 23 and lasts fifteen days.

The upcoming lunisolar year is a dragon year, specifically water dragon; Dayi's "Dragon Pole" shu, then, is the perfect way to add some water to a dragon and see what this new year might be about. Thanks to Shah8 for leaving a sample with me!



The photo above shows the gongting "tribute" grade leaf. These are very small, tippy buds whose small stature requires a skilled fermentation expert to create and whose potency requires my full attention to not overbrew.

The first few infusions are dark and syrupy thick--heavier fermentation shu. The flavors, though, combine earthiness with an almost roasted character, with flavors of carob and coffee.

Middle infusions, like the one below, have a very soft mouthfeel and more "chinese medicine" kind of notes.



Late infusions become woody and sweet, and it gave out rather quickly.

None of the infusions had much aftertaste to offer, but what flavors remained in the mouth were pleasant and light.

Supposedly Dayi's signature shu pu'er, it impressed me less than the An Xiang shu, but I can't say for sure it wasn't my own brewing inadequacy with leaf this small. Oh, if only I had a whole cake to practice with!



The 2009 version runs about US$21 on Taobao before proxy fees and shipping, $53.99 with shipping from Dragon Tea House (ebay seller based in China).

2007 Dayi "Secret Fragrance" Shu, Courtesy of Shah8

Everybody has secrets. Secrets are priceless to oneself, and when those entrusted with our secrets choose to sell them, the transaction comes at a high cost.

But when you make several wan (万, meaning 10,000) of cakes out of your secret and sell them, is it really still a secret?



暗香 (àn xiāng) means "subtle scent" or "hidden (as in obscured) fragrance". I don't know if "secret" is a good translation (care to opine, Marshaln?). "Dark fragrance" or "underhanded fragrance" are also possibilities, if unlikely ones.

Also, there was a Chinese movie by the same name in 2009. Perhaps drinking this tea while writing inspired the author to use this name?

Whatever the translation, the name clearly suggests that we take a good whiff of this tea and explore the scent, an act that can yield some unpleasant results when the object of our olfactory sense is shu pu'er, which can often smell like that pesky neighbor's clogged and funky drainage ditch.

The scent of this shu pu'er's wet leaves was pleasant, certainly. Mulchy and wet without smelling dirty, that "forest floor after the rain" euphemism that changes "smells like dirt" into a fond recollection of sierran enjoyment. It also carried a "secret/hidden/subtle/dark/underhanded fragrance" of cake.

The taste also carried this clean and balanced trait, woody, mulchy, and peppery. Velvety textured in the mouth, it made me salivate--a very "active" quality for a fermented tea to have. The only downsides were a thinness of texture and aftertaste, although the mineral, rocky aftertaste gave the tea an appreciably clean finish.

The fragrance, expectedly, changed little over infusions. The cake quality became a fruitiness as the tea thinned and tasted sweeter in later infusions.



Some of the fragrant qualities of the tea arise from the more lightly fermented large leaves, visible in the photo above.

I found it a very enjoyable tea, and thank you to Shah8 for sharing this sample with me. If you're interested, Dragon Tea House on ebay sells the cake for US$48 (free shipping), or you can find it on Taobao for less than a third of that price before shipping and proxy fees.

2002 Menghai Factory 7542-208

I used to think our friend Su kept her tea a little too dry for my taste. I felt that way until trying her 7542-208, supposedly a special production that contains higher quality (i.e., older tree) leaf.



The tea above neither looks nor smells traditionally stored, of course. Su doesn't run a wet storage facility. But it does look rather well aged for a 2002 tea, and the strong, sweet and woody aroma of the dry leaves foreshadows the deliciousness to come.

Bitterness appeared quickly, as did some smoke early on. Yet, the smoke and the aromatic woodiness of the tea reminded me of cedar planks, a trait I associate with Banzhang and some Pasha teas, a good sign that this might indeed have some older arbor leaves from those areas. It moved into more complexity, some "younger" floral notes floated above an almost leathery taste.



The aftertaste was thick and lasting, and the tea remained velvety soft in the mouth. Yesterday I drank this tea with a friend, and I used too much leaf, making some dryness appear early that later softened. The tea is potent enough that a little less leaf than normal might better highlight the complexity.

We drank probably 20 infusions of this tea before retiring for dinner, and it held up impressively.



As usual, many thanks to Su for providing a great experience. This was one of the best stored examples of early 2000s pu'er I've had the pleasure of tasting.

"Lipstick Red" Aged Sheng from Su

Su sent over a cake of a tea that she indicated Malaysians know as "lipstick red" for the color on the wrapper. Will Y. and I decided to share the cake and sawed it in half.

Upon opening the cake, I noticed it had the familiar compression of Shuangjiang Mengku tea factory productions: a compression that leaves an inner ring (visible immediately below) but keeps the edge of the cake thick (farther below).

I was delighted to think this could be an example of one of the factory's first productions before they broke off from the state-owned China Native & Natural Products (CNNP) firm. I have not had an example of this factory's tea from the years before their privatization, and so I felt some delight when noticing this.





Another way I know that the tea is not by Menghai Factory is the inclusion of these two fellows: an unthreshed piece of rice and a tea seed. Menghai Factory has, in my experience with their aged teas, not allowed such riffraff into their cakes.

Describing the tea in one word, I would say "fruity." The wet leaves smell like raisins in a box, which brought back the memory of my childhood when a small box of raisins was in my lunch bag seemingly every single day of elementary school. Moreover, the taste--aside from its Lincang-proving "rancid in a good way" sour notes--is of dried berries or raisins for many of the infusions. Davin even called the tea a "holiday pu'er"!

