Long post because a large backload of teas to cover. Again, this time of the year has meant generally great sessions.
The first tea is the 2008 XZH Blessings Iron, my old trusty reliable. The taste has always been small like a factory tea, and sort of hard to describe and easy to confuse, in memory, as being similar to other teas when that's not the case. It has its own balance and nuance, with good mouthfeel, aftertaste and qi. I certainly like this tea more than teas like that 2015 XZH Lanyin, which is much more refined but much less substantial than I'd like.
The aroma is mostly a certain honeysuckle floral sort of sweetness with some herbal and wood notes. Later brews tends to have more of a focus on a fruit or herbly-roasted carrot sweetness. The taste generally tends to be very ambiguous with a somewhat mineral milk base taste with wood, herbal as in basil/oregano, and a sweet chicory note. There can be some nice honeysuckle here and there. The mouthfeel is good with decent viscosity with a pudding-ish texture and light astringency. Aftertaste tends to have an unusual and interesting sweet chicory mouthcoat, consistently develops a very good yun, and has some mouthcoat along with the cooling feeling. Qi is strong, but not sure how to relate the feeling--it has a sense of both gathering and release. Durability is quite good, and I didn't finish before having to throw it out.
With as much as I take out of this bing, this is probably the high-end tea I drink most frequently, probably because the high-endedness of it is pretty subtle in the end. Just like drinking a Xiaguan tie-bing, but... not factory tea... I wish this tea was sold more often. I don't trust the regular 250g version that does show up on FB auction from time to time to be the same. My memory of 250g version was that it's a lot like the '09 XZH Xicontianxiang, and not as much like the same name 450g tie-bing.
The next tea is the 2006 XZH Youle. It really feels like to me that a good Youle is essentially a very exotic and fruity northern Bulang tea. This tea specifically had a very good day.
Aroma is basically dried apricots and a sense of beta-carotene and squash-nuttiness that I'm calling rutabega. There can be some honey in there, and late aroma tends to have some or mostly is wood. Leaves good aroma in empty cups. Early taste has dried apricots, rutabega, a bit of tcm bitter, and a high and soft choco. It can be a touch sour. Mid session taste tends to have a more prominent tcm bitter and varying proportion of dried apricots/rutabega vs deeper choco and aromatic wood. Somewhat late taste has tcm bitter with a touch of choco and wood, and very late taste is to a more generic apricotty taste with a touch of wood. Mouthfeel tends to be a good viscosity with oily texture with a mild astringency. The aftertaste game was very good. There was lots of cooling and other feelings in mouth, some numbing of tonguetip, and lots of feeling going down throat. There is a very active aftertaste in the throat that often feels like a yun with a very shallow pungent huigan. Some forest floral mouth aroma. There usually was a decent to good mouthcoat that has a lingering bitterness adding to the flavors, and the mouthcoat lasted past other aftertasts deep into the session. The qi was very strong with a fairly active feeling that is reminiscent of what a lot of old good quality puerh does, like an interior sea washing against inner borders of your frame. Durability was excellent.
This one of the very best of teas, with the primary "flaw" is that it could be a little less loose and more dense in taste, bit in the same way one could wish this is true of the taiji lbzs. There is only a small difference in quality between this Youle and good LBZ. It might be a sentiment related to storage in a way--I don't like the TW stored version of this tea nearly as much.
Now, the 2006 YQH Shenpin Chawang. Still really good. Less woody than it usually is. Very similar to the '09 YQH Shengyun Tiancheng this time around.
