I'll recommend white2tea, for one. Their stuff is wonderful and very hip marketing adds to it.
AA
SOTD- sheng of the day
- Thread starter ouch
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I'll recommend white2tea, for one. Their stuff is wonderful and very hip marketing adds to it.
AA
I had a pretty good tea weekend.
Thursday and Friday had good thermoses of YQH Qizhong and XZH '06 brick. The main reason I affirmatively didn't like the Qizhong is that it has an acrid bitterness for me, and most of the time, it's usually not sweet enough or interesting enough to compensate, but I got some good sweetness and some forest floral mouth aroma. The XZH was just nicely more dense in taste than it usually was, and I got good qi. I suppose I should mention that I had a decent thermos of '18 Yiwuteamountain Gaoshan.
The shu of Friday was the Dayi '13 DanQing. It has become a much better shu over the years with an interesting aromatic woodiness overlaying more typical shu flavors and a degree of qi. The "interesting" used to be pretty awkward and "artificial", and has sense balanced, eased or melded into something nicer.
The first tea of Saturday was the 30's 4 Gold Coins LiuBao. There aren't really any surprises here, and it's not mindblowing. One thing it did do is make me think that $640 for a cake of the late '80s Thai cake is not an awful deal, as there are some obvious similarities about the overall nature. I definitely enjoyed this tea, and it's cleaner and more refined than the Thai cake, and with a complex qi. The best part is over soon, though, and it becomes a bit more of a normal tea quickly.
The first brew had some warehouse notes, but this goes away by the second. The aroma is really good for about four brews with betelnut and wood with an underlying bright honey-like sweetness that is more complex than I'm really describing. After about brew four, it turns into a more simple liubao earthy and nutty nature. The taste starts off being very deep with with an emphasis on a wine sensibility--wine like many aged tea's deep plummy, with choco, betelnut, and wood. When not steeped hard enough it rises up to a more brightly fruity betelnut and wood. There is a grounding sense of sourness that is pleasant here. The late infusions are typical of an aged liubao, except less woody. The mouthfeel is pretty good, with moderate viscosity and a soft silkiness that promotes a sense of liquid just evaporating out the mouth through the throat. It takes a few brews for astringency to show up, and it felt sort of sandy and slick. There is some feeling in the mouth and down the throat. Earliest brews features an expressive mouthcoat that moves flavors around the mouth. In a bit later brews there's a a bit of yiwu huigan to sugars, a yun. Mouthcoat can linger in the mouth a long time. Qi is at about moderate strength, with a subtle, complex, and active feeling earlier in the session and a more calm feeling late.
Of course, I'm going to be drinking this all week.
I had a hankering for brighter teas, and I had been thinking about the '05 Shuangjiang Mengku and Bingdaos in general, so I decided to get out my '02 Tai Lian. I was also sort of celebrating that I could casually decide to drink an eighteen year old tea. This doesn't have the sensate sweetness of the SM, nor the fruitiness, or the broader mushroomyness. It does have the strong bitterness, and a bit of that tartness, but is much less astringent, and bittertart fades such that there are a couple of brews with good flavor and not much pain. The aftertastes do not feature the kind of obvious yiwu huigan to sugars that the SM has, but it's more expressive and interesting. I really enjoyed the session.
Aromatic performance was pretty good, with rather full and heavy honey aroma early, and which develops barnyard, sugars, and can have a touch of herbals and wood on the rim. The taste was interesting and complex, replete with a patchouli woodiness that I'd thought long gone with it's relative youth when I first got it, more of a patchouli floralness then. It was with honey, and a dark savory herbalness around a dominant bitter pole. Eventually the bitterness/tartness fades and one gets a dark herbal and honey taste, and some late brews had a subtle fruitiness to it, hidden in the herbal depth. The thickness of the soup was moderate with a velvet texture. Astringency doesn't really ever get more than light. The full range of sweet and floral aftertastes was on show, mouthcoat, yun, shallow pungent huigan, mouth aroma. There were occasional marked cooling feeling and feeling in general moving in mouth and throat. The qi was on the strong side and sedating.
The tea of today was the '09 XZH Diangu Chen--stuck on Bingdao proximates. I just like this kind of stuff, guys. It's a bit hard to drink in the mouth and tummy, but oh so dessert-y.
I got a bit of interestingly dark herbals early on, but mostly I got mango, barnyard, alkaline in aroma and taste. A bit of plumminess, and some bitterness also in taste. Thickness is good, and texture is sort of silty, grainy with some astringency that tends to melt into aftertastes. The aftertastes were really good. A bit of that yiwu huigan to sugars like the SM, but one brew had a nice intense sensate sweet tonguetip coat. Lots of good and active yuns/very shallow pungent huigan, strong mouthcoat, a bit of floral mouth aroma as well. Qi is on the strong side, not too remarkably so.
Thursday and Friday had good thermoses of YQH Qizhong and XZH '06 brick. The main reason I affirmatively didn't like the Qizhong is that it has an acrid bitterness for me, and most of the time, it's usually not sweet enough or interesting enough to compensate, but I got some good sweetness and some forest floral mouth aroma. The XZH was just nicely more dense in taste than it usually was, and I got good qi. I suppose I should mention that I had a decent thermos of '18 Yiwuteamountain Gaoshan.
The shu of Friday was the Dayi '13 DanQing. It has become a much better shu over the years with an interesting aromatic woodiness overlaying more typical shu flavors and a degree of qi. The "interesting" used to be pretty awkward and "artificial", and has sense balanced, eased or melded into something nicer.
The first tea of Saturday was the 30's 4 Gold Coins LiuBao. There aren't really any surprises here, and it's not mindblowing. One thing it did do is make me think that $640 for a cake of the late '80s Thai cake is not an awful deal, as there are some obvious similarities about the overall nature. I definitely enjoyed this tea, and it's cleaner and more refined than the Thai cake, and with a complex qi. The best part is over soon, though, and it becomes a bit more of a normal tea quickly.
The first brew had some warehouse notes, but this goes away by the second. The aroma is really good for about four brews with betelnut and wood with an underlying bright honey-like sweetness that is more complex than I'm really describing. After about brew four, it turns into a more simple liubao earthy and nutty nature. The taste starts off being very deep with with an emphasis on a wine sensibility--wine like many aged tea's deep plummy, with choco, betelnut, and wood. When not steeped hard enough it rises up to a more brightly fruity betelnut and wood. There is a grounding sense of sourness that is pleasant here. The late infusions are typical of an aged liubao, except less woody. The mouthfeel is pretty good, with moderate viscosity and a soft silkiness that promotes a sense of liquid just evaporating out the mouth through the throat. It takes a few brews for astringency to show up, and it felt sort of sandy and slick. There is some feeling in the mouth and down the throat. Earliest brews features an expressive mouthcoat that moves flavors around the mouth. In a bit later brews there's a a bit of yiwu huigan to sugars, a yun. Mouthcoat can linger in the mouth a long time. Qi is at about moderate strength, with a subtle, complex, and active feeling earlier in the session and a more calm feeling late.
Of course, I'm going to be drinking this all week.
I had a hankering for brighter teas, and I had been thinking about the '05 Shuangjiang Mengku and Bingdaos in general, so I decided to get out my '02 Tai Lian. I was also sort of celebrating that I could casually decide to drink an eighteen year old tea. This doesn't have the sensate sweetness of the SM, nor the fruitiness, or the broader mushroomyness. It does have the strong bitterness, and a bit of that tartness, but is much less astringent, and bittertart fades such that there are a couple of brews with good flavor and not much pain. The aftertastes do not feature the kind of obvious yiwu huigan to sugars that the SM has, but it's more expressive and interesting. I really enjoyed the session.
Aromatic performance was pretty good, with rather full and heavy honey aroma early, and which develops barnyard, sugars, and can have a touch of herbals and wood on the rim. The taste was interesting and complex, replete with a patchouli woodiness that I'd thought long gone with it's relative youth when I first got it, more of a patchouli floralness then. It was with honey, and a dark savory herbalness around a dominant bitter pole. Eventually the bitterness/tartness fades and one gets a dark herbal and honey taste, and some late brews had a subtle fruitiness to it, hidden in the herbal depth. The thickness of the soup was moderate with a velvet texture. Astringency doesn't really ever get more than light. The full range of sweet and floral aftertastes was on show, mouthcoat, yun, shallow pungent huigan, mouth aroma. There were occasional marked cooling feeling and feeling in general moving in mouth and throat. The qi was on the strong side and sedating.
The tea of today was the '09 XZH Diangu Chen--stuck on Bingdao proximates. I just like this kind of stuff, guys. It's a bit hard to drink in the mouth and tummy, but oh so dessert-y.
I got a bit of interestingly dark herbals early on, but mostly I got mango, barnyard, alkaline in aroma and taste. A bit of plumminess, and some bitterness also in taste. Thickness is good, and texture is sort of silty, grainy with some astringency that tends to melt into aftertastes. The aftertastes were really good. A bit of that yiwu huigan to sugars like the SM, but one brew had a nice intense sensate sweet tonguetip coat. Lots of good and active yuns/very shallow pungent huigan, strong mouthcoat, a bit of floral mouth aroma as well. Qi is on the strong side, not too remarkably so.
thank you for your responce
Think we're coming up on a Chinese holiday pretty soon though.
AA
AA
The shu of Friday was the '12 XZH Dragon Brick shu. I have come to like this tea more as I drink it. It's a rather nuanced shu even as it does standard things.
The first tea of Saturday was the '08 XZH Puzhen. I had done a thermos of the tea during the work-week, and it had wow'd me, and so I decided on a session. One of the influences was rereading an old reader post on the 2006 Guanzizai Bindao on Steepster, and the whole maple syrup idea had grabbed me. The thermos had a dark sweetness vaguely/handwaving in that direction, and so there I was, drinking a session on Saturday. As for how it went, it's pretty much as expected. The usual top of the line mouthfeel, qi is present. Complex taste with a sharp and well defined plummy tartness in the earlier brews, and which made the dimensions of the tea bigger in a pleasant way. The durability was great. This tea still comes up on FB auctions, less than before, but this really is still one of the best teas you can buy, and it's not that expensive if you get it at auction.
The second tea of the weekend was the '18 TeaSide Mae Hong Son, to see how much my first impression is validated. I guess it's sort of is, but it's rather bitter, and the whole idea of this still involves just packing it away and forgetting about it for a decade, so I feel as if it's a lower priority...
Aroma is mostly around a sort of green herbal with sometimes barnyard, sometimes a sweetness like creamed corn, honey, dulce de leche or something else like that. In later brews, there is a very nice chamomile and camphor aroma that comes out in a cooler soup. Taste is a bitter-woody-herbal with some sweet nuances. Moderate viscosity with some textural feel to it. Astringency varies over the session. Aftertaste is mainly a yiwu huigan to sugars (dulce de leche). There are some mouthcoats and a few good yuns early in the session. Pretty decent qi throughout.
The first tea today was the 80's Xiaguang Iron. It's been warehoused, so there is a bit of that note in it. It's a relatively simple and pleasant tea with herbal, wood, and lots of plummy notes. There is a bit of tartness. Viscosity is at about good, and is round. Astringency starts off low and builds as the session goes on, but most of it is productive. There is a lot of mouthfeeling and mouthcoat going on. A yun here and there. Qi isn't that strong, but it does have something of the complexity and activity of aged tea qi. I got bored with this tea and didn't push this too hard. Basically, it's too thin and one dimensional in taste. Something like the late 80's Hongtaichang would be a better tea.
The second tea of today was the 2010 Essence of Tea Manmai Bada. This was rather good, but unusually bitter and has to be managed with that in mind. The aroma and taste is really sweet, much like LBZ going around that first corner 7-10 years of age.
Aroma in the first brew was intensely sweet with sugars and honey in it. Through the session, there is a dance between a broader fruity and sugars sweetness in the direction of creme brulee and more minor wood/barnyard/herbal. The taste was dominated by bitter-tart, wood, herbal/barnyard in early brews. I kept brews very short until the bitterness subsided for normal brewing afterwards. When bitterness subsides, the main taste is fruitiness and white sweetness with a bit of wood herbal on the rim. Can be overbrewed and bring back bitterness even very late. Viscosity is about moderate to good level with albumin texture. A bit of astringency. The full set of aftertastes is on display in early brews, but the most consistent one through the session was a yiwu huigan to sugars. However, early, there was that and lots of mouthcoats even with a bit of sensate sweetness for tonguetip. There was some yuns and very shallow pungent huigans. Some feeling down throat. Qi was pretty good, nothing too distinct about it. Brewed at least fourteen times, and probably still has plenty left in the tank, and this will go into the fridge, along with puzhen.
The first tea of Saturday was the '08 XZH Puzhen. I had done a thermos of the tea during the work-week, and it had wow'd me, and so I decided on a session. One of the influences was rereading an old reader post on the 2006 Guanzizai Bindao on Steepster, and the whole maple syrup idea had grabbed me. The thermos had a dark sweetness vaguely/handwaving in that direction, and so there I was, drinking a session on Saturday. As for how it went, it's pretty much as expected. The usual top of the line mouthfeel, qi is present. Complex taste with a sharp and well defined plummy tartness in the earlier brews, and which made the dimensions of the tea bigger in a pleasant way. The durability was great. This tea still comes up on FB auctions, less than before, but this really is still one of the best teas you can buy, and it's not that expensive if you get it at auction.
The second tea of the weekend was the '18 TeaSide Mae Hong Son, to see how much my first impression is validated. I guess it's sort of is, but it's rather bitter, and the whole idea of this still involves just packing it away and forgetting about it for a decade, so I feel as if it's a lower priority...
Aroma is mostly around a sort of green herbal with sometimes barnyard, sometimes a sweetness like creamed corn, honey, dulce de leche or something else like that. In later brews, there is a very nice chamomile and camphor aroma that comes out in a cooler soup. Taste is a bitter-woody-herbal with some sweet nuances. Moderate viscosity with some textural feel to it. Astringency varies over the session. Aftertaste is mainly a yiwu huigan to sugars (dulce de leche). There are some mouthcoats and a few good yuns early in the session. Pretty decent qi throughout.
The first tea today was the 80's Xiaguang Iron. It's been warehoused, so there is a bit of that note in it. It's a relatively simple and pleasant tea with herbal, wood, and lots of plummy notes. There is a bit of tartness. Viscosity is at about good, and is round. Astringency starts off low and builds as the session goes on, but most of it is productive. There is a lot of mouthfeeling and mouthcoat going on. A yun here and there. Qi isn't that strong, but it does have something of the complexity and activity of aged tea qi. I got bored with this tea and didn't push this too hard. Basically, it's too thin and one dimensional in taste. Something like the late 80's Hongtaichang would be a better tea.
The second tea of today was the 2010 Essence of Tea Manmai Bada. This was rather good, but unusually bitter and has to be managed with that in mind. The aroma and taste is really sweet, much like LBZ going around that first corner 7-10 years of age.