Somehow it lacks the earthiness I associate with older pu'er. None appears to be developing here. In fact, the tea doesn't taste of other typical aged pu'er flavors such as wood, mulch, etc. And yet, it tastes like pu'er in a dark grainy sweetness. Later it shows the remainder of its youth in greener flavors like fresh pruned bushes and bitterness.

The tea has an aftertaste of moderate length, and though the mouthfeel is thin, it travels all around the mouth. It lasted a full kettle of water without weakening too much, which I appreciated.

I'll be curious to hear from Su if my guess hit the mark. Nonetheless, I am thankful for the opportunity to try a tea that matched the fall season so well.

Experiments with blending

The recent teas I tried came from 10g (+/-) samples. Because I tested each using 7g in my gaiwan, I had about 2-4g of each left. I decided to review the results of the first brews to see which teas I thought might blend well.

Here they are again, in short:

1. Douji 2011 Nannuo
1. Good: aroma, flavor, bittersweetness (gan), camphor
2. Bad: thin texture, flavors could be stronger in later infusions
2. Douji 2011 Mengsong Mao Cha
1. Good: heavy in "middle flavors"
2. Bad: weak flavor and texture
3. Douji 2011 Red Da Dou (thrown out!)
1. Good: ??
2. Bad: green tea pu
4. Yangpin Hao 2011 (2010?) Jingmai
1. Good: mouthfeel, savory bass notes, interesting flavors, some cooling/camphor
2. Bad: gives out quickly, becomes unpleasant when it gives out, a bit sour at times
5. Dayi 2011 7542
1. Good: well rounded, potent, aftertaste lasts once it appears
2. Bad: smoky aroma, can brew sour, no initial aftertaste

I decided to make two blends, the first a 50/50 blend of 7542 and Douji Nannuo, and the second a 50/50 blend of the YPH Jingmai and Douji Mengsong. I didn't quite have enough of the Jingmai for the second blend, so I threw in about 0.5g of the 7542, of which I had too much.

Here's what I learned:

• Blending is not a straightforward science

Two teas with good traits mixed in equal portions does not make a tea that has all their traits equally highlighted. Some of the finer notes of the older tree maocha disappeared into softening the harsher notes of the plantation tea. While the effect was good, it tasted like "less than the sum of its parts".

• A little plantation tea goes a long way in a blend

Being stronger in bitterness and off flavors, a little plantation leaf goes a long way. To the same effect, old tree tea requires less correction, I think. The 50/50 blend of Nannuo-7542 tasted like 75% 7542 and 25% Nannuo, and the 47.5/47.5/5 blend of Mengsong, Jingmai, and 7542 tasted like 85% plantation and 15% Mengsong. I think an actual 85/15 or 75/25 blend of these two teas would have been a better place to start.

This made me think of the many, many times vendors told me that a pu'er was a blend of X (plantation) with a little bit of Y (old leaf). My taste buds made me skeptical of such claims, because very little if any trace of old leaf traits could be found in those teas. Now I wonder if the vendor told the truth, but the producer did a poor job of blending. Ah, speculation.

• It's not easy, but it's fun!

Blending stuff makes fun work out of the odds and ends of samples that otherwise get thrown in a big jar of leftover samples (to later become what MarshalN calls "house blend").

2011 Dayi 7542

Finally, I tried Dayi's elusive 2011 production of 7542. For some reason, Dayi was stingy with their releases, and when I was in China this year, no vendor had enough 7542 to let anyone sample.

It seems Dayi corrected the situation, and a sample was included in the China Cha Dao pack as an example of plantation tea.



And it is! But Dayi has a reputation for blending reliably good, ageable tea--a reputation which, in spite of the innumerable competitors now in the pu'er market, and in spite of rumors of processing tea at too high of temperatures, appears to have withstood all tests. At least, it has so far.

Steaming leaves in the gaiwan smell of tobacco and smoke, and although the smoke doesn't appear in the flavor of the tea, the tobacco does, along with a more herbal element, savory and sweet like tarragon. The texture is oily.



Other flavors appear later, include a sour/citrus element, some butter, a heaping dose of bitterness in later infusions. Concomitant with the bitterness, the mouthfeel and aftertaste appeared in the middle infusions, lasting longer with subsequent infusions until the tea outlasted me, around infusion 14 or so.

The bitterness makes the tea unpleasant to drink now, but the signs are there that the tea should, hopefully, have enough "oomph" to calm into something decent after aging. With no lack of "decent" sheng pu around at similar or lower prices, this particular example doesn't merit my wallet. But for someone who wanted factory-style tea, this tea would suffice.

2011 (2010?) Yangpin Hao 'Jing Mai'

Today's tea, the 2011 (2010?) Yangpin Hao Jingmai mountain cake, is another sample from the set of sheng pu'er offered by China Cha Dao with the expressed intent of contrasting plantation "small tree" teas with older arbor "large tree" teas. This is one of the small tree examples, and it is not a tea that the vendor carries. Perhaps this indicates the vendor's opinion of the tea?

The leaves, as pictured in the photo above, are of smaller size. This is typical for teas from Jingmai, whose tea trees are of a smaller leaf varietal. One other trait of note is the heavy stripe-rolling treatment given the leaves.

The first infusion has a hard-to-place aroma, and "leafy" seems like a terrible description, but I can think of no better word for the "baseline" smell of raw pu'er leaves when they are very young. It offers a brothy taste, meaty and astringent, with a cooling aftereffect in the mouth. It moves onward to taste more sour, but with a mouthfeel the lasts and extends to the root of the tongue.

At times chocolatey and alkaline, and in later infusions becoming thinner in texture and offering mostly bitterness and hay, the tea falls into the "ok" category. It appears to be well processed enough, but of a medium quality material that, although it will likely improve with age, may not become spectacular. If this is the cake I suspect it is, it sells in China for about US$8 per 380g cake, a reasonable price given the quality.

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.