Aroma tends to be plummy with a caramel bend, and can have a distinct Hawaiian Punch fruitiness in the earlier-mid session. There can be faint mineral and/or wood in the aroma as well. Taste is pretty consistently a deep plumminess with an overtone of choco. There is a touch of sourness, and hints of wood, fruit punch. There is also pretty consistently a certain subtle caramel sweetness that is probably a fast yiwu huigan. The taste eventually rises to being mostly a plummy note in the late brews with a bit of mineral and papery wood. For a stretch of very late brews, the plumminess is distinctly a hongchapu lightly sour plummy that suggests some of the fresh leaves oxidized a bit before shaqing. Some cups gives a sensation of sweetness to that plummy as well. When I brewed hard late in the session, I got a bit of bitterness that's still there then. As with the Youle, mouthfeel is a good thickness with an oily texture, and it's more round and smooth than the Youle. Astringency can build up as one drinks the cup in early brews, however. It's not super thick like the '09 YQH Shenyun Tiancheng, tho'. Aftertastes tends to be a strong mouthcoat that melting astringency tends to add to, along with a bit of yun. Other than the suspected caramel, a couple of cups had yiwu huigan to fruitiness. Qi was great, it was very strong with good feeling, but it wasn't obviously positive tilt like it can be, but I couldn't make a complaint about my mood as I drank this tea. I brewed this tea over two days, so it lasted a very long way, particularly during the hongchapu phase.
This is a deeply excellent tea contrasting with the earlier Youle--where the Youle was kind of loose, the Shenpin was dense in taste. However, where the Youle had a lot of complexity in taste and was dynamic, this Shenpin doesn't really change that much over the course of the session, and there isn't *that* much going on in the up, aroma and taste-wise. Youle and Shenpin also had contrasting quality qi, one fairly active feeling, the other fairly subtle and still feeling. I also contrasted the Shenpin with the '09 XZH GFZ, and the GFZ wins on the complexity of aroma and taste as well, also thicker viscosity. XZH Youle and GFZ also has wider panoply of aftertastes.
I had the urge to do an oolong for once, and dragged out my rarely opened oolong stash, and got my favorite 2005 Zhengyan Rougui from Houde back in the day. Extremely satisfying. Only did a few brews before putting it into the fridge, where it's now waiting for me to give it more time. Perhaps tomorrow.
Aroma was plummy, mineral, cake/candy sweetness, a touch of almond and florals; occasional classic rougui cinnamon. Taste was plummy and mineral in a very nice way--strong mineral taste that didn't bite and segued from plumminess sort of seamlessly. Lightly sour, it's been 16 years since it was last roasted, of course. Viscosity moderate with light astringency and very smooth. Aftertastes were great, intensely floral mouthcoat with a not very pungent huigan deep in the throat. Needless to say there was plenty of feeling going down the throat. Plenty of feeling in the mouth with plenty of cooling. A good yiwu huigan to almond sweetness was almost an afterthought. The qi was strong, and there was plenty of caffeine feeling, so quite ennervating and calm at the same time. Only did like four or five brews. Just wanted to squeeze in that session.
We're not done yet. Today's first tea was the 2009 XZH Jin Taiji. Somewhat underwhelming compared to the string of high quality sessions to date. This session was a lot like the first session I had with a sample of this tea, where I was kind of "this is likable, but meh for the cost on FB auctions". This session was overall much like a 2007 XZH Mengsong session, except more delicate with more elaborate aftertastes.
Aroma generally had a bulgar wheat low element with wood, and some sugary/floral/fruit candy higher elements. Late aroma is more mushroomy, wood, barnyard. Taste is pretty consistently a tcm bitter with bulgar wheat, wood, and can have brown sugar or floral sweetness. Late session taste tends to be light tcm bitter pole with a choco tinged generic depth. Mouthfeel is pretty decent like all the other high end teas I've been drinking--good viscosity with a bit of oily texture. Astringency tends to build through some of the session. Aftertaste game is active early, and tends to be pretty merged--yiwu huigan to yun, bounce down the throat a bit in a pungent huigan, then coats the mouth. This tends to be a sweet, fruity aftertaste. Later session aftertaste tends to be more of a conversion from tcm bitter to lingering mouthcoat flavors. Qi is pretty strong and comfortable. I didn't brew this all the way, wanted to move onto another tea.