Aroma in the first brew was intensely sweet with sugars and honey in it. Through the session, there is a dance between a broader fruity and sugars sweetness in the direction of creme brulee and more minor wood/barnyard/herbal. The taste was dominated by bitter-tart, wood, herbal/barnyard in early brews. I kept brews very short until the bitterness subsided for normal brewing afterwards. When bitterness subsides, the main taste is fruitiness and white sweetness with a bit of wood herbal on the rim. Can be overbrewed and bring back bitterness even very late. Viscosity is about moderate to good level with albumin texture. A bit of astringency. The full set of aftertastes is on display in early brews, but the most consistent one through the session was a yiwu huigan to sugars. However, early, there was that and lots of mouthcoats even with a bit of sensate sweetness for tonguetip. There was some yuns and very shallow pungent huigans. Some feeling down throat. Qi was pretty good, nothing too distinct about it. Brewed at least fourteen times, and probably still has plenty left in the tank, and this will go into the fridge, along with puzhen.
Just discovered the thread. Scrolling backwards in time... great resource of information.
Shah8 (or anybody), may I have two questions:
1) What would be your pick of high end white2tea cakes now since some of them got some age on them and some of them got sold out... top 3?
2) about 50% of teas described here are XZH... personally I don’t have any experience with the brand. Are you buying them mostly on Facebook auctions as you mentioned somewhere or is this weidian shop is an official representative and it’s ok to buy there too?
Would appreciate if you share your recommended 5 cakes XZH crash course
Cheers
Shah8 (or anybody), may I have two questions:
1) What would be your pick of high end white2tea cakes now since some of them got some age on them and some of them got sold out... top 3?
2) about 50% of teas described here are XZH... personally I don’t have any experience with the brand. Are you buying them mostly on Facebook auctions as you mentioned somewhere or is this weidian shop is an official representative and it’s ok to buy there too?
Would appreciate if you share your recommended 5 cakes XZH crash course
Cheers
Just discovered the thread. Scrolling backwards in time... great resource of information.
Shah8 (or anybody), may I have two questions:
1) What would be your pick of high end white2tea cakes now since some of them got some age on them and some of them got sold out... top 3?
2) about 50% of teas described here are XZH... personally I don’t have any experience with the brand. Are you buying them mostly on Facebook auctions as you mentioned somewhere or is this weidian shop is an official representative and it’s ok to buy there too?
Would appreciate if you share your recommended 5 cakes XZH crash course
Cheers
I would also love to see if you had a “best of” list- I definitely have a guess or two based off of your writings, but it would still be awesome to see something definitive.
I also had a question about “thermosing”: I did 2.3g:1L off boil with a 2-hour infusion. 2016 W2T Bosch. I did my first attempt with 6g kinda steeped out leaves the same way- much much weaker. This is actually giving me something- just possibly a tad lighter than I hoped for- is it a function of which tea is used (with some thermosing better than others?) or should I just try upping my dose next try? 4g instead maybe?
All the best!
Sonjong, I'm not really sure what to suggest, because vendors generally pursue a specific taste, so many people like one brand and hate another--both XZH and W2T are typical in this respect.
As far as Sanhetang goes, few things that are good are cheap or easy to get. LiquidProust.com has a few teas in general, including Diangu productions that is something of a signature XZH production. The main issue these days with XZH's younger productions is that past 2014, there are very few genuinely special productions, as increasingly more good teas ascend to heaven. XZH has a lot of great northern teas in their catalog, but they tended to be weak in Yiwus until around 2009. I don't really have *a favorite* per se because all of my favorite teas do different things. XZH's most exclusive teas are probably the 2007 Dinjin Nu'er and it's 2009 counterpart, and the 2014 Hongyin (maybe--it's not completely a minuscule run, and there are various small stuff around).
White2tea is more of a place where you get blended tea with strong qualities, going for a strong bang for buck theme. Issue here is that the tea can be more incoherent than in other brand's teas. The brand has a pretty strong shu selection, and strong white tea/black tea selection.
mt3580, my first pour is at about 2 hours, tho' these days, I've often gone with 1.5hrs. But my second pour is at 4 hours, and third is at six. Why not do the same before going up to four grams? That would be pretty potent, and since I thermos plenty of broken and ground up material that can hurt the tummy, I can image four grams being unpleasant on the digestive system if not with relatively whole leaves.
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Some general thing I'd like to say to an audience. First, while puerh has virtues worth pursuing and drinking, the puerh industry is a scam. The idea of it's primary purpose is to encourage people to overconsume/hoard tea in the dubious prospect that you'll drink all that much of it or manage to resell it to some greater fool. Nobody should be buying tea with the fixed idea of drinking what they bought thirty years in the future--few people have anything like the security in life needed for that kind of vision. Don't let the survivor bias of those old teas that various families have managed to hang on to, through various highly traumatic events that many people did not live though, fool you. Most of those families with old teas in good conditions were long educated, with great connections, some money, and not a little luck. Also, nobody should be buying tea with the idea that their stash can be easily resold for lots of money. The main dynamic where you see people who buy factory tea for desultory amounts of cash and have super-expensive teas today. For example, I bought a pair of 2005 Dayi Peacock of Mengsong for $35 each from Houde in 2010--Eleven years later, full of frenzied speculation, particularly in the last couple of years, places like Donghe are saying that a box of 84 cakes (wholesale price) sell at a price that suggests that the wholesale price of a single cake is $1200. Which is ridiculous. I *could* probably sell for, say, $300, eventually. At $1200, I don't think there is much of a genuine retail liquidity for a tea like this. Someone in San Francisco bought a tong of 2005 Dayi Peacock of Menghai back in the aughts--wound up wanting to move to a smaller place and just sold off his teas in general, and that tong at around $100 a cake two or three years ago. Certainly, Farwenwa, a hobbyist selling out of Spokane, sold his Dayi Peacock of Menghai tong for about $150 a cake or so. Which could have been a mistake, since such a tea is like $4000 a cake today, theoretically. I bring all of this up to push the idea that these super high prices are pretty imaginary, and one shouldn't chase them (never mind think that they are a reliable indicator of quality). In other words, don't get hooked up on "collection value".
Another thought, specifically on fakes, particularly focused on the 2001 Dayi Simplified Yun. The main idea is that there is no real hope for simple revelations, but only a long trained expertise, particularly when it comes to teas made around from 1997 to about 2003. You pretty much have to stay humble. You can have a tea that is "real", but is essentially a "fake" tea because it's a production that is largely meant to fool people through using the exact same wrapper--2001 Red Dayi Simplified Yun 7502 versus 2001 Red Dayi Simplified 7542--and the only real way to tell between the two is to look at the cake for lots more twigs and big leaves than should be there. There is a Traditional Characters Zhongcha equivalent of the 7502 (also known as the 122, i.e., twenty-second and last run with the leftover undesirable stuff), but the 2001 Zhongcha Simplified Yun has distinctive markings on the bottoms of the characters on the top rim that makes it much easier to tell without unwrapping the cake. The issues between a very common issue generally (and for the 2001 Simplified Yun as well) of actual fake tea switcheroo'd into a wrapper and old neifei (if any) dug out and a MTF neifei attached with a few tea leaves steamed pressed onto it so that the nefei sticks onto the cake; AND the 7502 effectively trademark infringement issues has meant that what is essentially a famous tea (the Red Dayi version in particular) has a relatively low price compared to peer teas. Okay, that's one end of the problem. The other end of the problem is that there are a number of ways that a tea from this time period can be real, but look "fake". The two most common ways is, first, that teas are sent to a warehouse to start the aging process, either a quickie or a more long term thing--and afterwards, the wrappers are beat up, so teas leaving the warehouse have their original wrappers tossed and get rewrapped, and rewrapped in a way that is clearly not the style of Menghai Tea Factory. The other major way is that there are multiple runs of Simplified Yuns, both the Zhongcha and the Red Dayi, with slightly differing blends and presses, and for example, you'd want the legit Zhongcha Simplified with the super thin cotton paper wrapper and not the ones with the thick wrappers. Some teas are clearly pressed in different steam presses. Some of the reasons I was pretty sure that Houde's cake is real (in the argument with Mattcha) were that 1)I had discussed the provenance of these teas before I bought them in late 2011--So I knew that my tea had been in Hong Kong for about six months, then in Taiwan from then 'till about 2006 before Guang bought them and stored them in Houston before I bought my pair. The other thing is more of a hint rather anything real. Look at the back of the cakes. It's very weird and sort of deformed-looking, and if you look at other teas from this era, MTF certainly had neater tea presses. However, if you should search and find images of the '70s Xiaguan Simplified Yun discus (as opposed to studded iron cakes we're familiar with today), you'll see that the style of the back of those cakes are very similar to the back of the cakes Houde sells. Cloud has images of these cakes, but they aren't as brightly lit and clear as pics by other people. So the archaic look of the cake pressing may well be a wink and a nod to a reference, here. Some more notes about the Houde 7542: Firstly Guang of Houde is not actually all that much of a puerh expert. He's more of an oolong expert with lots of puerh drinking aquaintances, and Guang basically relied on his friends and what was generally popular when he went back to Taiwan to be family and buy more puerh tea for the shop. So there are very often errors in his descriptions of products, etc, not to mention the notorious Wade Giles misspellings. I say this so as to bring clarity about on him using the puerh guidebook and refering to his tea as 2003. I have not found any sign of a legit Red Dayi 2003 7542 Simplified Yun out there. There is a Red Dayi Simplified Yun 7572 *shu*, and Varat Phong links to the same page in the puerh guide (while clearly depicts a sheng) when talking about this shu. Second, the time period was chaotic enough that Guang could definitely have gotten a bunch of cakes real and fakes, and some were sold the real one and some were sold the fake. I don't think this happened, though.
There is also a nominally a tea production that is nominally 2003, that uses the same wrapper as the 2001 Red Dayi Simplified, but doesn't have a normal loose neipao ticket that describes the tea, but simply a big version of a dayi neifei design as a neipao. It's not a 7542, and it's not Dayi, but it's also not a fake tea--one would be stupid to refuse to buy it if offered for only a few hundred dollars. It's basically a privately pressed tea by (not even a teashop) a hobbyist--who just used what was at hand, and didn't make any effort at making their own wrapper or anything. Didn't get in trouble from using the copyrighted wrapper because that tea never circulated very widely and isn't well known at all. There are a ton of privately pressed teas by teashops and hobbyists that never made much of an attempt to do any graphic arts design works. Much of the time, it's just a standard Zhongcha wrapper and the standard Zhongcha neifei, and the only people who knows what it is where the ones who originally pressed it. The standard term for these teas are "Taipai". A lot of productions have some little inked stamp or other with characters for Zhencang, or Teji or Hongyin or something similar on top of a regular design. Most of these aren't particularly special (some are just worker-led extracurricular productions at their own factories, using what was at hand), but a few of them are really, really, good, even if you have little hope of finding them to buy. They aren't fake teas, though, and these teas are not examples of fake teas being better than the real stuff. *Actual FAKE teas* are usually horrible tasting (or at best blandly pleasant for one or two brews). That's because it takes capital to make teas, and in particular, decent tea from the bush, and scammers usually don't have either capital or access. What they do is take any old set of leaves, including used ones thrown out from the teashops and repress them in a new wrapper. Sometimes they'll go as far as to use common material for expensive materials and it won't be horrible, just not good. But the point of faking is to make money. Today, you can use a pretty decent warehoused tea that costs $100-$200 and do some creative work on it, wrap it up like a famous tea that costs $1000 and sell it for $600. "Hey, this is pretty decent but's it's kind of off?" "Good HK Storage, like how smooth it is?" Back in the early aughts, you didn't have much space at all in terms of costs before your fake leaves you with no profits. So if you know that a tea has been in someone's possession for a long time, with a deeply buried neifei, and that tea has some really good qualities--it is unlikely for that tea to be fake. Something is going on, but one should leave fakery as a last resort explanation. It invites emotions and rash actions (like throwing away a tea that would have actually been great given some rest of a few months to years). There are many different ways for a story to be true for some teas. Other teas, like the 1999 Big Green Tree, or the '01 No.4 101/102/103, or the 208 has very straightforward histories. There are only about 7800-8200 cakes of the 1999 MTF XY-commissioned Big Green Tree Black Stamp. There are no separate runs, no weird typographies to study, not a huge ton of variance even in storage, because everyone took care of their cakes since about 2003 and especially since 2006-7.
Whew! A long one about fakes.
Now, I want to discuss something about processing. The first there is that there is no *true* style of puerh tea. No true set of prescribed methods to make a cake of puerh tea, especially not in the sense of longjing or qimen or beihao, you get the picture. People have been very creative with puerh for a very long time, and almost certainly longer than for any other sort of tea-and it's robustness towards fermentation, with moisture, oxidation, or age, known almost as long. Most *any* puerh will age. Maybe not necessarily the way you like it, but also, the way oldsters like their teas might not be what you'd like, and that's really a-ok. Just realize that all processing methods have both benefits and costs. If you chop up leaves and roll those suckas hard, you'll get a concentrated taste that probably will be hard to drink young, but very potent and rich when it's older. However, what you often get is a very narrow band of depth and potency, and sort of taste/sounds like a Megadeath concert, young and old tea alike. If you roll tea gently, you'll more often get a broader taste with more detectable single notes like some sinuous quartet written by Beethoven. These teas can be thin in depth and are often in danger of being monotonous with age. If you do the shaqing at a high temperature, you can get a more bold taste, boldly green, boldly aged--but you often don't have much complexity. If you do it a a low temperature, oftentimes you risk the tea oxidising gradually after the manner of white teas, even as you strike for a more complex sense. If you oxidize the teas a bit, you can increase the complexity of the tea's taste and aroma, and make it more palatable and smooth to drink when it's young. However, for every bit that you oxidize, that fraction is going to age slower and be less interesting/nice at a certain age. One thing that is generally true in one direction is that with puerh, you do not want to speed dry anything, maocha, cakes, with heated air. Young teas have good aromas, and then underperforms as it ages. So always sundried maocha and pressed cakes if you can help it. Anyways, there are a ton of ways to process puerh teas to your taste and lots of dials. Those various processing tactics have various outcomes. What someone who wants to get tea they like should do, is to try out various brands, new and old teas, try out known bad-for-whatever-reason (for example, try and find some of these fall 2011 teas that TeaUrchin used to sell--they were all overoxidized, and you can taste the consequences ten years on) teas and get a sense of what is "this is too much or too little of xx processing for me".
What one should not do is let the traditionalismos push one around for their choices. Most of those people have managed to buy good examples of the styles that they like at an affordable cost and behaving all Boomer and bleep, and if you check things, there is rarely ever any *good* examples of such "proper style" puerh (why I'm sorry not to have speed bought that late '90's 8582 at Houde--that was indeed what an 8582 is supposed to be) even available to buy, let alone affordably so. The same with people talking about how some cake that's supposedly from XX micro-area ain't really so. Here's the thing--Probably no new gushu teas ever makes it to broad public sales from the smaller places today. That means no Bingdao teas, probably no Xigui teas, no Bohetang, no Mansong. You can buy shengtai Bingdao at very high prices, say about $1.5/g. The only hope with getting even close to real without spending huge money is to find older teas, but they are often not great either and certainly don't benefit from the modern technique that makes quite a bit of good puerh today. Again, virtually everything gushu that's from any place you've ever heard of, is probably $2+ a gram today for fresh maocha. That's way above what most people outside of East Asia is willing to pay for tea. So keep an even keel, stay humble, and keep an open mind about what you want and how you'll compromise/spend for the qualities you want.
man, I hope this isn't too rambling and people get some benefit from these thoughts.
