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!

2006 Tongxing Hao Yiwu Gu Cha (Best of Puerhshop)

This is an offering included in the "Best of Puerhshop" tasting kit. Just an FYI, the tasting kit promotion ends June 30. Luckily, though, this and many other tea samples are still available separately.

The dry leaves come apart easily; it was loosely compressed or has become so with 2 years of age. I notice this is the case with stemmy cakes like this one. They tend to fall apart with little pressure.

After a quick initial wash, poured over my pot as a thank you, I commenced a second tasting of this tea. I already tried it twice at work, and wanted to give it more attention.The wet leaves smell like dried out fallen leaves with some back notes of fruitiness.

This Tongxing Hao has a few characteristics worth mentioning. First, it has a wonderful smooth, round, silky texture, similar to great soy milk. Second, aside from its light fruitiness (which borders on oolongishness in middle infusions), it has a distinct creamy/milky flavor that reminds me of Vietnamese leaf after wet storage. Third, like the "truly wild" cakes, this tea also tasted sour at the finish, mostly as the tea cooled.

There is some old tree material in here, though I don't know how much; the wet leaves are uniform, showing no visual evidence of blending. The brew never became bitter, and like good old Yiwu tea, it caused a lot of saliva production and could be felt in the throat. A fleeting mintiness appeared at the tip of the tongue and disappeared as quickly.

All in all, at its current price of $17.50/cake, it could be a good buy. It's sweet enough to drink now, but has the "feel" of a tea that could possibly age well, assuming things like throatiness, salivary activation, mintiness, and aftertaste are markers of such things.

Shu Trio from John Grebe with guest review notes

John and I traded a few teas last week. He wanted to try some Liu An, and I wanted to try some of his shu pu'er. John drinks shu daily. His blog appears humble and unassuming, but from our chats about his experiences, I think he has a fair share of intuition about shu pu'er.

He sent me samples of the three shu pu'er he currently has open:

1. Changtai Tea Group 2006 "Banna" Tuo Cha
   
2. 2006 Banzhang King Imperial (bing?)
   
3. Menghai Tea Factory 2006 Cha Tou Brick

All three came from Puerhshop.com.

My good friend Davin and I drank them in that order last night while listening to Philip Glass, The Seoul Ensemble, Beethoven, Holst, and some random traditional Chinese music. I'm including both of our notes below. His thoughts are in green.

Changtai Tea Group 2006 "Banna" Tuo Cha

The leaves of this tuo supposedly came from Mengsong and Jinggu, supposedly sifted to remove dust and stems. Interestingly, you won't find Jinggu on a map of Xishuangbanna; Jinggu Shan sits in Simao. Not that in a blind taste test I could tell cooked pu'er from Jinggu from that of Mengsong.

I brewed this in a qinghua doucai gaiwan and pitcher set I purchased in Shanghai. Davin took the helm for much of the brewings. It began smooth, sweet at first, then finishing with an interesting herbal aroma. It became earthier, with a thick mouthfeel that paradoxically finished light on the tongue, mild flavors with a grain quality. The herbal notes transformed into what seemed like sweet onion, progressively sweeter and very consistent in strength and character.

The wet leaves revealed that the tuo contained small buds, fannings and chopped leaf, but indeed not much fine dust or big twigs as mentioned in Puerhshop.com's description. It lasted a pleasant 6 infusions.

All in all, we both really enjoyed it. We brewed all samples with the same filtered and remineralized water, and this one did not dry my mouth, while the others did. I appreciated this tea's interesting herbal quality, while Davin said it was an improvement over the first pu'er he tried, an aged shu zhutong pu'er.

2006 Banzhang King Imperial

The 2006 Banzhang King Imperial is a gong ting "tribute" grade xiao bing. Because I didn't catch the grade of the leaf from its appearance, I used too much leaf initially, which probably explains the unpleasant characteristics mentioned below. Also, the other samples came in chunks; the Banzhang came mostly loose.