And the last tea mentioned here, the one I was drinking the last dregs of when I started this stupidly long post, is the 2009 XZH Fengshali (not Fengshabao-new pricelist just dropped with english transliteration on it!). I was feeling curious about its nature about whether it was Phongsaly (the province in Laos) or was it just another way to say "secrit Yiwu village". The name of the cake is definitely a reference to Phongsaly, tho' the first character isn't right even though it's a homophone. I was thinking it had some distinct similarities to Bohetangy teas (like 2012 Kingly Aura Chawangbing or 2019 BYH BHT, etc, brown sugar BHT as opposed of Shenyung Tiancheng, 2010 BYH Wangong sort of plummy super fruity BHT). Eh, it was pretty good, not dense enough in taste to be considered top flight.
Aroma tends to have powder floral rims, pez candy fruitiness, brown sugar/sweet nutmeat, and sometimes has subtle fruit-honey undertones. It's sometimes pretty nice in aroma. Taste tends to be a loose one with a tcm bitter pole, dark-sweet herbal notes, some barnyard with a little bit of sourness, a little bit of brown sugar. There can be nice pez candy in the taste as well as sweet nutmeat. Viscosity is less than the other nice teas, with less oiliness, but still nice enough. Light astringency. Can be aggressively cooling with decent mouthcoat, yun. The qi is quite good, almost or equal to the Jin Taiji. Not super dynamic, has the same themes, but if I aggressively brew to bitterness, I generally get some pleasant aftertastes to go with that bitterness. Not sure on the durability, felt like it was fading, but never had trouble reviving.
There are indeed similarities to the brown sugar sort of BHT, particuarly in the expansive cooling sense, and maybe in the quality of the aroma. This doesn't have the sort of wild aromatic and complex mouthcoat aftertastes like the good stuff can do, and the cooling sense is different in nature, being more typical of other teas rather than the evaporative sense of the cooling in 2012 Chawangbing.
Whew!
Some further comments--the latest XZH price-list is out, and it's a relatively complete list for once, only a few teas are missing. The prices, of course are obscene and well beyond what any red-blooded American would pay, but some notes regardless.
The general price rise was on the order of 33%.
A lot of stuff are on the same price level despite the varying quality, ie, 2006 Youle and 2006 Guangbienlaozhai are the same price at $3.9K/400g, even though they are very different in quality.
Some stuff that I thought would be top end expensive, like 2007 XZH Dinji Nu'ercha, didn't turn out to be that way at $2.3K/200g, less than the 2009 XZH Ancient Diangu that I don't like that much at $3.41k/250g or '09 Purple Tip Diangu at the same price. What really surprised me was that the 2009 XZH GFZ was the second most expensive tea per gram in the catalog, after the 2005 LBZ spring cakes and brick. The 2007 fall teas were markedly cheaper than the spring releases (other than Diangu) than I expected.
Some items effectively more than doubled since April of last year, like many 2010 teas. All four of big 2010 teas effectively tripled, along with the Fog Soul Hekai. The 2010 Hungshan was something 2.5 times more, along with stuff like Lao Wu Shan and Supreme Old Tree (Yangta JingGu?). Lao Wu Shan over the years in general increased a ton in prices. 2011, 2012, and 2014 teas generally tended to go with the standard price rise, but 2012 Kingly Aura Chawangbing makes a first appearance and is much more expensive than the Phoenix Reappearance cake that is usually the same price, $2.2k vs $1.4k. Bohetang magic is obvious there. A bunch of 2013 teas had anamolously high rises, like aformentioned Lao Wu Shan, but also 2013 Yibang Classic went up to $1.7k, only a hundred less than the substantially better 2014 Hongyin, Hongyin Iron, never mind also substantially better Grade A and B that are $200 cheaper! The 2013 Risk One's Life went up slightly more. I tasted a sense of BHT in a sample some time ago, so I'm willing to guess fairly primo material there too, but dunno about that Yibang. Seems like teas newer than 2013 all had a fairly standard 33% price rise.