As far as Sanhetang goes, few things that are good are cheap or easy to get. LiquidProust.com has a few teas in general, including Diangu productions that is something of a signature XZH production. The main issue these days with XZH's younger productions is that past 2014, there are very few genuinely special productions, as increasingly more good teas ascend to heaven. XZH has a lot of great northern teas in their catalog, but they tended to be weak in Yiwus until around 2009. I don't really have *a favorite* per se because all of my favorite teas do different things. XZH's most exclusive teas are probably the 2007 Dinjin Nu'er and it's 2009 counterpart, and the 2014 Hongyin (maybe--it's not completely a minuscule run, and there are various small stuff around).
White2tea is more of a place where you get blended tea with strong qualities, going for a strong bang for buck theme. Issue here is that the tea can be more incoherent than in other brand's teas. The brand has a pretty strong shu selection, and strong white tea/black tea selection.
mt3580, my first pour is at about 2 hours, tho' these days, I've often gone with 1.5hrs. But my second pour is at 4 hours, and third is at six. Why not do the same before going up to four grams? That would be pretty potent, and since I thermos plenty of broken and ground up material that can hurt the tummy, I can image four grams being unpleasant on the digestive system if not with relatively whole leaves.
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Some general thing I'd like to say to an audience. First, while puerh has virtues worth pursuing and drinking, the puerh industry is a scam. The idea of it's primary purpose is to encourage people to overconsume/hoard tea in the dubious prospect that you'll drink all that much of it or manage to resell it to some greater fool. Nobody should be buying tea with the fixed idea of drinking what they bought thirty years in the future--few people have anything like the security in life needed for that kind of vision. Don't let the survivor bias of those old teas that various families have managed to hang on to, through various highly traumatic events that many people did not live though, fool you. Most of those families with old teas in good conditions were long educated, with great connections, some money, and not a little luck. Also, nobody should be buying tea with the idea that their stash can be easily resold for lots of money. The main dynamic where you see people who buy factory tea for desultory amounts of cash and have super-expensive teas today. For example, I bought a pair of 2005 Dayi Peacock of Mengsong for $35 each from Houde in 2010--Eleven years later, full of frenzied speculation, particularly in the last couple of years, places like Donghe are saying that a box of 84 cakes (wholesale price) sell at a price that suggests that the wholesale price of a single cake is $1200. Which is ridiculous. I *could* probably sell for, say, $300, eventually. At $1200, I don't think there is much of a genuine retail liquidity for a tea like this. Someone in San Francisco bought a tong of 2005 Dayi Peacock of Menghai back in the aughts--wound up wanting to move to a smaller place and just sold off his teas in general, and that tong at around $100 a cake two or three years ago. Certainly, Farwenwa, a hobbyist selling out of Spokane, sold his Dayi Peacock of Menghai tong for about $150 a cake or so. Which could have been a mistake, since such a tea is like $4000 a cake today, theoretically. I bring all of this up to push the idea that these super high prices are pretty imaginary, and one shouldn't chase them (never mind think that they are a reliable indicator of quality). In other words, don't get hooked up on "collection value".
Another thought, specifically on fakes, particularly focused on the 2001 Dayi Simplified Yun. The main idea is that there is no real hope for simple revelations, but only a long trained expertise, particularly when it comes to teas made around from 1997 to about 2003. You pretty much have to stay humble. You can have a tea that is "real", but is essentially a "fake" tea because it's a production that is largely meant to fool people through using the exact same wrapper--2001 Red Dayi Simplified Yun 7502 versus 2001 Red Dayi Simplified 7542--and the only real way to tell between the two is to look at the cake for lots more twigs and big leaves than should be there. There is a Traditional Characters Zhongcha equivalent of the 7502 (also known as the 122, i.e., twenty-second and last run with the leftover undesirable stuff), but the 2001 Zhongcha Simplified Yun has distinctive markings on the bottoms of the characters on the top rim that makes it much easier to tell without unwrapping the cake. The issues between a very common issue generally (and for the 2001 Simplified Yun as well) of actual fake tea switcheroo'd into a wrapper and old neifei (if any) dug out and a MTF neifei attached with a few tea leaves steamed pressed onto it so that the nefei sticks onto the cake; AND the 7502 effectively trademark infringement issues has meant that what is essentially a famous tea (the Red Dayi version in particular) has a relatively low price compared to peer teas. Okay, that's one end of the problem. The other end of the problem is that there are a number of ways that a tea from this time period can be real, but look "fake". The two most common ways is, first, that teas are sent to a warehouse to start the aging process, either a quickie or a more long term thing--and afterwards, the wrappers are beat up, so teas leaving the warehouse have their original wrappers tossed and get rewrapped, and rewrapped in a way that is clearly not the style of Menghai Tea Factory. The other major way is that there are multiple runs of Simplified Yuns, both the Zhongcha and the Red Dayi, with slightly differing blends and presses, and for example, you'd want the legit Zhongcha Simplified with the super thin cotton paper wrapper and not the ones with the thick wrappers. Some teas are clearly pressed in different steam presses. Some of the reasons I was pretty sure that Houde's cake is real (in the argument with Mattcha) were that 1)I had discussed the provenance of these teas before I bought them in late 2011--So I knew that my tea had been in Hong Kong for about six months, then in Taiwan from then 'till about 2006 before Guang bought them and stored them in Houston before I bought my pair. The other thing is more of a hint rather anything real. Look at the back of the cakes. It's very weird and sort of deformed-looking, and if you look at other teas from this era, MTF certainly had neater tea presses. However, if you should search and find images of the '70s Xiaguan Simplified Yun discus (as opposed to studded iron cakes we're familiar with today), you'll see that the style of the back of those cakes are very similar to the back of the cakes Houde sells. Cloud has images of these cakes, but they aren't as brightly lit and clear as pics by other people. So the archaic look of the cake pressing may well be a wink and a nod to a reference, here. Some more notes about the Houde 7542: Firstly Guang of Houde is not actually all that much of a puerh expert. He's more of an oolong expert with lots of puerh drinking aquaintances, and Guang basically relied on his friends and what was generally popular when he went back to Taiwan to be family and buy more puerh tea for the shop. So there are very often errors in his descriptions of products, etc, not to mention the notorious Wade Giles misspellings. I say this so as to bring clarity about on him using the puerh guidebook and refering to his tea as 2003. I have not found any sign of a legit Red Dayi 2003 7542 Simplified Yun out there. There is a Red Dayi Simplified Yun 7572 *shu*, and Varat Phong links to the same page in the puerh guide (while clearly depicts a sheng) when talking about this shu. Second, the time period was chaotic enough that Guang could definitely have gotten a bunch of cakes real and fakes, and some were sold the real one and some were sold the fake. I don't think this happened, though.
There is also a nominally a tea production that is nominally 2003, that uses the same wrapper as the 2001 Red Dayi Simplified, but doesn't have a normal loose neipao ticket that describes the tea, but simply a big version of a dayi neifei design as a neipao. It's not a 7542, and it's not Dayi, but it's also not a fake tea--one would be stupid to refuse to buy it if offered for only a few hundred dollars. It's basically a privately pressed tea by (not even a teashop) a hobbyist--who just used what was at hand, and didn't make any effort at making their own wrapper or anything. Didn't get in trouble from using the copyrighted wrapper because that tea never circulated very widely and isn't well known at all. There are a ton of privately pressed teas by teashops and hobbyists that never made much of an attempt to do any graphic arts design works. Much of the time, it's just a standard Zhongcha wrapper and the standard Zhongcha neifei, and the only people who knows what it is where the ones who originally pressed it. The standard term for these teas are "Taipai". A lot of productions have some little inked stamp or other with characters for Zhencang, or Teji or Hongyin or something similar on top of a regular design. Most of these aren't particularly special (some are just worker-led extracurricular productions at their own factories, using what was at hand), but a few of them are really, really, good, even if you have little hope of finding them to buy. They aren't fake teas, though, and these teas are not examples of fake teas being better than the real stuff. *Actual FAKE teas* are usually horrible tasting (or at best blandly pleasant for one or two brews). That's because it takes capital to make teas, and in particular, decent tea from the bush, and scammers usually don't have either capital or access. What they do is take any old set of leaves, including used ones thrown out from the teashops and repress them in a new wrapper. Sometimes they'll go as far as to use common material for expensive materials and it won't be horrible, just not good. But the point of faking is to make money. Today, you can use a pretty decent warehoused tea that costs $100-$200 and do some creative work on it, wrap it up like a famous tea that costs $1000 and sell it for $600. "Hey, this is pretty decent but's it's kind of off?" "Good HK Storage, like how smooth it is?" Back in the early aughts, you didn't have much space at all in terms of costs before your fake leaves you with no profits. So if you know that a tea has been in someone's possession for a long time, with a deeply buried neifei, and that tea has some really good qualities--it is unlikely for that tea to be fake. Something is going on, but one should leave fakery as a last resort explanation. It invites emotions and rash actions (like throwing away a tea that would have actually been great given some rest of a few months to years). There are many different ways for a story to be true for some teas. Other teas, like the 1999 Big Green Tree, or the '01 No.4 101/102/103, or the 208 has very straightforward histories. There are only about 7800-8200 cakes of the 1999 MTF XY-commissioned Big Green Tree Black Stamp. There are no separate runs, no weird typographies to study, not a huge ton of variance even in storage, because everyone took care of their cakes since about 2003 and especially since 2006-7.
Whew! A long one about fakes.
Now, I want to discuss something about processing. The first there is that there is no *true* style of puerh tea. No true set of prescribed methods to make a cake of puerh tea, especially not in the sense of longjing or qimen or beihao, you get the picture. People have been very creative with puerh for a very long time, and almost certainly longer than for any other sort of tea-and it's robustness towards fermentation, with moisture, oxidation, or age, known almost as long. Most *any* puerh will age. Maybe not necessarily the way you like it, but also, the way oldsters like their teas might not be what you'd like, and that's really a-ok. Just realize that all processing methods have both benefits and costs. If you chop up leaves and roll those suckas hard, you'll get a concentrated taste that probably will be hard to drink young, but very potent and rich when it's older. However, what you often get is a very narrow band of depth and potency, and sort of taste/sounds like a Megadeath concert, young and old tea alike. If you roll tea gently, you'll more often get a broader taste with more detectable single notes like some sinuous quartet written by Beethoven. These teas can be thin in depth and are often in danger of being monotonous with age. If you do the shaqing at a high temperature, you can get a more bold taste, boldly green, boldly aged--but you often don't have much complexity. If you do it a a low temperature, oftentimes you risk the tea oxidising gradually after the manner of white teas, even as you strike for a more complex sense. If you oxidize the teas a bit, you can increase the complexity of the tea's taste and aroma, and make it more palatable and smooth to drink when it's young. However, for every bit that you oxidize, that fraction is going to age slower and be less interesting/nice at a certain age. One thing that is generally true in one direction is that with puerh, you do not want to speed dry anything, maocha, cakes, with heated air. Young teas have good aromas, and then underperforms as it ages. So always sundried maocha and pressed cakes if you can help it. Anyways, there are a ton of ways to process puerh teas to your taste and lots of dials. Those various processing tactics have various outcomes. What someone who wants to get tea they like should do, is to try out various brands, new and old teas, try out known bad-for-whatever-reason (for example, try and find some of these fall 2011 teas that TeaUrchin used to sell--they were all overoxidized, and you can taste the consequences ten years on) teas and get a sense of what is "this is too much or too little of xx processing for me".
What one should not do is let the traditionalismos push one around for their choices. Most of those people have managed to buy good examples of the styles that they like at an affordable cost and behaving all Boomer and bleep, and if you check things, there is rarely ever any *good* examples of such "proper style" puerh (why I'm sorry not to have speed bought that late '90's 8582 at Houde--that was indeed what an 8582 is supposed to be) even available to buy, let alone affordably so. The same with people talking about how some cake that's supposedly from XX micro-area ain't really so. Here's the thing--Probably no new gushu teas ever makes it to broad public sales from the smaller places today. That means no Bingdao teas, probably no Xigui teas, no Bohetang, no Mansong. You can buy shengtai Bingdao at very high prices, say about $1.5/g. The only hope with getting even close to real without spending huge money is to find older teas, but they are often not great either and certainly don't benefit from the modern technique that makes quite a bit of good puerh today. Again, virtually everything gushu that's from any place you've ever heard of, is probably $2+ a gram today for fresh maocha. That's way above what most people outside of East Asia is willing to pay for tea. So keep an even keel, stay humble, and keep an open mind about what you want and how you'll compromise/spend for the qualities you want.
man, I hope this isn't too rambling and people get some benefit from these thoughts.
I drank a number of Puzhen '08 brews through the week, and they were good, but I was amazed at the durability of the Essence of Tea Manmai, which delivered solid brews probably past thirty brews and still had oomph by the time I finally dumped it on Friday. One thing I was pretty curious about is that the nature of the bitterness in the EoT Manmai is rather similar to the YQH Yehgu, relatively powerful, durable, and flavorful--so wonder if the sort of trees harvested in Bada area are similar to the sort of trees that produced Yehgu...
The shu of Friday was a blend of renmaints of shu samples--Yiwu Tea Mountain Yiwu shu brick, the YS Yiwu Rooster, and with some XZH Court Shu to round things out to 8g. It worked okay for a decent enough brew, particularly in the sense of comfortable qi.
The tea of Saturday was the YQH '07 Huangshan Lingya. This seems pretty clearly, after recent tea drinking over the past several months, a tea made from trees between the southern rim of GFZ and Tongqinghe. I rather enjoyed it, but it's a bit smaller than teas like the XZH '09 GFZ, YTM Tongqinghe '14, and others like it, and it still has amazingly poor durability for a tea as good as it is up to the cliff, tho' with rest and longer brews, I could get a thin taste. One reason I wanted to have a session was that I recently had a good thermos with it. Thermosing might be what it's most suited for--at least until aging oxidize/ferment some more flavor into later brews.
The aroma tends to have high barnyard, brown sugar, a suggestion of musk, a suggestion of candied fruit. The aroma stops being a factor quickly, but the last main brew with aroma, and sometimes later had a more candied fruit forward aspect. The taste is primarily wood, barnyard, a bit of bitter-tcm that gives depth in the brews between the wash and the fifth brew. After the fifth brew, the taste is primarily a thin wood taste with things like fruit, honey, or a touch of bitterness with it. Mineral and choco notes have happened, too. The mouthfeel is quite good, and lasts well past meaningful flavor. It has good viscosity with a sticky texture, with only a few brews with astringency of any note. The most consistent aftertaste is a subtly sweet yiwu huigan that is usually very fast and shows up with main flavors. Mouthcoats happens often as well. The nicest aftertastes are the early brew's yun/gentle-shallow pungent huigans, as well as a tendency for an herbal-sensate sweet tonguecoat for salivating goodness. Feeling goes down the throat nicely in brews two and three where the best aftertastes are, as well. Moderate to strong qi of no particular character for me.
All in all, a pretty worthwhile tea with a notable weakness.
The first tea today was the Teaside 2016 Pu Muen Jungle Raw thai tea. I wanted to check on whether if my first impressions are right. What I wound up thinking is that this tea is a lot like the 2006 Ming Dee Hong Thai Chang, in the sense that it had a real tangerine segment taste in it. I was thinking about the older tea because more broadly, in terms of sheer quality metrics, Thai tea can't measure up to puerh, so getting some, particularly when I have so much good tea already, is mostly about just collection. That being said, I definitely enjoyed the session.