I caught a hint of mint amongst the thick creamy, overpowering flavors in the first three brews. Acidic initially, then stout and woody consistently thereafter, it died around infusion 5, retaining its oily mouthfeel but yielding only mild, dusty flavor. The liquor started and remained dark and cloudy; I wondered if the producer overcomposted the tea.

I tried this tea again today in a zhu ni pot, using less leaf. The different ratio and vessel improved the tea overall, revealing a fennel/botanical complication in the "stout" wet bark flavors, but still the tea didn't deliver the promise the rounded forest floor flavors indicated in the aroma of the wet leaves. I suspect when the proper ratio is found, I might like this tea better. It's a shame that its qualities make it finicky to brew.

Menghai Tea Factory 2006 Cha Tou Brick

Cha tou means "tea nugget"; expectedly, this tea arrived in the form of tight fingernail-sized clods.

To me, this was the most "traditional" tasting of the three tea samples. Woodier than the others, its wood had a refined character departing from the mulch flavors of the above samples. Creamy like the Banzhang but sweet like the Banna, the mintiness in this tea appeared strong and fresh; Davin felt this tea was more herbal than the Banna, tasting something like green cocoa, if you could find it. I found it more nutty than herbal, but I agreed with his perception of cocoa in the flavor, especially after we let a later brew sit and chill by the window.

We both agreed that the flavors seemed cleaner, and the transparency of the brews made this apparent, though my cups don't show this particularly well. Most amazingly, this tea lasted over 10 brews, yielding consistent strength and enjoyable flavors to the end. We gave up before the tea did, sometime around midnight. Rarely does a shu pu'er yield this much. We could see part of the reason for this as we brewed the tea: the last nugget did not unfurl completely until the 8th infusion. Somehow, this relay of unfurling elongated the session life of this tea.

It was our favorite, and this flight of pu'ers gave Davin a good opportunity to practice gongfu brewing. I sent Davin home with some gift tea and teaware. I feel like a pusher giving a new client a free bump to get him hooked! Spread the addiction!

Just4Tea Tie Guan Yin, Pu'er

I brewed both of these teas gongfu. I will brew them according to vendor instructions and update the blog later. Disclosure: I received these teas as part of a "free sample to bloggers" promotion.

Just4tea Tie Guan Yin
Brewed in pre-heated ming-style gaiwan, gongfu style, boiling mineralized water



To my surprise, the Just4tea foil packet contained roasted Tie Guan Yin. At the sight of the pellet-sized brown clods, my initial reticence became relief. I love roasted oolong; most likely I would enjoy this.

The aroma off the dry leaf is stale charcoal, but this is often the case with roasted oolongs good and bad. When wet, the aroma shifted to butterscotch--a nice change from the usual chocolate aromas off roasted Tie Guan Yin. It promised to be interesting.



While it wasn't that interesting, it tasted good. In fact, for an everyday roasted oolong, it's very good. Buttery and easy to drink, with good aftertaste and no sourness. Despite its butterscotch aroma, unsweetened cocoa dominated the palate, melting to a butter aftertaste and finish. Simple, easy, enjoyable. Fruit aromas appeared off the wet leaf and played peek-a-boo in the flavor. Yeasty/bready flavors, the typical denouement of high roasted oolongs, predictably appeared as the tea's flavors quieted at infusion 8 and after. In a subsequent steep in a yixing pot, I used less leaf and reaped wheaty sweetness early on, but not the sweetness signifiying "the tea flavor fading" but a toasty sweetness of appreciable and consistent character, with light cacao.



Simplicity, while good in an everyday tea, may rank as its only fault: it leashes this tie guan yin, keeps it among the more prosaic teas. Considering that hand-crafted high roasted Taiwan oolongs come at twice the price, this remains a good deal. Truly a deal in the online world, where high roasted teas are rare, pricey, and often over-roasted or soured if aged.



Just4tea's Tie Guan Yin would serve well as an introduction to high roasted Tie Guan Yin: it displayed what such tea tastes and smells like when not stale, poorly stored, or overroasted. I wouldn't feel guilty drinking this tea without paying it much attention, but, as with any tea, further brewing and attention might reap a harvest of new flavors.

