2012 Spring Shen Gu You Lan

I dug out a sample of this tea from Tea Urchin just recently and was positively surprised - among so many young teas that are no fun, this one is actually really good.

It is supposed to be a mixture of Bingdao (or near-Bingdao) leaves and Da Xue Shan - I certainly feel it falls close from the centroid of the "Bingdao" cluster I have in my memory. And therefore, it is quite lovely.

Rinsed leaves smell dark flowery (magnolia, orchid), fruity (grapefruit/pomelo) - heavily and very nicely.

The taste is really good - it has the same features as the aroma (plus vanilla and sometimes forest fruit and roasted chestnuts) and it is rich, silky-smooth and undisturbingly sweet. When you're in the middle of enjoying the taste, it gets accompanied by quite strong and unusually early tingling and cooling.

The aftertaste is not the strongest one, being citrusy-floral, but not particularly intense or long-lasting.

Some teas smite you with their qi right away - this one does not work like that on me - but after a while, the energy builds up and becames really strong and harmonizing. It forms a good harmony with the Rachmaninov's 1st piano concerto I'm listening to right now.

This is a good tea, no doubt. Whether you want to pay $110 is up to your preference for young tea. In the cruel world, where even $100+ can get you not-so-good tea, I found this tea to be pretty good, being basically faultless and with some really nice positive features.

That said, $110 can get you a basic cake from 90s which will probably work better for some people (e.g., me).

Revisiting old chums

Hello dear readers. I've been recently drinking mostly things I've written about before. However, why not to write about the development of these teas? My opinions are below, in no particular order.

1999 Wu  Dong Cha Tou
Wow, this aged Dan Cong wulong starts to really shine. When more leaves are used, it is strong-tasting, very sweet, full and relaxing. A good purchase.

2010 Hailanghao Yiwu Chawang
At that time, it was an uber-expensive tea - so expensive, that it would be expensive even these days. I did not overly care for its taste, but I felt that its qi was outstanding. Now it tastes stronger and more interesting - very sweet, sugary, with some pretty flower tones. However, the qi is not really as strong as I felt it when I had it in the past. I'm glad I did not buy more of this tea I guess.

2004 Shi Kun Mu Yibang
This is from another batch (or it tastes so) than the one I wrote about. While it still tastes quite nice, it is a bit more hollow and not-deep than one would wish from a very high quality tea.

2004 Shi Kun Mu Menghai
A very solid blend, ages really nicely - even though it is still quite bitter (or it can be), it shows good promise for the future. And it is quite pleasant as it is - a good, solid, classical puerh.

2006 Haiwan Pa Sha
Still a very good tea, still very vulnerable to bad water.

2007 "Banzhang" tuocha
This is the cheap 250g tuocha that I got from Sampletea and that is currently being sold by Chawangshop. It is still as delightful as when I had it for the first time. It was also one of favourites between colleagues in school who are new-ish to pueerh.

2008 Xiaguan Happy tuo
Pretty good, did not change so much since I had it for the last time. I like the mixture of smoke and fruitiness. Not my everyday pu, but everymonth yes.

1993 Kang Zhuan 
Cheap heicha from Chawangshop - decent qi, pleasant light taste, what's not to like? It's not pu, of course, but you can hardly blame it.

2003 Menghai Bada tuocha
A really complex taste, but as with other Bada teas, I miss something in there. Anyway, it's still a good fun to drink, no doubt.

2010 YS Youle Ya Nuo
Simple, but very, very tasty. One of the better (if not best) Youle teas I know.

2012 Chawangpu Jingmai Da Zhai
An excellent Jingmai, not really that similar to "ordinary" Jingmai teas. With time, it acquired more depth and more taste that I slightly missed in it when it was fresh.

2007 Xizihao Dragon and Phoenix
Not very good - slightly smoky, a bit boring... It would be an ok-ish tea, was it not priced so crazily.

2003 Wistaria Zi Pin
Still so good. The taste is something that takes getting used to, but it is a very coherent, energetic and powerful tea.

3x Pu-erh.sk: 99 Yiwu maocha, 2008 Bada, 2012 Autumn Yiwu

Hello again! The bad thing about being most of the day in school is that there is litle time for tea at home, which also means less time for writing. Ah, can't be helped I guess. Anyway, I collected my paper notes on these three "Slovak" puerh teas to convert them into online form.