The aroma often has honey and tangerine in it. Sometimes it has herbals or camphor. The taste is very consistent, with the usual lack of dynamic character of Thai tea--a fishy umami, tangerine, and a sort of sweet dark herbal/mineral depth. There can be a touch of bitterness, camphor or wood. The taste is a bit narrow, and is distinctly not as rich as a good puerh would be. The viscosity is moderate to good with gradually increasing astringency part of the way through the session. Aftertastes include a bit of mouthcoat and a bit of other stuff coming from a lingering bitterness, like mouth aroma. Some interesting cooling. The qi is moderate to strong and pretty relaxing and enjoyable.
This a very solid tea and worth the money, but it has a lot of competition, including the '06 MingDee, which I realize is fairly close in nature to this tea in retrospect.
The tea today was the 2007 XZH 7542 Conscientious Prescription. The sheer aggressive lack of any Bada in this tea makes it a lot more like the 2006 XZH Menghai Nu'er Brick or '06 Taipei Expo Memorial jincha rather than any sort of normal 7542. Tho' it's not that different from an actual 70's Conscientious Prescription, which is also very northern Bulang forward. This tea doesn't really have any barnyard or dark herbal depth like normal 7542s, and it's rather thin and delicate tasting. Fortunately for my sweet tooth, yellow tea stained and all, it's sweet.
Aroma changes around through a session, so it's dynamic there, if not wildly so. Early brew had high barnyard, honey, and musk, brews a bit later had herbal/wood, while brews late tend to be sort of minerally-woody. One brew had a fairly fruity aspect while another has floral hints, but through it all, there's usually a lot of plumminess. The taste through a first stage is a plummy honey with wood/herbal fringes and a bit of bitter-tart. Then it becomes more dominantly a sensate-sweet plummyiness. There a number of later plummy brews with an interesting and delicate floralness that is enjoyable. Good viscosity and very round, not much astringency except for some late brews. As for aftertastes, after a few brews, there is a consistent yiwu huigan to almond sweetness adding to an already sweet plumminess. There is a tendency towards a subtle mouth aroma. Light mouthcoats. The qi is actually kind of strong for my expectations, certainly stronger than the '06 brick, but there's nothing distinctive about it, tho' it does linger past the cup a bit.
Again, while the taste is broad, thin, and high, it was really, really enjoyable. It does remind me also of the 2002 MTF qingbing I have mostly drunk up (probably 7542, but could be 7582 or 7222, uses a very generic wrapper used since 88qb) when it decides to be uber plummy, but that tea is more substantially rich woody and herbal, with thinner viscosity and mucilaginous texture.
The shu of Friday was a blend of renmaints of shu samples--Yiwu Tea Mountain Yiwu shu brick, the YS Yiwu Rooster, and with some XZH Court Shu to round things out to 8g. It worked okay for a decent enough brew, particularly in the sense of comfortable qi.
The tea of Saturday was the YQH '07 Huangshan Lingya. This seems pretty clearly, after recent tea drinking over the past several months, a tea made from trees between the southern rim of GFZ and Tongqinghe. I rather enjoyed it, but it's a bit smaller than teas like the XZH '09 GFZ, YTM Tongqinghe '14, and others like it, and it still has amazingly poor durability for a tea as good as it is up to the cliff, tho' with rest and longer brews, I could get a thin taste. One reason I wanted to have a session was that I recently had a good thermos with it. Thermosing might be what it's most suited for--at least until aging oxidize/ferment some more flavor into later brews.
The aroma tends to have high barnyard, brown sugar, a suggestion of musk, a suggestion of candied fruit. The aroma stops being a factor quickly, but the last main brew with aroma, and sometimes later had a more candied fruit forward aspect. The taste is primarily wood, barnyard, a bit of bitter-tcm that gives depth in the brews between the wash and the fifth brew. After the fifth brew, the taste is primarily a thin wood taste with things like fruit, honey, or a touch of bitterness with it. Mineral and choco notes have happened, too. The mouthfeel is quite good, and lasts well past meaningful flavor. It has good viscosity with a sticky texture, with only a few brews with astringency of any note. The most consistent aftertaste is a subtly sweet yiwu huigan that is usually very fast and shows up with main flavors. Mouthcoats happens often as well. The nicest aftertastes are the early brew's yun/gentle-shallow pungent huigans, as well as a tendency for an herbal-sensate sweet tonguecoat for salivating goodness. Feeling goes down the throat nicely in brews two and three where the best aftertastes are, as well. Moderate to strong qi of no particular character for me.
All in all, a pretty worthwhile tea with a notable weakness.
The first tea today was the Teaside 2016 Pu Muen Jungle Raw thai tea. I wanted to check on whether if my first impressions are right. What I wound up thinking is that this tea is a lot like the 2006 Ming Dee Hong Thai Chang, in the sense that it had a real tangerine segment taste in it. I was thinking about the older tea because more broadly, in terms of sheer quality metrics, Thai tea can't measure up to puerh, so getting some, particularly when I have so much good tea already, is mostly about just collection. That being said, I definitely enjoyed the session.
The aroma often has honey and tangerine in it. Sometimes it has herbals or camphor. The taste is very consistent, with the usual lack of dynamic character of Thai tea--a fishy umami, tangerine, and a sort of sweet dark herbal/mineral depth. There can be a touch of bitterness, camphor or wood. The taste is a bit narrow, and is distinctly not as rich as a good puerh would be. The viscosity is moderate to good with gradually increasing astringency part of the way through the session. Aftertastes include a bit of mouthcoat and a bit of other stuff coming from a lingering bitterness, like mouth aroma. Some interesting cooling. The qi is moderate to strong and pretty relaxing and enjoyable.
This a very solid tea and worth the money, but it has a lot of competition, including the '06 MingDee, which I realize is fairly close in nature to this tea in retrospect.
The tea today was the 2007 XZH 7542 Conscientious Prescription. The sheer aggressive lack of any Bada in this tea makes it a lot more like the 2006 XZH Menghai Nu'er Brick or '06 Taipei Expo Memorial jincha rather than any sort of normal 7542. Tho' it's not that different from an actual 70's Conscientious Prescription, which is also very northern Bulang forward. This tea doesn't really have any barnyard or dark herbal depth like normal 7542s, and it's rather thin and delicate tasting. Fortunately for my sweet tooth, yellow tea stained and all, it's sweet.
Aroma changes around through a session, so it's dynamic there, if not wildly so. Early brew had high barnyard, honey, and musk, brews a bit later had herbal/wood, while brews late tend to be sort of minerally-woody. One brew had a fairly fruity aspect while another has floral hints, but through it all, there's usually a lot of plumminess. The taste through a first stage is a plummy honey with wood/herbal fringes and a bit of bitter-tart. Then it becomes more dominantly a sensate-sweet plummyiness. There a number of later plummy brews with an interesting and delicate floralness that is enjoyable. Good viscosity and very round, not much astringency except for some late brews. As for aftertastes, after a few brews, there is a consistent yiwu huigan to almond sweetness adding to an already sweet plumminess. There is a tendency towards a subtle mouth aroma. Light mouthcoats. The qi is actually kind of strong for my expectations, certainly stronger than the '06 brick, but there's nothing distinctive about it, tho' it does linger past the cup a bit.
Again, while the taste is broad, thin, and high, it was really, really enjoyable. It does remind me also of the 2002 MTF qingbing I have mostly drunk up (probably 7542, but could be 7582 or 7222, uses a very generic wrapper used since 88qb) when it decides to be uber plummy, but that tea is more substantially rich woody and herbal, with thinner viscosity and mucilaginous texture.
Not too hectic a tea weekend...
The shu of Friday was some of the XZH 2017 7581 imitation. It is a seriously mellow and rounded version of this style of tea, with only subtle wood and camphor, a bit more choco, and subtle fruitiness in the taste of later steeps. The aroma isn't that strong. The flip side is that it's not sour or has any of the other usual faults of such tea. The qi was mild-moderate and pretty relaxing. It's a relatively boring shu, say, compared to W2T's Camphornaut. OTOH, I definitely enjoyed a sense of easy peace when drinking it.
The first tea of yesterday was the 2006 YQH Chawangshu, inspired in part by Mattcha's criticism of the tea. My perspective after drinking this tea is that indeed very mild and sort of thin. I would say that first, a number of YQH's earliest teas are pretty mild, and second, Chawangshu teas have often been fairly mild. Going over my notes for other Chawangshu teas, it feels like there isn't that much difference between the '06 YQH and the '12 YTM Chawangshu. I'm not convinced that there is any simple logic to Yang's pricing as Mattcha paints it, though, as his prices do not correlate to value in my book nearly as reliably as Sanhetang's pricing.
Aroma during the early part of the session tends to be dominated by mushroom, often with barnyard and plumminess, and more rarely/subtly with choco and wood. As the session goes on, the aroma becomes more dominated by wood with some barnyard in it. The taste generally sort of follows the aroma, and generally is mushroom and/or plummy. There is a productive bitterness. The viscosity is good early and tends to weaken as the session goes on. There is a pudding sense in the texture in the early going. The bitterness generates some cooling feeling in mouth and top of throat. The most consistent aftertaste is a subtle and fast yiwu huigan to sweetness. In the very early going, the bitter generates a touch of floral mouth aroma. The bitterness more generally delivers a sense of mouth and throatcoat. The qi is on the moderate side and is of good quality. I didn't press this tea hard before putting it aside.
There wasn't a sense of intrusion when it came to astringency, so I assume it was relatively light.
As for whether I'd buy more...Probably not--I'd rather see if I can't get the '08 Auspicious Chawangshu, or spend more money for the more chawangshuish teas like the '12 XZH fenghua chawang... Of course just as qua Guafengzhai area in general, the '09 XZH GFZ is much better than this YQH tea, tho' not as agreeably tasting. Probably much more expensive than the YQH, too.
The second tea of yesterday was the XZH '07 Yuanshilin. I brewed my usual amount of leaves in a smaller pot so it was more potent, and the hongcha issues aren't so inmyface. I wound up enjoying the tea a good bit.
Aroma and taste has a deep tobacco character, to the point of raisin depth. There is a sort of woodiness that one would find in not especially moist raisins. As the session moves on, the lighter aroma rises some and becomes more malt, choco, barnyard. The taste is deep and potently tobacco-raisin depth with a bit of associated tartness, and has the richness of banzhang and those emulating banzhang tea. The taste gradually becomes softer and higher as the session moves on until it is more maltchocobarnyard. Good viscosity of no particular character. Low astringency, but can increase in spots here and there. It has occasional nice floral or woody mouth aroma, but the star of the aftertaste show is strong and flavorful mouthcoat and good yun with associated strong feeling at top of throat. The qi is moderate to strong and of good quality. I also didn't push the tea too hard this day.
Today, I did a check brew of ZeroSum from White2tea. Unlike with the Thai stuff, I'm a bit more enthusiastic about having this on the to-buy list. Seemed less like an upgraded Censors, and also a bit more like the vendor description, at least in the early going. Sweet cream and pipe tobacco is a pretty good combo. It is less like Censors than in my initial session. Mouthfeel wasn't as beeswaxy.
The shu of Friday was some of the XZH 2017 7581 imitation. It is a seriously mellow and rounded version of this style of tea, with only subtle wood and camphor, a bit more choco, and subtle fruitiness in the taste of later steeps. The aroma isn't that strong. The flip side is that it's not sour or has any of the other usual faults of such tea. The qi was mild-moderate and pretty relaxing. It's a relatively boring shu, say, compared to W2T's Camphornaut. OTOH, I definitely enjoyed a sense of easy peace when drinking it.
The first tea of yesterday was the 2006 YQH Chawangshu, inspired in part by Mattcha's criticism of the tea. My perspective after drinking this tea is that indeed very mild and sort of thin. I would say that first, a number of YQH's earliest teas are pretty mild, and second, Chawangshu teas have often been fairly mild. Going over my notes for other Chawangshu teas, it feels like there isn't that much difference between the '06 YQH and the '12 YTM Chawangshu. I'm not convinced that there is any simple logic to Yang's pricing as Mattcha paints it, though, as his prices do not correlate to value in my book nearly as reliably as Sanhetang's pricing.
Aroma during the early part of the session tends to be dominated by mushroom, often with barnyard and plumminess, and more rarely/subtly with choco and wood. As the session goes on, the aroma becomes more dominated by wood with some barnyard in it. The taste generally sort of follows the aroma, and generally is mushroom and/or plummy. There is a productive bitterness. The viscosity is good early and tends to weaken as the session goes on. There is a pudding sense in the texture in the early going. The bitterness generates some cooling feeling in mouth and top of throat. The most consistent aftertaste is a subtle and fast yiwu huigan to sweetness. In the very early going, the bitter generates a touch of floral mouth aroma. The bitterness more generally delivers a sense of mouth and throatcoat. The qi is on the moderate side and is of good quality. I didn't press this tea hard before putting it aside.
There wasn't a sense of intrusion when it came to astringency, so I assume it was relatively light.
As for whether I'd buy more...Probably not--I'd rather see if I can't get the '08 Auspicious Chawangshu, or spend more money for the more chawangshuish teas like the '12 XZH fenghua chawang... Of course just as qua Guafengzhai area in general, the '09 XZH GFZ is much better than this YQH tea, tho' not as agreeably tasting. Probably much more expensive than the YQH, too.
The second tea of yesterday was the XZH '07 Yuanshilin. I brewed my usual amount of leaves in a smaller pot so it was more potent, and the hongcha issues aren't so inmyface. I wound up enjoying the tea a good bit.
Aroma and taste has a deep tobacco character, to the point of raisin depth. There is a sort of woodiness that one would find in not especially moist raisins. As the session moves on, the lighter aroma rises some and becomes more malt, choco, barnyard. The taste is deep and potently tobacco-raisin depth with a bit of associated tartness, and has the richness of banzhang and those emulating banzhang tea. The taste gradually becomes softer and higher as the session moves on until it is more maltchocobarnyard. Good viscosity of no particular character. Low astringency, but can increase in spots here and there. It has occasional nice floral or woody mouth aroma, but the star of the aftertaste show is strong and flavorful mouthcoat and good yun with associated strong feeling at top of throat. The qi is moderate to strong and of good quality. I also didn't push the tea too hard this day.
Today, I did a check brew of ZeroSum from White2tea. Unlike with the Thai stuff, I'm a bit more enthusiastic about having this on the to-buy list. Seemed less like an upgraded Censors, and also a bit more like the vendor description, at least in the early going. Sweet cream and pipe tobacco is a pretty good combo. It is less like Censors than in my initial session. Mouthfeel wasn't as beeswaxy.
I have started drinking tea again regularly to destress and take a break from coffee from time to time-
Back in 2015-2016 I was introduced to Puer and tried to go as wide and deep as I knew how- pulling heavily from the more accessible western facing resources like TeaDb and various blogs. I bought copious amounts of samples from W2T, EoT, Tea Urchin, and YS before burning my stomach out on young sheng, “budget teas” and “daily drinkers” and getting into specialty coffee instead.
I pretty much stopped drinking tea altogether except for a memorable incident of getting some kind of strep throat or something that completely wrecked my ability to swallow for a few days and for whatever reason decided to try and drink the last of my sample of W2T’s 2016 “Last Thoughts”- which not only calmed me way down, but coated my throat and made it so that I could swallow pretty much painlessly.