Tip: use less leaf, decent amount of minerals in the water, quick infusions with slow pours.

Just4tea 2004 Pu'er (mini-tuocha)
Brewed in pre-heated ming-style gaiwan, gongfu style, boiling mineralized water

Just4tea also sent me a sample of their mini-tuocha. As with all reviews a reviewer writes--whether about movies, books, or tea--the best reviews judge the production at hand for what it is, not for what it isn't. Mini-tuo is not high grade. It is not cake pu'er. Therefore, I do not hold mini-tuo to the same standard I would any other "branded" shu pu'er of more substantial size. Moreover, if I am to review this mini-tuo in comparison to other teas, it should be to other mini-tuo I have had. Thus, in my opinion, a mini-tuocha that manages more than 4 infusions and lacks pondy characteristics is a good mini-tuocha, because few meet that standard.



Just4tea's mini-tuo come wrapped in thin cloth paper gauze, like most. They have little to no smell when dry, like most. When moist, the tea emitted a smooth earthy aroma with undertones of pond. Thankfully, the pond hinted at itself rather than permeated the aroma, stopping me from wrinkling my nose. Flavors were cream, bark, and an amount of pond proportional to the pond smell. Unfortunately, the pond lingered in the aftertaste. Subsequent infusions mimicked this; like most mini-tuo, this one's flavors remained static, simply reappearing in weaker form from brew to brew.

It managed 7 infusions "gongfu" style, and to its further credit, as the flavors weakened only the earth remained. Most pondy mini-tuo end with only pondiness. This nice plus maybe found its root in the 4 years of age?

All in all, this mini-tuo ranks among the average mini-tuo. And it's a bit pricey for its quality. I can't say it's a bad purchase--it's acceptable--but the $30 for 8oz. would be better spent buying a Menghai factory shu bing, which weigh in at roughly 16oz. or more.

Tips: give it a long rinse (20s+) to decompress the tuo, then brew each infusion quickly for more numerous and palatable infusions.

2007 Spring Chang Ning Mao Cha

This was a gift from Imen of Tea Habitat when I attended her Chinese New Year fête.



The medium-sized leaves show no huang pian (yellow bits) and a few hearty bud and flag combinations. When dry, the stuff smells like really fresh sheng pu'er: fertile and buttery. When wet, though, it smells somewhere between fresh sheng pu'er and Yunnan green tea. MarshalN has said as much about most of the raw materials from 2007: they have so many traits of green tea, calling them pu'er seems inappropriate or inadequate.



What this greenness in raw pu'er means I can't say. There are a few possible explanations. First, it could just be a fluke of the 2007 crop. We can perhaps confirm that soon with the 2008 spring crop. Second, it could be a shift in processing methods aimed at making young pu'er more tasty and drinkable now, although this may be the case with the pu'er whose aroma and flavors approach those of oolong. Third, it could be that more Yunnan green tea was processed like pu'er and released into the market as such. I have no opinion that steers me toward any of these speculative explanations. However, from my own experience tasting in China in 2007, many--but not all--of the green pu'er products from larger factories had this green tea quality. Many from Haiwan and Six Famous Tea Mountain factories I recall in particular, but a few from Menghai Factory, Nanjian/Zhai Zi Po, and others, too. The mao cha I tasted on Nannuo and Youle mountains did not share this quality, but some the Youle and Manzhuan mao cha I tasted in Jinghong did.



Back to the tea at hand: the taste is light. The color is light. Aftertaste is there; it lingers in the mouth. "Green tea bitterness," the marker of "green tea pu'er," is not present in this tea, confusing any snap judgment regarding if this tea is really green tea instead of pu'er. Take green tea, pour boiling water over it, and it becomes vegetal and bitter. This mao cha brewed at boiling tastes light and sweet, buttery and biscuity. Thin, but not vegetal and not bitter. The leaves, paper thin and delicate, still smell mostly like pu'er.



As with most other pu'er teas...we'll see how it ends up in 10-15 years.