By the way, it's probably like that for longer time, but it has been brought to my attention (huge thanks Marketa) that Google added space for storing photos at Picasa. I.e., if you, like me, have filled the 1GB quite quickly and had to link to other websites, it's possible to upload pictures "natively" again.

Many thanks to Peter from Pu-erh.sk for providing these teas!

Let's take it chronologically again, starting with the grandpa of these three:

1999 Yiwu maocha

Pretty, is it not? And it smells quite good too - like an aged Yiwu. There is some additional humidity on top of that which I enjoy.

Rinsed leaves smell sweet, aged and decent, with small amount of fishiness. It seems to me that the variance in aged maochas is a lot smaller than in cakes or even tuos... 

The liquor is quite dark even for a 99 maocha, almost pitch black. That's not a bad thing though, just saying...

In mouth, I'd say the tea is "adequate". It's aged, it's kind of sweet and full (though not really like a cake), with a bit of vanilla. There are still remnants of fruitiness, which make it quite interesting. Also, small amount of extra humidity seems to make this tea stand out a bit in a lot of generic aged maochas - it's actually quite nice. It is a decent approximation of good, rich aged tea, but it's not really "it", if you know what I mean. Anyway, it's pleasant enough to be sure. 

Compared to the 99 Yiwu I tasted recently from Origintea, the one from pu-erh.sk seems a bit richer, less fishy and overall better (and a lot more expensive too).

Two things that I did mind slightly (not like they're bad, it's just that one slightly expects them) was general lack of qi and not that great stamina. The tea gave me about 10-11 steepings, while decently aged cakes from 90 can often give up to 20. 

I seem to appreciate loose aged tea less and less, which is unfortunate, given that it is cheaper than compressed tae. Such is the price of learning I guess. 

So - I did enjoy this 99 maocha, but do not expect aged tea enlightment. Also, it seems a bit more expensive to me than it should (0.6$ per gram). The 2001 BGT seems like a lot better tea to me an it is actually cheaper. But it's just my ill-judged opinion so don't go by it :)

2008 Bada

Bada boom! 

Teachum Brano from Slovakia wrote highly of this tea and therefore I was quite eager to taste it. Is it good? It sure is. I may miss something in it, but it is good nevertheless.

The aroma is explosively fruity, sweet, with some darker notes which make it obvious that this is not really a young tea anymore.

The taste is...explosively  fruity too. There is a good mixture of various sorts of fruits - darker jam, ripe garden fruit and some fresh, higher, grape-like tops. Even though the taste is a bit on the dry side, it is full and sweet.

It has got some nice huigan, which I enjoyed. Not much qi, unfortunately.

The strange thing about Bada seems to me that even these which taste really good (this 2008 Bada or Menghai's 2003 Bada), there is something I miss in them, there is a sort of hollowness in comparison to "classical" regions, such as Bulang or Yiwu.

But still, it tastes really nice - I think that for most people, it will be a great tea and they won't mind what I minded a bit.

2012 Yiwu

When I first tasted this tea, I thought "ah, another generic young Yiwu". Later, I realized it's more. Even though the basic form is indeed usual youngish Yiwu - wet straw, sweetness, sugariness and dark forest fruit. The bonus is that this tea is fun to drink, which can't be said about all young Yiwus. The fruitiness is accompanied by slight mixture of "candy" and camphor.

Therefore, I'd say that this is basically a very well done Yiwu tea - perhaps  not astonishing, but it makes you think "hey, this is definitely better than normal". At the same time, it's good to realized that given today's crazy pricing of Yiwu, it is rather cheap. 

Smoothness of this tea is quite remarkable - it's smoothness itself in the initial steepings, becoming a bit astringent with time, but not in an unpleasant way.

You could say that it is autumnal, which is baaaaad, but I don't think that's really true. Autumnal tea can be good from time to time and this one is an example of that.

1998 Fu Cha Ju Jingmai with tea flowers

After some time, I tasted something new. Most of my tea sessions happen in school these days, so there is not really enough time for taking pictures or tasting anything special. And, not knowing why, I recently started feeling that I want to become better acquainted with the teas I have in greater quantity. Nevertheless, I had a free(ish) afternoon, so why not to have something interesting? And this Fuchaju tea interesting is. Scented teas are not something I'd usually drink, but the addition of tea flowers seems like a nonviolent way of enhancing a tea (I think that especially Youle and Jingmai might profit from these). Also, the addition of tea flowers does not seem to change the basic character of a tea. When I had 2005 Fuchaju Jingmai and 2005 Fuchaju Jingmai with tea flowers side by side, both these teas were essentially similar, the latter being a bit sweeter and more rounded. But the addition of tea flowers seems to be nowhere near adding jasmine or magnolia, in means of overall change to a tea.