Fast forward to this last year, for whatever reason, the W2T line caught my eye after a few years break- and I got some of the higher recommended teas from the lineup including a full cake of high quality stuff after seeing what “Last Thoughts” had done previously...
I have finally gone back and tasted some of my older samples and- wow- not all tea is created equal... so far I currently only have real plans to invest in my W2T stock going forward, but EoT’s samples stood out nicely as well- I appreciate what Paul is doing and his blends generally appeal to my palate.
My last order from the new year sale is due to arrive Monday and I have a couple cakes earmarked for order next sale.
Going forward I’m not looking for “budget teas” or “daily drinkers”- I’ve found there is definitely a quality shift that is worth it both in body feeling, and stomach ease.
Back in 2015-2016 I was introduced to Puer and tried to go as wide and deep as I knew how- pulling heavily from the more accessible western facing resources like TeaDb and various blogs. I bought copious amounts of samples from W2T, EoT, Tea Urchin, and YS before burning my stomach out on young sheng, “budget teas” and “daily drinkers” and getting into specialty coffee instead.
I pretty much stopped drinking tea altogether except for a memorable incident of getting some kind of strep throat or something that completely wrecked my ability to swallow for a few days and for whatever reason decided to try and drink the last of my sample of W2T’s 2016 “Last Thoughts”- which not only calmed me way down, but coated my throat and made it so that I could swallow pretty much painlessly.
Fast forward to this last year, for whatever reason, the W2T line caught my eye after a few years break- and I got some of the higher recommended teas from the lineup including a full cake of high quality stuff after seeing what “Last Thoughts” had done previously...
I have finally gone back and tasted some of my older samples and- wow- not all tea is created equal... so far I currently only have real plans to invest in my W2T stock going forward, but EoT’s samples stood out nicely as well- I appreciate what Paul is doing and his blends generally appeal to my palate.
My last order from the new year sale is due to arrive Monday and I have a couple cakes earmarked for order next sale.
Going forward I’m not looking for “budget teas” or “daily drinkers”- I’ve found there is definitely a quality shift that is worth it both in body feeling, and stomach ease.
Sort of taking it easy on the taking of notes this weekend, so fewer details...
Shu of Friday was the Drip'd O'Bitters chenpi shu from W2T in coin form. It was pretty good, interestingly less citrusy than the bamboo chenpi or Saturday Mass. Much weaker durability. Wasn't bitter.
Saturday's first tea was the '06 XZH BanPo LaoZhai. It was decent enough, but I was kind of expecting a tea that was much more gentle and mushroomy than it actually was. This time around it was dark, sharp tobacco, like with the '07 Yuanshilin. The taste was not as deep, and there were some subtle fruit and almond sweetness--so nominally, it was a touch more complex in taste, if less rich than the YSL. The aroma was a bit weak and didn't make a big impression after a few brews. The mouthfeel was the same as my first try, very nice and a sort of silky/syrupy texture. Decent enough, but more on the moderate end of moderate-strong qi.
A lot of these Menghai teas really can taste like one another after a bunch of aging, and it feels like the primary means anyone can tell a reasonably real LBZ is how much of a broad (rather than completely proximate to the bitterness) choco and barnyard depth there is, reflecting the Bulang heritage exemplified by Mannuo. If it's mostly tobacco, it might be more adulterated with other Menghai area teas.
That last session of the XZH Yuanshilin might merely be a better than usual session, but I think a lot more about it, and think better of it for now.
I wasn't completely satisfied yesterday so I started a second tea, which was the '20 W2T Mirage. Very enjoyable green tea-ish puerh that's similar to a Mangfei style tobacco and honey character. It's a bit bigger than how Mangfei usually is, and is more honey. It's not too complex, but is nicely aromatic, refreshing with a good viscosity, and has a bit of qi. There's a degree of sencha-ness in it. Earliest brews had a sencha greeness, and a bit of the sweetness isn't honey but more of an alkaline soy milk sweetness that's like a sencha after a few previous steepings. I wouldn't say that it is a great prospect for aging, but it does feel like a good tea to drink now.
The first tea today was the '06 XZH Youle. Middle of my 3kg cake is highly framented, dusty material like brick tea. So initial brews were fairly cloudy. The taste therefore also had factory tea-ish nature in a concentration toward a dark powerful center, at least early on, instead of a more broad apple with soft choco depth. Early brews was somewhat sour and tobacco depth tart. Later brews settle into its traditional unique taste, though, with the wood, camphor, spices, vegeto-apple, choco hints. Aroma was not high, but it was consistently present throughout a long session. Viscosity was good much of the session, and then became really good and thicc late, reminiscent of how nicely thick TW stored version of this tea is like. Early brews has some of the things that makes me think of this as top tea with a rather synchonized qi, throatfeel, and subtle pungent huigan that feels kind of magical. Qi in general through the session is of very high quality. Late brews has a subtle yiwu huigan to almond sweetness. lots of brews had.
But I did do another tea. I was thinking of that Youle compared to a good factory tea, particularly that Houde late '90s 8582, and thinking about how age really mellows out a gushu tea into maybe something that's bland. That 8582 was really good, though. This comfortably beats most 7542s. Oh, speaking of 7542, I still have a last little fragment of a putative 2002 201 7542 QingBing cake gifted to me from Paul Murray way back when, after he did a blogpost on this tea. I'm pretty inclined to believe this could be something different. Aroma isn't all that strong, but strong plummy, a bit fruity, a bit umami. The taste is very plummy, but thin--a bit like the XZH '07 7542, but that tea has a thicker, sweeter taste. Anyways, the '02 only has a tiny bit of dark taste from a dark woodiness associated with a bitterness. Viscosity is about a bit less than moderate, but astringency is pretty much gone, when it came into my possession with a bit of annoying astringency. Not much aftertaste. Qi seems to be aged caffeine. Little dynamism.
All in all a decent tea weekend...
Shu of Friday was the Drip'd O'Bitters chenpi shu from W2T in coin form. It was pretty good, interestingly less citrusy than the bamboo chenpi or Saturday Mass. Much weaker durability. Wasn't bitter.
Saturday's first tea was the '06 XZH BanPo LaoZhai. It was decent enough, but I was kind of expecting a tea that was much more gentle and mushroomy than it actually was. This time around it was dark, sharp tobacco, like with the '07 Yuanshilin. The taste was not as deep, and there were some subtle fruit and almond sweetness--so nominally, it was a touch more complex in taste, if less rich than the YSL. The aroma was a bit weak and didn't make a big impression after a few brews. The mouthfeel was the same as my first try, very nice and a sort of silky/syrupy texture. Decent enough, but more on the moderate end of moderate-strong qi.
A lot of these Menghai teas really can taste like one another after a bunch of aging, and it feels like the primary means anyone can tell a reasonably real LBZ is how much of a broad (rather than completely proximate to the bitterness) choco and barnyard depth there is, reflecting the Bulang heritage exemplified by Mannuo. If it's mostly tobacco, it might be more adulterated with other Menghai area teas.
That last session of the XZH Yuanshilin might merely be a better than usual session, but I think a lot more about it, and think better of it for now.
I wasn't completely satisfied yesterday so I started a second tea, which was the '20 W2T Mirage. Very enjoyable green tea-ish puerh that's similar to a Mangfei style tobacco and honey character. It's a bit bigger than how Mangfei usually is, and is more honey. It's not too complex, but is nicely aromatic, refreshing with a good viscosity, and has a bit of qi. There's a degree of sencha-ness in it. Earliest brews had a sencha greeness, and a bit of the sweetness isn't honey but more of an alkaline soy milk sweetness that's like a sencha after a few previous steepings. I wouldn't say that it is a great prospect for aging, but it does feel like a good tea to drink now.
The first tea today was the '06 XZH Youle. Middle of my 3kg cake is highly framented, dusty material like brick tea. So initial brews were fairly cloudy. The taste therefore also had factory tea-ish nature in a concentration toward a dark powerful center, at least early on, instead of a more broad apple with soft choco depth. Early brews was somewhat sour and tobacco depth tart. Later brews settle into its traditional unique taste, though, with the wood, camphor, spices, vegeto-apple, choco hints. Aroma was not high, but it was consistently present throughout a long session. Viscosity was good much of the session, and then became really good and thicc late, reminiscent of how nicely thick TW stored version of this tea is like. Early brews has some of the things that makes me think of this as top tea with a rather synchonized qi, throatfeel, and subtle pungent huigan that feels kind of magical. Qi in general through the session is of very high quality. Late brews has a subtle yiwu huigan to almond sweetness. lots of brews had.
But I did do another tea. I was thinking of that Youle compared to a good factory tea, particularly that Houde late '90s 8582, and thinking about how age really mellows out a gushu tea into maybe something that's bland. That 8582 was really good, though. This comfortably beats most 7542s. Oh, speaking of 7542, I still have a last little fragment of a putative 2002 201 7542 QingBing cake gifted to me from Paul Murray way back when, after he did a blogpost on this tea. I'm pretty inclined to believe this could be something different. Aroma isn't all that strong, but strong plummy, a bit fruity, a bit umami. The taste is very plummy, but thin--a bit like the XZH '07 7542, but that tea has a thicker, sweeter taste. Anyways, the '02 only has a tiny bit of dark taste from a dark woodiness associated with a bitterness. Viscosity is about a bit less than moderate, but astringency is pretty much gone, when it came into my possession with a bit of annoying astringency. Not much aftertaste. Qi seems to be aged caffeine. Little dynamism.
All in all a decent tea weekend...
The W2T Mirage continued to give a number of good brews during the week, fairly durable.
Did a western brew of Yiwu Tea Mountain Yiwu black, and it turned out well, rather subtle, but still rewards attentive sipping.
Friday's shu was a second try of '20 W2T The Nameless One. I was quite satisfied, and do not regret spending the money to get two cakes of this. The wodui is much reduced from my first time drinking, and the shu is unusually floral and fruity. The first couple of brews had a pleasurable bitterness. Good viscosity, and plenty of aftertastes. The core of the tea, like the '16 XZH Xige, is pretty high, like some white chocolate or milk or whatever going on-which meant that the tea grows mild very quickly as the flavor thins through the session. Good viscosity and oily texture. Capable of strong cooling feelings in mouth. The qi was very enjoyable and strong. This qi, as well as the mouthfeel, lasted way past the majority of the flavor.
The first tea of today was the '20 Essence of Tea Jinggu Forest, because I wanted to compare with W2T Mirage.
The aroma comprises of some vegetalness, honey, tobacco, and on occasion, herbalness. Aromatic performance doesn't last very deep into the session. Taste is vegetal, honey, with occasional sweet herbal, tobacco here and there. There are some fruit nuances in aroma and especially the taste. Late brews consistently delivers a sweet light honey with a little vegetalness. Moderate to good viscosity, with some slight texture to it. Astringency is moderate much of the way through the session and fades in the late going. A brew or two had a decent feeling down throat. There are occasional yiwu huigan to fruitiness with only light elements of other aftertastes. Qi is moderate to strong, and lasts pretty much to the end of the session.
The second tea of today was the '19 YS XY blend. This wasn't nearly as good, in the sense that it was more bitter, and the flavor is not super strong around this sort of green bitterness.
Aroma is vegetal and barnyard mostly, but it can have a sweet umami similar to eggy thing one finds on sushu plates. The sweet eggy umami also shows up in the taste but only generally after soup has cooled. The taste also features vegetalness and grains sweetness. The viscosity stays around moderate level, with not too much astringency. Somewhat capable of generating mouthcoat, and can generate a decent mouth aroma as well. Not much aftertaste.
W2T Mirage is better than either of the two shengs I had today. While Jinggu Forest is pretty decent, the YS XY doesn't really compare favorably to the other two, despite similar pricing. In general, if you like Yongde county tea or Jinggu material, Mirage may well be a decent bet to purchase in terms of drinkers.
Did a western brew of Yiwu Tea Mountain Yiwu black, and it turned out well, rather subtle, but still rewards attentive sipping.
Friday's shu was a second try of '20 W2T The Nameless One. I was quite satisfied, and do not regret spending the money to get two cakes of this. The wodui is much reduced from my first time drinking, and the shu is unusually floral and fruity. The first couple of brews had a pleasurable bitterness. Good viscosity, and plenty of aftertastes. The core of the tea, like the '16 XZH Xige, is pretty high, like some white chocolate or milk or whatever going on-which meant that the tea grows mild very quickly as the flavor thins through the session. Good viscosity and oily texture. Capable of strong cooling feelings in mouth. The qi was very enjoyable and strong. This qi, as well as the mouthfeel, lasted way past the majority of the flavor.
The first tea of today was the '20 Essence of Tea Jinggu Forest, because I wanted to compare with W2T Mirage.
The aroma comprises of some vegetalness, honey, tobacco, and on occasion, herbalness. Aromatic performance doesn't last very deep into the session. Taste is vegetal, honey, with occasional sweet herbal, tobacco here and there. There are some fruit nuances in aroma and especially the taste. Late brews consistently delivers a sweet light honey with a little vegetalness. Moderate to good viscosity, with some slight texture to it. Astringency is moderate much of the way through the session and fades in the late going. A brew or two had a decent feeling down throat. There are occasional yiwu huigan to fruitiness with only light elements of other aftertastes. Qi is moderate to strong, and lasts pretty much to the end of the session.
The second tea of today was the '19 YS XY blend. This wasn't nearly as good, in the sense that it was more bitter, and the flavor is not super strong around this sort of green bitterness.
Aroma is vegetal and barnyard mostly, but it can have a sweet umami similar to eggy thing one finds on sushu plates. The sweet eggy umami also shows up in the taste but only generally after soup has cooled. The taste also features vegetalness and grains sweetness. The viscosity stays around moderate level, with not too much astringency. Somewhat capable of generating mouthcoat, and can generate a decent mouth aroma as well. Not much aftertaste.
W2T Mirage is better than either of the two shengs I had today. While Jinggu Forest is pretty decent, the YS XY doesn't really compare favorably to the other two, despite similar pricing. In general, if you like Yongde county tea or Jinggu material, Mirage may well be a decent bet to purchase in terms of drinkers.
I did a couple more teas today...
First was the Essence of Tea Boundless, again to sort of contrast with Mirage and all the other cheaper northern tea of good quality. It was rather good, and in particular, it had a very good set of aftertastes, and represents a level of quality that people can't aspire to with more famous places.
It had a sweet and savory vegetal aroma early on, and gradually shifts towards a more sweet herbal aroma. When really pushed the vegetal aroma is back. The aroma can also have a umami-ish sweet sense verging on creme brulee. The taste generally tends to be sweet with vegetal background, a touch of bitterness, and some honey. The umami sweet is in the taste on occasion as well. This has good viscosity with a velvety texture. The astringency is light to moderate, but is extremely productive and melts away. That aftertaste starts with a yiwu huigan to sweet herbals and leaves a long lasting mouthcoat. The early brews have a yun going. There is some cooling associated with all of this. The qi is moderate of good quality, feels caffeinated as well. Did about thirteen brews before putting it in the fridge, seems like it's got at least a couple more brews in it...