Windy Beginning: Hong Cha, Hei Cha

I figured it appropriate to begin the first post of an Occidental tea blog with red tea, the tea that most Westerners will encounter first. I chose a pu'er to finish this post because my tea journey has taken me to outlying regions of aged tea--pu'er in particular. Hong cha is where I started; hei cha is where I am now.

2007 Ju Qiu Hong Mei (from Jing Tea Shop)

Sebastien of Jing Tea Shop sent this sample to me gratis with my last order with him. This gongfu black tea hails from Hu Fou, Hang Zhou city, in Zhe Jiang Province, an area most famous for one of China's 10 Famous Teas, Long Jing aka Dragonwell.

The dry leaves appear delicate and wiry. Their curves mean they interlock, like they don't want to let go of each other. I felt giddy with epicaricacy when I fractured a measure of leaves into into my scoop.



Lascivious scents of roses, lavender, and grain arose from the wet leaves in the pot. In the empty fair cup, it left the aromatic trace of butter and malt. I knew just from the wash that this black tea would satisfy me on a chilly and windy night in a city more famous for sunshine.

I steeped it fast and loose the first few servings in a new pot, a pot of unknown clay: too dense and tonal to be hong ni, but too roughly textured to be zhu ni. The pot performed superbly on its christening steep.



The tea offered an initial velvety texture, stevia sweetness, malty/grainy flavor, and surprising hui gan for a black tea. Creamy, it performed more like a good Assam than a gongfu black tea, but with the delicate feminine lightness and finish only Chinese blacks capture . The creaminess wouldn't die, and the tea took longer infusions without a bit of astringency or acid. Before I checked the website, I wondered if this tea was aged. It's been about a year since it was produced, and it shows itself in smoothness.

Toward later steeps, the flavor remained similar, but the rose aroma in the wet leaves entered into the aroma left in the mouth. Eventually, by steep 6 or so, the tea became too light for my taste, sweet and grainy with a long creamy finish, but not pronounced enough for my taste. I think I used too few leaves.



Overall: one of the better black teas I've had. Usually they sit heavy in my stomach, but this did no such gastrointestinal damage.

1997 Zhongcha (CNNP) Yiwu Ye Sheng (from Teacuppa)

I bought this sample and had brewed it once before tonight. It drinks nicely for an adolescent tea, perhaps because of wetter (but not "wet storage" wet) Malaysian storage.

The tea claims to be "wild" and "Yiwu" tea. This tea falls within my experience of Yiwu teas at this age, but any claim to wildness I couldn't verify.



The tea is hard to write about right now, cuz I'm already drunk on it. It started out sweet & easy, with honey and timber notes, soft mouthfeel that encompasses all areas of the mouth (tongue, soft and hard palates, even gums!). Hui gan took a while to build, but the more it built the longer it lingered.

The tea's clean start and finish pleased me. It soaked into the back of my tongue and dripped down my throat as though absorbed by a sponge, leaving a trail behind the whole way down. It became soothingly aromatic when its muted floral notes evaporated off my tongue as I breathed out my nose, and early on it made my ears, back, and shoulders tingle with moving qi.



It tastes its age. No arguments there. Very late in the aftertaste--minutes later--a youthful bitterness appears. Maybe it's cut with a little border tea?

I started feeling silly and delirious some 6 infusions in. I wrote in my notes that the flavor was not quite wood but aromatic like a wood sauna. Obviously, my mind was elsewhere.

Unfortunately, with my finances the way they are of late, I won't enjoy this tea in more than 20g increments. But, that Teacuppa makes this tea available loose is an awesome move.



Nonce thoughts on pu'er and aging
No one really knows anything yet. It's all guesswork. Whatever the aging, it doesn't matter all that much, because I haven't had any bad 20+ year old pu'er. Some better than others, sure, but none so bad I felt sorry to have tasted it. I feel more nonchalant about my teas' aging. In 30 years, all we collectors will be sitting on a mound of deliciousness. What's the worry?

I also wonder if the terroir of a pu'er diminishes with great age. With single-mountain productions only recently labeled, perhaps in the future we will know, but with so many lying labels, I fear we're just as much in the dark. But the feeling above cancels out any worry: it'll be good. Just enjoy it.