I really enjoyed that 2005 Jingmai thing with flowers, but that was about it, I haven't encountered anything like that, until Honza of Chawangshop sent me a sample of the 1998 version, also by Fuchaju (btw. Chawangshop also made Jingmai cake with tea flowers this year, I'm quite curious what it's like). 

What do seven teas of aging do to an already pretty good tea (given that the source material is the same, which it probably isn't)? And what do three years of aging change in a tea lover? Wasn't it just a whim of years past that I liked the combination previously?

The leaves do not look like a 1998 tea (spoiler - the tea feels younger overall, but it's not a problem), but it seems that the cake has been just stored in a rather dry environment. 

The dry leaves smell of meadow flowers and fruit - a bit more like Youle than like Jingmail, but pretty nevertheless. There is no trace of agedness, on the other hand, there is no trace of faults in aging process either. 

The wet leaves smell really good, explosive - a myriad of interweaving fruits, jam and ripe wine grapes (white). Further components are herbalness and "apples with cinnamon". In general, the aroma is very harmonic.

(the second photo has a more faithful color). You may see that the liquor is quite light, though perhaps not as light as one might expect, given the greenness of dry leaves. Also, it is obvious that Oxford water is hard indeed (this is after filtration). 

If you can free your mind from the shackles of expecting a normally aged tea (I can), this is a very interesting and enjoyable tea, being good in many areas. The taste is simply good. The tea tastes youngish (2004?), but the darker and complex background suggests that there is is indeed some further time spent aging. What is important to me is, that a) there is no sourness/bad red fruit/hem string taste from dry storage, b) aged Jingmai hongcha-iness (btw. I think you could cease expecting a normal aged tea just because this is a Jingmai tea).  The taste contains a mixture of garden fruits, ripe white grapes and meadow flowers - all mixed with a honey-like sweetness. It is very good in being balannced, with full low, mid and high tones. It is like high-class aged white wine in many aspects.

What surprised me the most was the extraordinarily strong and pleasant aftertaste. It is fruity and honey-like and it is really, really uncommonly good. There is actually an intersection with what is found in the "aged Jingmai hongcha-iness", but it is not strong enough to stand out in a peculiar way.

What makes this tea a very good one (and strictly better than the 2005 version) is good and fast huigan, good tongue-tickling and quite obvious and "world-connecting" qi.  

Overall, I enjoyed this tea very much. It may not be the most typical example of puerh (actually, it is rather an outlier), but I find it very complex, refreshingly new, while it manages to keep the good aspects that puerh can have. Only thing that was slightly disturbing me was the rather high astringency, but that was only a minor thing, hardly a big problem.

I don't think that this is a tea that needs further long-term storage. But for drinking now or in a couple of years, it seems like a really good choice.

Tasting Origintea: 2001&2 Haiwan HOP, 2003 Purple Dayi, 1990s round cake

While I was quite content with the loose leaf teas from Origintea, I remember that when I tasted some of the compressed stuff, I was unimpressed at best and horrified at worst - which is unfortunate, because the owner of Origintea, Tony, is such a nice chap. Most of the teas tended to suck - these, I'm giving them a second chance (and they are better than they were indeed, if nothing else, weird storage smell in some of them is gone). I think that some of them are a grand example of why overly dry storage sucks - and no, it is not that the tea ages slower and retains complexity, that's nonsense. The tea gets too dry and I don't think it would ever get better. MarshalN has written about one such tea (2001 CYH) here. I'll write about the CYH in future too. 

Today, there's some optimism, at least - it is called "The good, the bad, the bad and the weird".It goes chronologically.

2003 Menghai Purple Dayi

I usually like Purple Dayi and this one is not an exception.

The compression is heavy indeed. Nevertheless, these chunks smell pretty good, of plums, mint and raisins. After rinsing, it is interestingly sweet, with tones of longan - it feels rather northern, but without the occassional northern hardness. There is some camphor in the background, and, unfortunately, an element of hollowness.

In mouth, one quickly can tell that this is a decent tea - sweet, thick, long-lasting (both in taste and number of steepings) and rather tasty. In the first steepings, it feels Mengku-ish, with a mixture of longan fruitiness, overripe garden fruit and some wood. Later, another family of tastes chimes in (feels more like Bulang to me) - some meadow flowers and dark brown honeylike sweetness. The element of hollowness from the aroma is not present at all, which is good.