The aroma and taste are much smaller and less durably strong than W2T Mirage, but is at least as strong as EoT Jinggu Forest and the XY blend from YS. The qi is at least as strong as Mirage, and the aftertaste game is much better. Getting this level of performance from a Yiwu would probably cost more than three times/200g than this cake's $68.
The second tea was a quick slap of a reminder that there is a reason why famous areas are famous and expensive. I got this pair of Bulangs from YS, which were made by the brand YS worked with back in 2009-10, RuiCaoXiang, in the process of getting other more interesting teas like Dayi an xiang shu and YS xikong. Off and on over the years I had some pleasant and not so pleasant session with these teas. The '09 DongFangBuBai is a tea made from the area YS explains as ManMu, which is a bit south of west of Lao Man'e near Mannan township (Bulangshan - https://mapcarta.com/15978102). One thing I think is interesting is that before about 2010, there were not a ton of bulang teas made with the explicit sense of being material from further south than Lao Man'e. You had EoT doing Mansai in 2010 and '11, but you didn't really have name places much before then for any place south of Lao Man'e. Of course, nowadays people regularly namedrop Mannuo and that "little banzhang" at the far southwest tip literally a couple miles from the border, etc, etc...
Anyways... This was really rather good, the taste is smaller than something big-time, and the viscosity is definitely not good from the current day perspective what with everything being thick and stuff. However the taste is deep, layered, and potent, and which has a quality set of aftertastes.
The aroma tends toward grains, mostly roasted grains but also your usual Cheerios style sweet grains, along with wood and a bit of barnyard. The taste is deep, with a strong bitter core, choco, deep barnyard, mineral, wood, very much in the southern Bulang lover's wheelhouse. The taste gradually rises as the session moves on. The viscosity is generally on the thinner side of moderate with light astringency. The aftertastes starts off with a strong yiwu huigan to more fruity notes, and slowly coats the mouth with a variety of tastes including molasses. The mouthcoat tends to develop and last a long time. Qi is pretty decent. Thoroughly enjoyed, but didn't have enough time to do more than seven or eight brews before needing to put it in the fridge. While this has the benefit of age, it is thoroughly more appealing than the EoT Boundless, and it's interesting to think of this Manmu compared to the more floral and a bit more asprin-y EoT Bulang '10,'11, with not as complex aftertastes, and against the higher and sweeter EoT Mansai '10 and definitely inferior when it came to aftertastes.
First was the Essence of Tea Boundless, again to sort of contrast with Mirage and all the other cheaper northern tea of good quality. It was rather good, and in particular, it had a very good set of aftertastes, and represents a level of quality that people can't aspire to with more famous places.
It had a sweet and savory vegetal aroma early on, and gradually shifts towards a more sweet herbal aroma. When really pushed the vegetal aroma is back. The aroma can also have a umami-ish sweet sense verging on creme brulee. The taste generally tends to be sweet with vegetal background, a touch of bitterness, and some honey. The umami sweet is in the taste on occasion as well. This has good viscosity with a velvety texture. The astringency is light to moderate, but is extremely productive and melts away. That aftertaste starts with a yiwu huigan to sweet herbals and leaves a long lasting mouthcoat. The early brews have a yun going. There is some cooling associated with all of this. The qi is moderate of good quality, feels caffeinated as well. Did about thirteen brews before putting it in the fridge, seems like it's got at least a couple more brews in it...
The aroma and taste are much smaller and less durably strong than W2T Mirage, but is at least as strong as EoT Jinggu Forest and the XY blend from YS. The qi is at least as strong as Mirage, and the aftertaste game is much better. Getting this level of performance from a Yiwu would probably cost more than three times/200g than this cake's $68.
The second tea was a quick slap of a reminder that there is a reason why famous areas are famous and expensive. I got this pair of Bulangs from YS, which were made by the brand YS worked with back in 2009-10, RuiCaoXiang, in the process of getting other more interesting teas like Dayi an xiang shu and YS xikong. Off and on over the years I had some pleasant and not so pleasant session with these teas. The '09 DongFangBuBai is a tea made from the area YS explains as ManMu, which is a bit south of west of Lao Man'e near Mannan township (Bulangshan - https://mapcarta.com/15978102). One thing I think is interesting is that before about 2010, there were not a ton of bulang teas made with the explicit sense of being material from further south than Lao Man'e. You had EoT doing Mansai in 2010 and '11, but you didn't really have name places much before then for any place south of Lao Man'e. Of course, nowadays people regularly namedrop Mannuo and that "little banzhang" at the far southwest tip literally a couple miles from the border, etc, etc...
Anyways... This was really rather good, the taste is smaller than something big-time, and the viscosity is definitely not good from the current day perspective what with everything being thick and stuff. However the taste is deep, layered, and potent, and which has a quality set of aftertastes.
The aroma tends toward grains, mostly roasted grains but also your usual Cheerios style sweet grains, along with wood and a bit of barnyard. The taste is deep, with a strong bitter core, choco, deep barnyard, mineral, wood, very much in the southern Bulang lover's wheelhouse. The taste gradually rises as the session moves on. The viscosity is generally on the thinner side of moderate with light astringency. The aftertastes starts off with a strong yiwu huigan to more fruity notes, and slowly coats the mouth with a variety of tastes including molasses. The mouthcoat tends to develop and last a long time. Qi is pretty decent. Thoroughly enjoyed, but didn't have enough time to do more than seven or eight brews before needing to put it in the fridge. While this has the benefit of age, it is thoroughly more appealing than the EoT Boundless, and it's interesting to think of this Manmu compared to the more floral and a bit more asprin-y EoT Bulang '10,'11, with not as complex aftertastes, and against the higher and sweeter EoT Mansai '10 and definitely inferior when it came to aftertastes.
The taste vocabulary for tea is infinite. I love your descriptions. You are the first person I've heard describe a tea as aspirin-y. Interesting!
Tea makes my headache go away!
Did the DongFangBuBai in a thermos--while decent enough, it's notably thinner in depth of taste than the really high quality teas. It seems that much of the flavor is concentrated around the bitterness. I also drank gongfu cups through the week, and it was quite tasty with a potent and pleasant bitterness. It's not super-good, but it's pretty good.
The shu of Friday was the 2020 W2T The Stranger. I feel like I gotta switch impressions around between The Stranger and The Nameless One, like how this time, it's the Nameless One with all of the complex aftertastes and shengy sensibilities, while The Stranger is more a straightforward shu. And I had in mind from my first impression that The Stranger was a tea made from material hailing north of Xishuangbanna. However, this last session was fairly close to the 2017 HLH LBZ shu. Relatively thick and oily tea with somewhat dark taste--The Stranger is not nearly as concentrated and powerful depth as the HLH, but similar--that is fairly foodie--like eggy-sugary-cooked something and not as much dark barnyard and choco. The taste is rather layered as a shu, with some wood as well, and floral nuances. There wasn't a distinctively pineapple fruitiness, but a more general fruitiness, particularly as a yiwu huigan. The qi was very strong and enjoyable though, and this is what slowed my drinking of this tea. I think, overall, I like Saturday Mass more than The Stranger today, but without the chenpi, The Stranger is the better quality shu. The Nameless One though is pretty clearly superior in a way that justifies the margin of selling points.
The first tea of the weekend was the other YS-RuiCaoXiang Bulang production, the GushuLanXiang. This was made from Xingui area SW of Lao Man'e. This was also rather enjoyable, if not quite as good as DongFangBuBai.
Aroma starts off with a mineral, wood, honey, barnyard emphasis, sometimes fairly leathery. Then the aroma shifts to a more sweet cola aroma with occasional wood and mineral aspects. The taste starts off with honey, leather, wood, fruit, a touch sour before quickly becoming focused on a deep bitter-mineral-cola sweet taste that rises as the session goes on and the bitterness fades. This tea has better viscosity than DongFangBuBai, good with a bit of astringency. There is a consistent amount of cooling in the mouth and feeling at the top of the throat. Mild aftertastes of mouthcoat, yun, some shallow pungent huigans early. Mostly just mouthcoats late. Qi is moderate and of decent quality. Durability is pretty good, I think I took this about fifteen brews.
The second tea of the weekend was the 2008 XZH Blessings Iron. This was pretty good. I had gotten the sense that it had some similarities to a Xiaguan 01 Iron, but eventually decided against that.
Aroma was green woodsap, wood, florals, and a bit of honey in general. The taste was rather mild, with this thinner honey, woodsap, mushroom taste, and some subtle fruitiness later on. The sweetness had a sense of creamed corn. Good viscosity with some pleasant astringency. This had long, subtle yiwu huigans and mouthcoat much of the way and provided most of my satisfaction along with the qi, which was on the moderate side. This also went a good ways, did something like 15 brews. This has been a pretty reliably enjoyable tea for me, and my session was pretty notably good for me despite the not that showy performance.
I decided that since I was comparing the XZH with the Xiaguan, I will do that 2001 Xiaguanish Iron. This isn't very similar to the XZH. Much more robust earthy mushroomy taste with light wood rims to things. So stronger and more mouthfilling flavor (unusual for a factory-boutique comparision), with better viscosity as well. There just isn't much complexity in taste nor is there much aftertaste, and I sort of felt like I was just doing a job drinking this tea, and I did about ten brews.
The main event for the weekend was the 2009 XZH Soul of Yunnan (Jingmai). Interesting to me was that it was so clearly superior to the '08 Blessings, and I guess sort of a capstone b*slap in the sense that XZH did really, really, good in 2009--not a single underperforming tea. Main weakness of this tea is the general weakness of xiaozhong leaf, smallness and narrowness of taste, not the best of durability. Not a whole lot of dynamism, but boy, it didn't really need it. Recalled memory of that '98 Heavenly Fragrant Jade from BanaTea and the 2001 HeShiHua Jingmai I got from Sampletea long ago.
Aroma and taste started off with the kind of cake taste that young Manzhuans tend to have, but with jasmine floralness permeating it. As the session goes on, the cake aspect is minimized as the aged Jingmai dark taste of dried longan/cola is more present in aroma and taste. A bitterness in the taste. A wood note also shows up in both aroma and taste. The mouthfeel is great--while the tea isn't superthick, it is very nicely oily and almost silky and is very pleasant in the mouth. Aftertaste game is dramatic in first half of the session--beautiful shallow pungent huigan with jasmine florals. A Yiwu huigan to fruits and more insidiously subtly good caramel notes. Long mouthcoat and yun generated by the bitterness as well. Qi is strong as well. Durability seems to be good, but in the longer brews it's mostly the same thing gradually rising higher in taste, and dropping all the fancy aftertaste. Overall experience not so different from XZH Happiness Pro World Gedengs. Benefits and costs of the small-leaf goodness.
Should start in on some new Essence of Tea samples next weekend.
The shu of Friday was the 2020 W2T The Stranger. I feel like I gotta switch impressions around between The Stranger and The Nameless One, like how this time, it's the Nameless One with all of the complex aftertastes and shengy sensibilities, while The Stranger is more a straightforward shu. And I had in mind from my first impression that The Stranger was a tea made from material hailing north of Xishuangbanna. However, this last session was fairly close to the 2017 HLH LBZ shu. Relatively thick and oily tea with somewhat dark taste--The Stranger is not nearly as concentrated and powerful depth as the HLH, but similar--that is fairly foodie--like eggy-sugary-cooked something and not as much dark barnyard and choco. The taste is rather layered as a shu, with some wood as well, and floral nuances. There wasn't a distinctively pineapple fruitiness, but a more general fruitiness, particularly as a yiwu huigan. The qi was very strong and enjoyable though, and this is what slowed my drinking of this tea. I think, overall, I like Saturday Mass more than The Stranger today, but without the chenpi, The Stranger is the better quality shu. The Nameless One though is pretty clearly superior in a way that justifies the margin of selling points.
The first tea of the weekend was the other YS-RuiCaoXiang Bulang production, the GushuLanXiang. This was made from Xingui area SW of Lao Man'e. This was also rather enjoyable, if not quite as good as DongFangBuBai.
Aroma starts off with a mineral, wood, honey, barnyard emphasis, sometimes fairly leathery. Then the aroma shifts to a more sweet cola aroma with occasional wood and mineral aspects. The taste starts off with honey, leather, wood, fruit, a touch sour before quickly becoming focused on a deep bitter-mineral-cola sweet taste that rises as the session goes on and the bitterness fades. This tea has better viscosity than DongFangBuBai, good with a bit of astringency. There is a consistent amount of cooling in the mouth and feeling at the top of the throat. Mild aftertastes of mouthcoat, yun, some shallow pungent huigans early. Mostly just mouthcoats late. Qi is moderate and of decent quality. Durability is pretty good, I think I took this about fifteen brews.
The second tea of the weekend was the 2008 XZH Blessings Iron. This was pretty good. I had gotten the sense that it had some similarities to a Xiaguan 01 Iron, but eventually decided against that.
Aroma was green woodsap, wood, florals, and a bit of honey in general. The taste was rather mild, with this thinner honey, woodsap, mushroom taste, and some subtle fruitiness later on. The sweetness had a sense of creamed corn. Good viscosity with some pleasant astringency. This had long, subtle yiwu huigans and mouthcoat much of the way and provided most of my satisfaction along with the qi, which was on the moderate side. This also went a good ways, did something like 15 brews. This has been a pretty reliably enjoyable tea for me, and my session was pretty notably good for me despite the not that showy performance.
I decided that since I was comparing the XZH with the Xiaguan, I will do that 2001 Xiaguanish Iron. This isn't very similar to the XZH. Much more robust earthy mushroomy taste with light wood rims to things. So stronger and more mouthfilling flavor (unusual for a factory-boutique comparision), with better viscosity as well. There just isn't much complexity in taste nor is there much aftertaste, and I sort of felt like I was just doing a job drinking this tea, and I did about ten brews.
The main event for the weekend was the 2009 XZH Soul of Yunnan (Jingmai). Interesting to me was that it was so clearly superior to the '08 Blessings, and I guess sort of a capstone b*slap in the sense that XZH did really, really, good in 2009--not a single underperforming tea. Main weakness of this tea is the general weakness of xiaozhong leaf, smallness and narrowness of taste, not the best of durability. Not a whole lot of dynamism, but boy, it didn't really need it. Recalled memory of that '98 Heavenly Fragrant Jade from BanaTea and the 2001 HeShiHua Jingmai I got from Sampletea long ago.
Aroma and taste started off with the kind of cake taste that young Manzhuans tend to have, but with jasmine floralness permeating it. As the session goes on, the cake aspect is minimized as the aged Jingmai dark taste of dried longan/cola is more present in aroma and taste. A bitterness in the taste. A wood note also shows up in both aroma and taste. The mouthfeel is great--while the tea isn't superthick, it is very nicely oily and almost silky and is very pleasant in the mouth. Aftertaste game is dramatic in first half of the session--beautiful shallow pungent huigan with jasmine florals. A Yiwu huigan to fruits and more insidiously subtly good caramel notes. Long mouthcoat and yun generated by the bitterness as well. Qi is strong as well. Durability seems to be good, but in the longer brews it's mostly the same thing gradually rising higher in taste, and dropping all the fancy aftertaste. Overall experience not so different from XZH Happiness Pro World Gedengs. Benefits and costs of the small-leaf goodness.
Should start in on some new Essence of Tea samples next weekend.