One thing that went on in my mind is that Auspicious brand 2008 Chawangshu and 2009 GFZ are both teas that I suggest people look for with some effort, because you might be able to buy those teas at something like a reasonable price when they are pretty top-end.
ok, *whew!*
The first tea is the 2008 XZH Blessings Iron, my old trusty reliable. The taste has always been small like a factory tea, and sort of hard to describe and easy to confuse, in memory, as being similar to other teas when that's not the case. It has its own balance and nuance, with good mouthfeel, aftertaste and qi. I certainly like this tea more than teas like that 2015 XZH Lanyin, which is much more refined but much less substantial than I'd like.
The aroma is mostly a certain honeysuckle floral sort of sweetness with some herbal and wood notes. Later brews tends to have more of a focus on a fruit or herbly-roasted carrot sweetness. The taste generally tends to be very ambiguous with a somewhat mineral milk base taste with wood, herbal as in basil/oregano, and a sweet chicory note. There can be some nice honeysuckle here and there. The mouthfeel is good with decent viscosity with a pudding-ish texture and light astringency. Aftertaste tends to have an unusual and interesting sweet chicory mouthcoat, consistently develops a very good yun, and has some mouthcoat along with the cooling feeling. Qi is strong, but not sure how to relate the feeling--it has a sense of both gathering and release. Durability is quite good, and I didn't finish before having to throw it out.
With as much as I take out of this bing, this is probably the high-end tea I drink most frequently, probably because the high-endedness of it is pretty subtle in the end. Just like drinking a Xiaguan tie-bing, but... not factory tea... I wish this tea was sold more often. I don't trust the regular 250g version that does show up on FB auction from time to time to be the same. My memory of 250g version was that it's a lot like the '09 XZH Xicontianxiang, and not as much like the same name 450g tie-bing.
The next tea is the 2006 XZH Youle. It really feels like to me that a good Youle is essentially a very exotic and fruity northern Bulang tea. This tea specifically had a very good day.
Aroma is basically dried apricots and a sense of beta-carotene and squash-nuttiness that I'm calling rutabega. There can be some honey in there, and late aroma tends to have some or mostly is wood. Leaves good aroma in empty cups. Early taste has dried apricots, rutabega, a bit of tcm bitter, and a high and soft choco. It can be a touch sour. Mid session taste tends to have a more prominent tcm bitter and varying proportion of dried apricots/rutabega vs deeper choco and aromatic wood. Somewhat late taste has tcm bitter with a touch of choco and wood, and very late taste is to a more generic apricotty taste with a touch of wood. Mouthfeel tends to be a good viscosity with oily texture with a mild astringency. The aftertaste game was very good. There was lots of cooling and other feelings in mouth, some numbing of tonguetip, and lots of feeling going down throat. There is a very active aftertaste in the throat that often feels like a yun with a very shallow pungent huigan. Some forest floral mouth aroma. There usually was a decent to good mouthcoat that has a lingering bitterness adding to the flavors, and the mouthcoat lasted past other aftertasts deep into the session. The qi was very strong with a fairly active feeling that is reminiscent of what a lot of old good quality puerh does, like an interior sea washing against inner borders of your frame. Durability was excellent.
This one of the very best of teas, with the primary "flaw" is that it could be a little less loose and more dense in taste, bit in the same way one could wish this is true of the taiji lbzs. There is only a small difference in quality between this Youle and good LBZ. It might be a sentiment related to storage in a way--I don't like the TW stored version of this tea nearly as much.
Now, the 2006 YQH Shenpin Chawang. Still really good. Less woody than it usually is. Very similar to the '09 YQH Shengyun Tiancheng this time around.