Both families of tastes work well together, creating a nice, dark taste spectrum, and in means of pleasure, it is not important which one dominates at a given moment.

Overall, this is a very warming tea with calming qi - very good for this kind of cold Oxford days.

2002 Haiwan HOP
Supposedly 50% from Yiwu, I'm afraid that this is a pretty bad tea. Just look at the leaves and color of liquor.

Is this a 2010 tea? No... 2008 then? No... But it surely does not have a color of normal 2002 tea either (I don't think it's a fake though). It has been stored very dry, obviously.

The aroma of dry leaves is a bit smoky - same with rinsed leaves, which add some woodiness and rancid walnuts to the mix.

The taste is nothing to write home about either. There is a rancid nuttiness, generic sweet wood, emptiness and a large component of "plain weirdness".

Qi? No way. Some activity in mouth is there, but I'm not sure if it's a bug (pesticides) or a feature here.

This tea is, in my opinion, dead and gone. Even if you revive it, it will be hardly much good - it's probably better to invest your energy elsewhere.

2001 Haiwan HOP

This one has a bit bigger and better conserved leaves than the 2002. It is also quite without smoke. But that's unfortunately about it when it comes to good stuff.

This is a hollow, dried out tea, without much energy in it. When it manifests some strength, it does so via weird tastes and unpleasant sourness.

It is somewhat drinkable when you have zero expectations, but otherwise, I'd steer clear of it.

1990s Round cake
The previous two teas were largely without positives - the same can't be said about this cake, despite its numerous shortcomings.

The dry leaves smell quite nicely, of nuts. The wet leaves smell rather earthy, but not in a classical puerh way. A lot of red fruit and woody tannins is also present. Some laundry and some nuts finish it up - nothing too great, though not tragic either.

In mouth, the tea is very sweet, in a positive, warming way. It starts a bit fishy/mineral, followed by sweet woodiness (not too great). However, it feels good in mouth overall, being thick and sweet.

After a couple of steepings, the fishiness subsides and gives way to drier woodiness and a taste I'd call "laundry". Simply put, it does not taste very good.

Nevertheless, it causes pleasant vibrations in mouth and the overall warming feeling is accompanied by a qi that takes some time to build up, but is rather obvious (to me, at least) - and which is calming and soothing. Therefore, even though this tea does not taste too good, I would not say it totally sucks - it also has some good aspects about it. In overall feeling, it bears some similarity to Guan Yun Gong teas...

2001 & 2004 Big Green Tree Yiwu

Peter of Pu-erh.sk has been so kind to send me samples of his slightly more aged samples (from 1999 to 2004). I am doubly grateful for these, as all are pretty good... 

Today, let us have a look at two BGTs (private production, not an "official" one):

2004 Big Green Tree Yiwu

The cake is already dark and brown, mummy alert is off. It is a "black ribbon" edition (i.e., rich  in black hair). 

Rinsed leaves have a good aroma. It seems to be of the "dark forest fruit" sort of Yiwu, along with further fruitiness, but it is very nicely aged  already, one easily sees the additional depth. The aroma suggests (and the taste later confirms) that this is, quite interestingly, right between a tea's youth and old age. I had both a piece from the cake's centre and a piece further from it - the non-central part is quite a lot more aged. That is not surprising, due to strong compression of the centre, but it was interesting nevertheless - one does not compare a tea's centre and non-centre every day.

In taste, there is some very light fishiness - not too bad, but it slightly disturbed my first couple of steepings. Along that minor unpleasantness, a lot of pleasant tastes marches on - lovely forest fruit, some clay and moss. Later steepings introduce more of overripe fruit and powidl, the more aged tones get stronger and nuts appear in the taste and aftertaste.

The tea has plenty of good sweetness and thickness. Activity (vibrations, rather than cooling) is good, it starts behind teeth and moves to the back of oral cavity. There is some qi, but it is not really that developed, in my opinion.

All in all, this is quite a good tea and its price ($80 or so) is very competitive. I'll buy some of that, methinks...

2001 Big Green Tree Yiwu

At last, I unpacked my camera, which is why I hope to post more photos regularly again.

The nicely colored leaves (yay, Guangzhou storage) emit a peaceful, aged camphory aroma. The aroma becomes much more interesting when the leaves are rinsed: it has tones of sweet wood, camphor, overripe forest fruit and some red fruit. It is sweet and suggests excellent storage conditions.