Hmmm, where the '09 XZH Jingmai outpaced the '08 XZH Blessing for, say, ten brews or so, the '08 Blessings was the better tea in the long run, with good aftertastes continuing in pleasantly subtle soup and qi going on, where the '09 Jingmai was mostly limited to shimmering flavors in the core dried longan depth. Blessings did better in the thermos as well, even as the Jingmai wasn't a slouch. Small leaf teas really does have a bit of a core weakness once one gets away from the finery, which usually is only present during the active phase, and can be overbrewed away, like in a thermos.
EoT order came in. Main reason for buying was to get a 300g bag of the '19 Beyond the Clouds hongcha. Very good value, and is easily one of the best of the cheaper puerh hongcha one might be able to buy, in my awareness. Yunnan Sourcing has some cheaper puerh hongcha, but I have not been impressed by black teas from YS when I've had them, so not inclined to trust the quality. This has also beaten out W2T Redhead as well.
So what are some of the other things I got?
Well, I got a free sample of the "1999 Light Fermentation Shou Puerh", so that was my shu of Friday. I thought it was pretty outstanding, with only a couple of primary weaknesses, being not a particularly brawny aromatic performer, and it's a bit high on astringency. Also, note that this tea is $88 for something that is packed as if it's a 7581 (this is pretty clearly not one, just something packed as if it was, and following lightly fermented big leaf idea). $88 is cheap for a quality shu from the '90s, and virtually all recognizable shu like it that I'm aware of, are substantially more expensive. The two actual 7581s I've had recently cost at least $300, and '90s 7581 from places like Yee-on tea is like $200+. I'm saying that this is quite unusually well priced, especially for Essence of Tea, and people who think they might like this should jump at it.
This has an understated aroma that is the combination of the herbal sense (sort of like ginseng) of old teas like those from the '70s, and of the usual funky fermentation depth taste of warehoused and dried out shu that is found in most shu from the '90s and earlier since most had humid storage. There is only an understated bit of aromatic soil-incensy wood like what you'd find in an 8592 present, and essentially none of the camphorated woodiness found in traditional 7581s. As with most lightly fermented shu, the taste is on the thin side, but you can get a reasonably thick taste with firm brewing, at least early in the session. For all that the taste is sort of thin, it is layered and nuanced with mostly that herbal old tea taste with things like coffee and cream, funky fermentation depth and a bit of fruit nuance. More wood notes show up in the late session. The viscosity starts out moderate and improves as the session goes on, the texture being notably good, juicy early and moving towards a velvet feel later. As said before, there is a moderate bit of astringency, not to bothersome but there. The taste regularly leads to a sweet sense yiwu huigan-mouthcoat, which can last through a run if need be. A cooling feeling is regularly present in mouth. The qi is strong, of good quality that last a long while after the sip and cup is over. The durability is pretty good, delivers a decent worthwhile if light taste along with mouthfeel for a long while, I probably did around fourteen brews or so.
The finished leaves are in really good shape, and there aren't that many twigs, so this doesn't have the vanillins of many other '90's shu like the W2T white wrapper tuos. I also found hairs and a pumpkin seed, but who cares, right? Looking at the price and the quality, I have to presume that the Taiwanese person EoT bought this off of could not sell these tea because of the lack of any ability to distinguish this run from any others or even to confidently assert that this did indeed come from '99. This obviously can't be sold as 7581s. Maybe this is a scam and it's a well made, but cheap mid2k shu...eh...then all that happens is that you pay $20-$40 too much. While I am not an expert in these kind of brick shu, I'm inclined to believe that this is indeed a '90's shu with higher end material in it.
The tea of Saturday is more like the usual EoT experience, being good tea, priced just high enough that I get wishy washy until it's all sold out (not that I am in any true customer mode these days). It's the 2006 Tea Horse Tribute. It's pretty good, but let's say, put that up against the 2006 803 Thai tea from Teaside, and I think I'd have to say that the Thai tea is better. just not exceptional. It was intimated to me that this 2006 is more Yiwu-ish while the other, nake cake from 2006 and same maker is more Menghai. My impression is of a more refined Mengku tea or a Mengsong like the '02 Wistaria Qingteng. The most impressive aspect is a high quality aroma that lasts a long while in the cup.
The aroma is a sharp, barkish, tobaccoey woodiness that tends to have depth like choco, floral complexity, and changes as the soup cools. The taste is mostly a soft golden raisin-hay sort of taste with a tobacco-wood rim, a bit like Qingteng with a backbone. The viscosity of the soup varies a bit, sometimes being pretty good, but can be a bit thinner. Late brews have good thickness. In general, no notable texture. It can get seriously astringent, and one brew had me like I ate a persimmon. Astringency fades in the late session. There is regular good cooling feeling, and throat feeling in the early going. The aftertaste game is wide ranging but all of it is on the light side. A bit of mouth aroma early, caught a bit of throat huigan mid session, and a general tendency toward a slight yiwu huigan to sugars. The qi is strong early, but tends to fade in the late session. Durability is okay, but I got bored and moved on after about maybe 12 brews. It probably could have gone on.
It's a good bit of fun at least, and I didn't have super high expections, and that was met.
I got some of the expensive yancha hongcha, the Wudi Zhengyan that came in those little 5g pouches. I was comparing this off of the Houde oolong honcha I bought from way back. It's not as good as that tea. Also, I brewed this as I would a puerh, but this came out like it probably would have been better brewed as if it was a yancha. This tea is more a fully oxidized yancha than a hongcha, tho' it's quite hongcha.
aroma has fruity-coconut that one regularly finds in hongcha oolongs. Later brews has brown rice syrup, plumminess, heavy red wine, spices also involved. The taste is mostly like the aroma, but it does have a bitterness and a yanyun, giving it a weight. It also has the usual hongcha sour plumminess, rotten coconut-malty in it as well. Good thickness, very round feeling relatively free of astringency in terms of mouthfeel. Decent cooling in mouth. Regular yiwu huigan to a sweet sense. Lasting mouthcoat as well. The qi is pretty decent. This isn't an especially durable tea, as it thins to the area around the bitter pole/mineral relatively quickly, like eight brews or something like that.
I took out my Auburn Black spring from W2T to give a check right afterwards. I realized doing the gongfu that my bag mostly had broken leaf as I had bought the last bit at the time. The tea has also lost a good bit of floralness and is much more plummy, maybe got a bit stale and further oxidized. It was an okay session, but is obviously not as good as the EoT hongcha. I was amused, though, to see how intensely a red soup this broken hongcha gave.
ended Saturday feeling quite wired.
Sunday was the EoT 90's QB. I did a thermos during the week, and it gave me a sense that it was something like a 7532. It was a fairly pleasant thermos. The session made me think it's mostly a single estate plantation, maybe the plantation had a bit of age to it, like 20-30 years old Nannuo bushes. This is definitely not as good as real Dayi sheng from the same time period, less thick (warehousing gave it some fermentation heft) in taste and less complex. Again, it's pretty decent.
Aroma is on the lighter side, with wood, earth, a little herbal playing roles over a fermentation barnyard depth. The thickness of taste in early session brews are okay, with earthiness, nannuo carrot, a bit of wood over a depth that can have a bit of choco. There is an active tartness that makes the tea interesting feeling and contributes to more flavors like a good bitterness. In later brews, the taste is more a thin aromatic soil or wood taste over a generic fermentation depth that can have a fruitiness show up there every once in a while. Mouthfeel is pretty good, especially the first five or so brews with good viscosity and velvet mouthfeel, and viscosity generally holds up nicely through the whole session. There is astringency early in the session, but fades rather quickly as the brews go on. Some cooling early. Good mouthcoat early, but it fades as the session goes on. The qi is on the moderate side, but it's of pretty decent quality. I got bored with the tea somewhat quickly, and put the rest in the fridge.
The last tea of the weekend was the 2019 Origintea Wild tea Jinjunmei. Excellent. More choco this time around so it was like drinking litchi bonbons. Great mouthfeel, good qi. I feel very pleased that I have plenty of this tea, especially since the 2020 version seems to be out with only the largest size available.
EoT order came in. Main reason for buying was to get a 300g bag of the '19 Beyond the Clouds hongcha. Very good value, and is easily one of the best of the cheaper puerh hongcha one might be able to buy, in my awareness. Yunnan Sourcing has some cheaper puerh hongcha, but I have not been impressed by black teas from YS when I've had them, so not inclined to trust the quality. This has also beaten out W2T Redhead as well.
So what are some of the other things I got?
Well, I got a free sample of the "1999 Light Fermentation Shou Puerh", so that was my shu of Friday. I thought it was pretty outstanding, with only a couple of primary weaknesses, being not a particularly brawny aromatic performer, and it's a bit high on astringency. Also, note that this tea is $88 for something that is packed as if it's a 7581 (this is pretty clearly not one, just something packed as if it was, and following lightly fermented big leaf idea). $88 is cheap for a quality shu from the '90s, and virtually all recognizable shu like it that I'm aware of, are substantially more expensive. The two actual 7581s I've had recently cost at least $300, and '90s 7581 from places like Yee-on tea is like $200+. I'm saying that this is quite unusually well priced, especially for Essence of Tea, and people who think they might like this should jump at it.
This has an understated aroma that is the combination of the herbal sense (sort of like ginseng) of old teas like those from the '70s, and of the usual funky fermentation depth taste of warehoused and dried out shu that is found in most shu from the '90s and earlier since most had humid storage. There is only an understated bit of aromatic soil-incensy wood like what you'd find in an 8592 present, and essentially none of the camphorated woodiness found in traditional 7581s. As with most lightly fermented shu, the taste is on the thin side, but you can get a reasonably thick taste with firm brewing, at least early in the session. For all that the taste is sort of thin, it is layered and nuanced with mostly that herbal old tea taste with things like coffee and cream, funky fermentation depth and a bit of fruit nuance. More wood notes show up in the late session. The viscosity starts out moderate and improves as the session goes on, the texture being notably good, juicy early and moving towards a velvet feel later. As said before, there is a moderate bit of astringency, not to bothersome but there. The taste regularly leads to a sweet sense yiwu huigan-mouthcoat, which can last through a run if need be. A cooling feeling is regularly present in mouth. The qi is strong, of good quality that last a long while after the sip and cup is over. The durability is pretty good, delivers a decent worthwhile if light taste along with mouthfeel for a long while, I probably did around fourteen brews or so.
The finished leaves are in really good shape, and there aren't that many twigs, so this doesn't have the vanillins of many other '90's shu like the W2T white wrapper tuos. I also found hairs and a pumpkin seed, but who cares, right? Looking at the price and the quality, I have to presume that the Taiwanese person EoT bought this off of could not sell these tea because of the lack of any ability to distinguish this run from any others or even to confidently assert that this did indeed come from '99. This obviously can't be sold as 7581s. Maybe this is a scam and it's a well made, but cheap mid2k shu...eh...then all that happens is that you pay $20-$40 too much. While I am not an expert in these kind of brick shu, I'm inclined to believe that this is indeed a '90's shu with higher end material in it.
The tea of Saturday is more like the usual EoT experience, being good tea, priced just high enough that I get wishy washy until it's all sold out (not that I am in any true customer mode these days). It's the 2006 Tea Horse Tribute. It's pretty good, but let's say, put that up against the 2006 803 Thai tea from Teaside, and I think I'd have to say that the Thai tea is better. just not exceptional. It was intimated to me that this 2006 is more Yiwu-ish while the other, nake cake from 2006 and same maker is more Menghai. My impression is of a more refined Mengku tea or a Mengsong like the '02 Wistaria Qingteng. The most impressive aspect is a high quality aroma that lasts a long while in the cup.
The aroma is a sharp, barkish, tobaccoey woodiness that tends to have depth like choco, floral complexity, and changes as the soup cools. The taste is mostly a soft golden raisin-hay sort of taste with a tobacco-wood rim, a bit like Qingteng with a backbone. The viscosity of the soup varies a bit, sometimes being pretty good, but can be a bit thinner. Late brews have good thickness. In general, no notable texture. It can get seriously astringent, and one brew had me like I ate a persimmon. Astringency fades in the late session. There is regular good cooling feeling, and throat feeling in the early going. The aftertaste game is wide ranging but all of it is on the light side. A bit of mouth aroma early, caught a bit of throat huigan mid session, and a general tendency toward a slight yiwu huigan to sugars. The qi is strong early, but tends to fade in the late session. Durability is okay, but I got bored and moved on after about maybe 12 brews. It probably could have gone on.
It's a good bit of fun at least, and I didn't have super high expections, and that was met.
I got some of the expensive yancha hongcha, the Wudi Zhengyan that came in those little 5g pouches. I was comparing this off of the Houde oolong honcha I bought from way back. It's not as good as that tea. Also, I brewed this as I would a puerh, but this came out like it probably would have been better brewed as if it was a yancha. This tea is more a fully oxidized yancha than a hongcha, tho' it's quite hongcha.
aroma has fruity-coconut that one regularly finds in hongcha oolongs. Later brews has brown rice syrup, plumminess, heavy red wine, spices also involved. The taste is mostly like the aroma, but it does have a bitterness and a yanyun, giving it a weight. It also has the usual hongcha sour plumminess, rotten coconut-malty in it as well. Good thickness, very round feeling relatively free of astringency in terms of mouthfeel. Decent cooling in mouth. Regular yiwu huigan to a sweet sense. Lasting mouthcoat as well. The qi is pretty decent. This isn't an especially durable tea, as it thins to the area around the bitter pole/mineral relatively quickly, like eight brews or something like that.
I took out my Auburn Black spring from W2T to give a check right afterwards. I realized doing the gongfu that my bag mostly had broken leaf as I had bought the last bit at the time. The tea has also lost a good bit of floralness and is much more plummy, maybe got a bit stale and further oxidized. It was an okay session, but is obviously not as good as the EoT hongcha. I was amused, though, to see how intensely a red soup this broken hongcha gave.
ended Saturday feeling quite wired.
Sunday was the EoT 90's QB. I did a thermos during the week, and it gave me a sense that it was something like a 7532. It was a fairly pleasant thermos. The session made me think it's mostly a single estate plantation, maybe the plantation had a bit of age to it, like 20-30 years old Nannuo bushes. This is definitely not as good as real Dayi sheng from the same time period, less thick (warehousing gave it some fermentation heft) in taste and less complex. Again, it's pretty decent.
Aroma is on the lighter side, with wood, earth, a little herbal playing roles over a fermentation barnyard depth. The thickness of taste in early session brews are okay, with earthiness, nannuo carrot, a bit of wood over a depth that can have a bit of choco. There is an active tartness that makes the tea interesting feeling and contributes to more flavors like a good bitterness. In later brews, the taste is more a thin aromatic soil or wood taste over a generic fermentation depth that can have a fruitiness show up there every once in a while. Mouthfeel is pretty good, especially the first five or so brews with good viscosity and velvet mouthfeel, and viscosity generally holds up nicely through the whole session. There is astringency early in the session, but fades rather quickly as the brews go on. Some cooling early. Good mouthcoat early, but it fades as the session goes on. The qi is on the moderate side, but it's of pretty decent quality. I got bored with the tea somewhat quickly, and put the rest in the fridge.
The last tea of the weekend was the 2019 Origintea Wild tea Jinjunmei. Excellent. More choco this time around so it was like drinking litchi bonbons. Great mouthfeel, good qi. I feel very pleased that I have plenty of this tea, especially since the 2020 version seems to be out with only the largest size available.