Aroma tends to be plummy with a caramel bend, and can have a distinct Hawaiian Punch fruitiness in the earlier-mid session. There can be faint mineral and/or wood in the aroma as well. Taste is pretty consistently a deep plumminess with an overtone of choco. There is a touch of sourness, and hints of wood, fruit punch. There is also pretty consistently a certain subtle caramel sweetness that is probably a fast yiwu huigan. The taste eventually rises to being mostly a plummy note in the late brews with a bit of mineral and papery wood. For a stretch of very late brews, the plumminess is distinctly a hongchapu lightly sour plummy that suggests some of the fresh leaves oxidized a bit before shaqing. Some cups gives a sensation of sweetness to that plummy as well. When I brewed hard late in the session, I got a bit of bitterness that's still there then. As with the Youle, mouthfeel is a good thickness with an oily texture, and it's more round and smooth than the Youle. Astringency can build up as one drinks the cup in early brews, however. It's not super thick like the '09 YQH Shenyun Tiancheng, tho'. Aftertastes tends to be a strong mouthcoat that melting astringency tends to add to, along with a bit of yun. Other than the suspected caramel, a couple of cups had yiwu huigan to fruitiness. Qi was great, it was very strong with good feeling, but it wasn't obviously positive tilt like it can be, but I couldn't make a complaint about my mood as I drank this tea. I brewed this tea over two days, so it lasted a very long way, particularly during the hongchapu phase.
This is a deeply excellent tea contrasting with the earlier Youle--where the Youle was kind of loose, the Shenpin was dense in taste. However, where the Youle had a lot of complexity in taste and was dynamic, this Shenpin doesn't really change that much over the course of the session, and there isn't *that* much going on in the up, aroma and taste-wise. Youle and Shenpin also had contrasting quality qi, one fairly active feeling, the other fairly subtle and still feeling. I also contrasted the Shenpin with the '09 XZH GFZ, and the GFZ wins on the complexity of aroma and taste as well, also thicker viscosity. XZH Youle and GFZ also has wider panoply of aftertastes.
I had the urge to do an oolong for once, and dragged out my rarely opened oolong stash, and got my favorite 2005 Zhengyan Rougui from Houde back in the day. Extremely satisfying. Only did a few brews before putting it into the fridge, where it's now waiting for me to give it more time. Perhaps tomorrow.
Aroma was plummy, mineral, cake/candy sweetness, a touch of almond and florals; occasional classic rougui cinnamon. Taste was plummy and mineral in a very nice way--strong mineral taste that didn't bite and segued from plumminess sort of seamlessly. Lightly sour, it's been 16 years since it was last roasted, of course. Viscosity moderate with light astringency and very smooth. Aftertastes were great, intensely floral mouthcoat with a not very pungent huigan deep in the throat. Needless to say there was plenty of feeling going down the throat. Plenty of feeling in the mouth with plenty of cooling. A good yiwu huigan to almond sweetness was almost an afterthought. The qi was strong, and there was plenty of caffeine feeling, so quite ennervating and calm at the same time. Only did like four or five brews. Just wanted to squeeze in that session.
We're not done yet. Today's first tea was the 2009 XZH Jin Taiji. Somewhat underwhelming compared to the string of high quality sessions to date. This session was a lot like the first session I had with a sample of this tea, where I was kind of "this is likable, but meh for the cost on FB auctions". This session was overall much like a 2007 XZH Mengsong session, except more delicate with more elaborate aftertastes.
Aroma generally had a bulgar wheat low element with wood, and some sugary/floral/fruit candy higher elements. Late aroma is more mushroomy, wood, barnyard. Taste is pretty consistently a tcm bitter with bulgar wheat, wood, and can have brown sugar or floral sweetness. Late session taste tends to be light tcm bitter pole with a choco tinged generic depth. Mouthfeel is pretty decent like all the other high end teas I've been drinking--good viscosity with a bit of oily texture. Astringency tends to build through some of the session. Aftertaste game is active early, and tends to be pretty merged--yiwu huigan to yun, bounce down the throat a bit in a pungent huigan, then coats the mouth. This tends to be a sweet, fruity aftertaste. Later session aftertaste tends to be more of a conversion from tcm bitter to lingering mouthcoat flavors. Qi is pretty strong and comfortable. I didn't brew this all the way, wanted to move onto another tea.