The taste is undoubtedly of the "somewhat aged Yiwu" family, but it is deeper and more complex than most of these. This Yiwu tea is very sweet, in a caramel way, which mixes with tastes of raisins, overripe forest fruit and plumminess (the plummy component actually starts to dominate the taste after a couple of steepings; it is a bit like 06 CGHT's Yiwu Yecha). The sweetness is both deep and wide and I find it entirely lovely. There were some slightly disturbing (laundry-like) tastes in the first two steepings, but I guess that they're just an aspect of the plumminess.

The aftertaste is also very nice, with a bit of camphor and later long-term aftertaste of young plums. These good post-taste features are paired with pleasant numbing of mouth (not the bad pesticide-like sort of numbing).

It definitely has stronger qi than the 2004 version. Still, it is not an "in your face" qi powerhouse, but it needs some time to build up instead. 

This is a tea which has many good features and little to no bugs. However, I found it lacking in "X factor" - although I enjoyed the two sessions with this tea, they were by no means "wow sessions". Anyway, I guess that this is purely personal and you might have even better time than I had (and it was pretty good already) with this tea.

Both the 2001 and 2004 versions of BGT sold by pu-erh.sk are, in my opinion, very nice teas, well worth sampling.

2008 Finepuer Ding Jia Zhai & 2000 Menghai Dayi Fragrant Bamboo Tube

Oxford seems like an awfully nice place to be at, I must say. We already had our first puerh session with Hobbes, which and who were both extraordinarily nice. The only aspect in which Oxford seems to suck is the water. Hobbes has shed some light upon that matter, as he told me that it probably comes from lots of chalk nearby... maybe it's a good water for old-fashioned teachers... However, it is certainly not good for puerh or any other tea if it comes to that. The first day here, we had a pot of plain old Earl Grey and there was almost a crust at the surface, not only a thin coating. I'm definitely glad I brought my Brita over...

I've been retasting teas I know well these days, so I won't write about them, but I picked two teas from my "archive of paper notes" (a chaotic stack of tattered yellow paper, covered with hieroglyphs) as they both are rather interesting and/or decent. By the way, why is there "and/or" in english? "Or" should always dominate "and"... Or is it that "and/or" is common OR and "or" is XOR? (Unfortunately, I hoped that I could be clearer in common talking using xor as a normal word, but so far, it has been more explaining than saved words with people outside of my discipline).

Ah, back to tea anyway...

2008 Finepuer Ding Jia Zhai

This tea felt quite interesting to me, as I did not think much of young DJZ when I had it, and furthermore, this particular one is not really a typical Yiwu tea I know. 

It's got a dark, sweet taste, of forest honey and sweet wood... it tastes a lot more like some aged Bulangs than a common Yiwu, imho... Anyway, it is properly thick, sweet and quite tasty, although the taste is not very dynamic and just gets weaker and weaker as steepings go. The tea is somewhat one-dimensional, but it is good at what it does.

Despite pleasant cooling, I feel the tea somewhat lacks in qi. That is the difference between decent and great tea, I think. Pure taste won't make me pay more than $50.

2000 Menghai Bamboo-tube puerh

Another tea from Finepuer/sampletea. Unfortunately, the photos lie deep under sands of time, so I'll at least describe the visual aspect. The tube is, unlike most I've met so far, very thin, hardly more than an inch in diameter. I wonered what such a large surface area would do to aging. 

The color of the liquor is very nice red/orange, a rather good color for a tea from 2000. Outside that, though, the tea is quite unlike any 2000 tea I have had, because of the very strong bamboo aspect. 

The aroma has a typical puerh based (not much aged puerh, though, like about 5 years), but on top of that, there are young and penetrating bamboo tones. Overall, the aroma is a mixture of lower, sweet (honey) aspects and higher ones - lemon an herbs. Overall, it smells very medicinal...

... And tastes medicinal too. The taste is very similar to the aroma, i.e., honey, herbs and lemon/lemongrass. The bamboo taste is quite similar to the one you might know from drinking Liu'An baskets, except it is a bit fresher. Unfortunately, the tea is not very dynamic and it did not feel very "internally powerful" to me (yes, also no qi). The bamboo aspect is strong and uncommon, but the tea aspect seems to be lacking and a bit hollow - could it be that there was litle volume unexposed to the environment in this tube?

Basically, I think that this is closer to an aromatized tea than to an ordinary puerh... which is ok, but it's good to know. I would look elsewhere for a good example of 2000 tea.