I did a thermos of the 2006 Tea Horse Tribute from EoT, and it felt a bit more yiwu-ish that way. Still mostly a pleasant tea. The EoT Naked Cake from the same maker was a more interesting thermos that was a bit like a 5-10yo Nannuo.
The jinjunmei lasted all week, extremely durable.
The '90's QB from Essence of Tea also lasted a long time, and I found it pretty enjoyable, especially since I brewed it hard--brewing to bitterness led to a much more satisfying cup.
The shu of Friday was the mid2k Nuoxiang brick from W2T. It's still a very mild and sweet tea, with a woody-herbal sticky rice rim. This doesn't have much fermentation taste, viscosity is average, and little aftertastes. The qi is moderate to strong, though. Again, not really what I'm looking for in a lightly fermented shu, but it was still a welcome gongfu session.
The first tea of Saturday was the 2006 Naked Tea Horse from Essence of Tea. Hmm, I'd contest the description a bit. Put simply, the tea is processed terribly. The leaves are a broken mass, almost like CTC Assams, with the odd whole small leaf, and some of those leaves are visibly heavily scorched. As a consequence, given these factors, I'm inclined to say that the tea has had at least some decent humidity, but this tea is more like a Xiaguan tuo without the iron pressing, and simply requires a lot of time. The original material is indeed good--to me, obviously from a place like Jie Liang, Bulang tea growing area. So it's sort of worthwhile, but it's really something that you store for at least another decade.
After the initial, effectively wash pour, the aroma is rich and lifted for several brews, starting down from a deeper choco, wood, barnyard, and rising up through fruitiness to eventually a more thin barnyard and mineral aroma that keeps going at a low ebb through the rest of the session. With longer late brews, the aroma has sometimes perked back up with something interesting to say. The taste started out sweet, fruity, a little nutty, going for all the sensibilities of a nice Bangwei, but when I put the second brew's cup to the lips...MEGADETH BULANG POWER DIALED UP TO ELEVEN1!!1 Some bitterness, choco, tcm, barnyard and minerals present themselves in the taste. As the session goes on, the taste loses bitterness and thins to a sort of choco and mineral note. The viscosity starts off moderate and thickens up nicely. The texture is indistinct most of the time, but one brew gets a decent velvet feel. Astringency is generally fairly high much of the way through with dips presumably because of underbrewing. Cooling feeling often happend. The aftertaste game is good, but these aftertastes tend to arrive slowly. Mouthcoats take time to build up until you really feel it by the end of the cup. Yiwu huigans take forever to show up, but it does happen with strong sugars taste. There are some floral mouth aromas here and there, as well as slight and shallow pungent huigans. The qi is hidden in part by the caffeine in the early part of the session, but becomes more obvious and decent in the late brews. The durability is two-fold, it has a short early phase where it's blasting out aroma and taste and aftertaste, and it has an indefinite longer phase with subtle flavors a little like yancha in late infusions.
Neither Tea Horse cakes are an especially good deal the wrappered version is mostly just good and what's more nice about it is subtle, while the non-wrappered might be difficult to drink for some people, but has reasonably high quality material that might pay off with another decade in storage, but it's expensive since one would want to store in tong format?
The second tea of Saturday was the 2018 Beyond the Clouds hongcha in gongfu format. This has the savory Solanacae note that Wuliang and other place in the north tends to have, and I was not impressed. Underneath it are some nice spicey notes. Western brews is quite a lot better for me, particularly as fruitiness is more of a factor.
The tea today was the 2010 XZH Hungshan. Thoroughly enjoyed. Aroma not quite as present as usual, but the taste is good, the mouthfeel is substantial, and so much feeling and action in the throat. Plenty of qi. I was quite slow in drinking these cups.
A second tea today was the 2008 XZH gongting shu. Also enjoyed. As with the other 2008-9 XZH shu, it's getting that old medicine/herbal taste of old tea, along with wood, paper, choco in aroma, and a good depth and concentration of taste. Not much of an aftertaste performer. The soup color was also pretty jewel-like. Some qi.
The jinjunmei lasted all week, extremely durable.
The '90's QB from Essence of Tea also lasted a long time, and I found it pretty enjoyable, especially since I brewed it hard--brewing to bitterness led to a much more satisfying cup.
The shu of Friday was the mid2k Nuoxiang brick from W2T. It's still a very mild and sweet tea, with a woody-herbal sticky rice rim. This doesn't have much fermentation taste, viscosity is average, and little aftertastes. The qi is moderate to strong, though. Again, not really what I'm looking for in a lightly fermented shu, but it was still a welcome gongfu session.
The first tea of Saturday was the 2006 Naked Tea Horse from Essence of Tea. Hmm, I'd contest the description a bit. Put simply, the tea is processed terribly. The leaves are a broken mass, almost like CTC Assams, with the odd whole small leaf, and some of those leaves are visibly heavily scorched. As a consequence, given these factors, I'm inclined to say that the tea has had at least some decent humidity, but this tea is more like a Xiaguan tuo without the iron pressing, and simply requires a lot of time. The original material is indeed good--to me, obviously from a place like Jie Liang, Bulang tea growing area. So it's sort of worthwhile, but it's really something that you store for at least another decade.
After the initial, effectively wash pour, the aroma is rich and lifted for several brews, starting down from a deeper choco, wood, barnyard, and rising up through fruitiness to eventually a more thin barnyard and mineral aroma that keeps going at a low ebb through the rest of the session. With longer late brews, the aroma has sometimes perked back up with something interesting to say. The taste started out sweet, fruity, a little nutty, going for all the sensibilities of a nice Bangwei, but when I put the second brew's cup to the lips...MEGADETH BULANG POWER DIALED UP TO ELEVEN1!!1 Some bitterness, choco, tcm, barnyard and minerals present themselves in the taste. As the session goes on, the taste loses bitterness and thins to a sort of choco and mineral note. The viscosity starts off moderate and thickens up nicely. The texture is indistinct most of the time, but one brew gets a decent velvet feel. Astringency is generally fairly high much of the way through with dips presumably because of underbrewing. Cooling feeling often happend. The aftertaste game is good, but these aftertastes tend to arrive slowly. Mouthcoats take time to build up until you really feel it by the end of the cup. Yiwu huigans take forever to show up, but it does happen with strong sugars taste. There are some floral mouth aromas here and there, as well as slight and shallow pungent huigans. The qi is hidden in part by the caffeine in the early part of the session, but becomes more obvious and decent in the late brews. The durability is two-fold, it has a short early phase where it's blasting out aroma and taste and aftertaste, and it has an indefinite longer phase with subtle flavors a little like yancha in late infusions.
Neither Tea Horse cakes are an especially good deal the wrappered version is mostly just good and what's more nice about it is subtle, while the non-wrappered might be difficult to drink for some people, but has reasonably high quality material that might pay off with another decade in storage, but it's expensive since one would want to store in tong format?
The second tea of Saturday was the 2018 Beyond the Clouds hongcha in gongfu format. This has the savory Solanacae note that Wuliang and other place in the north tends to have, and I was not impressed. Underneath it are some nice spicey notes. Western brews is quite a lot better for me, particularly as fruitiness is more of a factor.
The tea today was the 2010 XZH Hungshan. Thoroughly enjoyed. Aroma not quite as present as usual, but the taste is good, the mouthfeel is substantial, and so much feeling and action in the throat. Plenty of qi. I was quite slow in drinking these cups.
A second tea today was the 2008 XZH gongting shu. Also enjoyed. As with the other 2008-9 XZH shu, it's getting that old medicine/herbal taste of old tea, along with wood, paper, choco in aroma, and a good depth and concentration of taste. Not much of an aftertaste performer. The soup color was also pretty jewel-like. Some qi.
Nothing too eventful is going on these days. I thermosed the XZH '10 Hungshan, and what stands out mostly is the quality of the qi which is great for being mellow at work. The taste was rather mild, but it did have a subtly complex depth to it that can be savored.
The shu of Friday was the 2006 Thai gushu shu from TeaSide. I thought it was okay, but I wasn't that excited about drinking it. It has a kind of barky-woody herbal taste that's on the thin side of things, good viscosity, a touch of yiwu huigan to sugars, and about a moderate level of qi. Compared with the similarly lightly fermented and thin tasting NuoXiang from White2Tea, it's not as refined in its woodiness, and it doesn't have as agreeable main body--the taste has a touch of sourness compared to the sweet herbalness of the W2T shu. Also, the NuoXiang has a nicer quality qi. The Thai shu does have more aftertastes, tho'.
The first tea today was the 2019 Essence of Tea YaoZhuDi. I was much more careful and conservative about increasing steep times, and that, along with a touch more age, has given me its best session, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I suspect it's a touch overcooked from shaqing. I compared it a lot to Yehgu, W2T Sister-Brother Nannuo, the 2016 Essence of Tea Lengshuihe(ish), and the XZH Hungshan while I was drinking this.
Aroma tended to be two stages. The first, more of a booming aroma starts off early being mushroom, butter, caramel, then goes through a choco stage one the way to being more a mineral aroma with sweet herbal and/or fruitiness. The second, cooler, longer aroma tended to be savory florals, minerals, and maybe custard. Aromatics were entertaining. The taste didn't have as much green bitter bite as it used to except in very overbrewed late brews. It's also much more fully choco rather than something like hojicha like when I first commented about this tea. This loss of greeness and growing choco reminded me of the behavior of the W2T Sister Brother bricks that did the same thing. It also reminded me of the '16 Theosophie LBZ. Anyways, the first brew was sweet mushroomy before dropping off to deep choco with a touch of tcm bitter. Since I wasn't stepping up the time like I usually do, the taste mostly just thinned and got higher until it got to a thin choco (that can be foody-ish in the way I remember that 2016 LSH) and mineral taste. Late brews has a sweet eggy note. The viscosity is pretty thick and it is a rather smooth tea with a tendency for pudding feel that gets more pronounced late. Not a lot of drying astringency without strong pushing, tho' a late brew had some astringency. The cooling was interesting and dynamic in mouth. Early brews did not have a lot of aftertaste, but aftertaste game did kick in with longer brews, and delivered dynamic mouthcoats. There is some yiwu huigan to sugars here and there, and a bitterness can create a yiwu huigan to fruitiness from time to time. The qi was moderate to strong, not too distinct but rather enjoyable. I must have done about fourteen to seventeen brews before throwing out the tea.
Broadly speaking, this tea did some of the things that Yehgu does, but not as potent or as bitter. This session made me think that indeed, that if I had wanted to, I could have bought the EoT Tianmenshan and held it for the few years to lower that green bite and get a pretty good young tea in a few years time. The TMS was certainly more than $20 better/cake than the '19 YaoZhuDi. The YaoZhuDi is a rather small tea, even compared to YiwuTeaMountain stuff, let alone the likes of XZH, but it was still nicely concentrated.
The second tea of the day was the 2015 or 2016 Tuhao as bleep from W2T. I wasn't really into this tea. The taste died a bit too quick.
The aroma mostly had a woody herbalness and alkaline main focus with some barnyard and fruitiness in the background. The taste tends to have a bitter note with wood, alkaline with a touch of barnyard and choco in the depth. Not a very sweet tea. The viscosity is generally pretty good, not much distinctiveness to texture, not much astringency. Some cooling, but aftertaste game is weak. It has a bit of yiwu huigan to sugars, the bitterness sometimes leaves some active mouthcoat, and one brew had that nice coating of tonguetip with sweetness that's nice to salivate and suck off. The taste gradually gets higher and thinner with a vague honey note and I lost interest in continuing and went back to the YaoZhuDi some. The qi was pretty strong early and was of good quality, but it faded pretty quickly as well.
The shu of Friday was the 2006 Thai gushu shu from TeaSide. I thought it was okay, but I wasn't that excited about drinking it. It has a kind of barky-woody herbal taste that's on the thin side of things, good viscosity, a touch of yiwu huigan to sugars, and about a moderate level of qi. Compared with the similarly lightly fermented and thin tasting NuoXiang from White2Tea, it's not as refined in its woodiness, and it doesn't have as agreeable main body--the taste has a touch of sourness compared to the sweet herbalness of the W2T shu. Also, the NuoXiang has a nicer quality qi. The Thai shu does have more aftertastes, tho'.
The first tea today was the 2019 Essence of Tea YaoZhuDi. I was much more careful and conservative about increasing steep times, and that, along with a touch more age, has given me its best session, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I suspect it's a touch overcooked from shaqing. I compared it a lot to Yehgu, W2T Sister-Brother Nannuo, the 2016 Essence of Tea Lengshuihe(ish), and the XZH Hungshan while I was drinking this.
Aroma tended to be two stages. The first, more of a booming aroma starts off early being mushroom, butter, caramel, then goes through a choco stage one the way to being more a mineral aroma with sweet herbal and/or fruitiness. The second, cooler, longer aroma tended to be savory florals, minerals, and maybe custard. Aromatics were entertaining. The taste didn't have as much green bitter bite as it used to except in very overbrewed late brews. It's also much more fully choco rather than something like hojicha like when I first commented about this tea. This loss of greeness and growing choco reminded me of the behavior of the W2T Sister Brother bricks that did the same thing. It also reminded me of the '16 Theosophie LBZ. Anyways, the first brew was sweet mushroomy before dropping off to deep choco with a touch of tcm bitter. Since I wasn't stepping up the time like I usually do, the taste mostly just thinned and got higher until it got to a thin choco (that can be foody-ish in the way I remember that 2016 LSH) and mineral taste. Late brews has a sweet eggy note. The viscosity is pretty thick and it is a rather smooth tea with a tendency for pudding feel that gets more pronounced late. Not a lot of drying astringency without strong pushing, tho' a late brew had some astringency. The cooling was interesting and dynamic in mouth. Early brews did not have a lot of aftertaste, but aftertaste game did kick in with longer brews, and delivered dynamic mouthcoats. There is some yiwu huigan to sugars here and there, and a bitterness can create a yiwu huigan to fruitiness from time to time. The qi was moderate to strong, not too distinct but rather enjoyable. I must have done about fourteen to seventeen brews before throwing out the tea.
Broadly speaking, this tea did some of the things that Yehgu does, but not as potent or as bitter. This session made me think that indeed, that if I had wanted to, I could have bought the EoT Tianmenshan and held it for the few years to lower that green bite and get a pretty good young tea in a few years time. The TMS was certainly more than $20 better/cake than the '19 YaoZhuDi. The YaoZhuDi is a rather small tea, even compared to YiwuTeaMountain stuff, let alone the likes of XZH, but it was still nicely concentrated.
The second tea of the day was the 2015 or 2016 Tuhao as bleep from W2T. I wasn't really into this tea. The taste died a bit too quick.
The aroma mostly had a woody herbalness and alkaline main focus with some barnyard and fruitiness in the background. The taste tends to have a bitter note with wood, alkaline with a touch of barnyard and choco in the depth. Not a very sweet tea. The viscosity is generally pretty good, not much distinctiveness to texture, not much astringency. Some cooling, but aftertaste game is weak. It has a bit of yiwu huigan to sugars, the bitterness sometimes leaves some active mouthcoat, and one brew had that nice coating of tonguetip with sweetness that's nice to salivate and suck off. The taste gradually gets higher and thinner with a vague honey note and I lost interest in continuing and went back to the YaoZhuDi some. The qi was pretty strong early and was of good quality, but it faded pretty quickly as well.