And the last tea mentioned here, the one I was drinking the last dregs of when I started this stupidly long post, is the 2009 XZH Fengshali (not Fengshabao-new pricelist just dropped with english transliteration on it!). I was feeling curious about its nature about whether it was Phongsaly (the province in Laos) or was it just another way to say "secrit Yiwu village". The name of the cake is definitely a reference to Phongsaly, tho' the first character isn't right even though it's a homophone. I was thinking it had some distinct similarities to Bohetangy teas (like 2012 Kingly Aura Chawangbing or 2019 BYH BHT, etc, brown sugar BHT as opposed of Shenyung Tiancheng, 2010 BYH Wangong sort of plummy super fruity BHT). Eh, it was pretty good, not dense enough in taste to be considered top flight.
Aroma tends to have powder floral rims, pez candy fruitiness, brown sugar/sweet nutmeat, and sometimes has subtle fruit-honey undertones. It's sometimes pretty nice in aroma. Taste tends to be a loose one with a tcm bitter pole, dark-sweet herbal notes, some barnyard with a little bit of sourness, a little bit of brown sugar. There can be nice pez candy in the taste as well as sweet nutmeat. Viscosity is less than the other nice teas, with less oiliness, but still nice enough. Light astringency. Can be aggressively cooling with decent mouthcoat, yun. The qi is quite good, almost or equal to the Jin Taiji. Not super dynamic, has the same themes, but if I aggressively brew to bitterness, I generally get some pleasant aftertastes to go with that bitterness. Not sure on the durability, felt like it was fading, but never had trouble reviving.
There are indeed similarities to the brown sugar sort of BHT, particuarly in the expansive cooling sense, and maybe in the quality of the aroma. This doesn't have the sort of wild aromatic and complex mouthcoat aftertastes like the good stuff can do, and the cooling sense is different in nature, being more typical of other teas rather than the evaporative sense of the cooling in 2012 Chawangbing.
Whew!
Some further comments--the latest XZH price-list is out, and it's a relatively complete list for once, only a few teas are missing. The prices, of course are obscene and well beyond what any red-blooded American would pay, but some notes regardless.
The general price rise was on the order of 33%.
A lot of stuff are on the same price level despite the varying quality, ie, 2006 Youle and 2006 Guangbienlaozhai are the same price at $3.9K/400g, even though they are very different in quality.
Some stuff that I thought would be top end expensive, like 2007 XZH Dinji Nu'ercha, didn't turn out to be that way at $2.3K/200g, less than the 2009 XZH Ancient Diangu that I don't like that much at $3.41k/250g or '09 Purple Tip Diangu at the same price. What really surprised me was that the 2009 XZH GFZ was the second most expensive tea per gram in the catalog, after the 2005 LBZ spring cakes and brick. The 2007 fall teas were markedly cheaper than the spring releases (other than Diangu) than I expected.
Some items effectively more than doubled since April of last year, like many 2010 teas. All four of big 2010 teas effectively tripled, along with the Fog Soul Hekai. The 2010 Hungshan was something 2.5 times more, along with stuff like Lao Wu Shan and Supreme Old Tree (Yangta JingGu?). Lao Wu Shan over the years in general increased a ton in prices. 2011, 2012, and 2014 teas generally tended to go with the standard price rise, but 2012 Kingly Aura Chawangbing makes a first appearance and is much more expensive than the Phoenix Reappearance cake that is usually the same price, $2.2k vs $1.4k. Bohetang magic is obvious there. A bunch of 2013 teas had anamolously high rises, like aformentioned Lao Wu Shan, but also 2013 Yibang Classic went up to $1.7k, only a hundred less than the substantially better 2014 Hongyin, Hongyin Iron, never mind also substantially better Grade A and B that are $200 cheaper! The 2013 Risk One's Life went up slightly more. I tasted a sense of BHT in a sample some time ago, so I'm willing to guess fairly primo material there too, but dunno about that Yibang. Seems like teas newer than 2013 all had a fairly standard 33% price rise.
One thing that went on in my mind is that Auspicious brand 2008 Chawangshu and 2009 GFZ are both teas that I suggest people look for with some effort, because you might be able to buy those teas at something like a reasonable price when they are pretty top-end.
ok, *whew!*
