SOTD- sheng of the day

Cool! Shah8, thanks for the google hint. geraldo's opinions on the wood mold pekoe run pretty much parallel to my own. But he's a better writer. Didja read that piece--"I Am Buying Aged Pu'er"? Wow! nff--I'll share some pics if I can. Maestro mplant phases in and out of this space-time continuum, so I have to be fast on the shutter release. We'll drink pu'er 50s - present and the best dc and wuyi we can source. And I've reeled in some good High Mountain oolongs. Tomorrow I'll open the GrandTea parcel so the HK grams can breathe. I hate to chip one of my 2000 beengs; they're somewhat rare. Maybe I can GENTLY shake loose enough from a cake for us to brew without breaking the beeng. If mine is good or comparable (or better!), perhaps I'll go into the tea biz and sell it off in pieces. We shall see what we shall see. Best to all, ~grasshopper

91 7452 a little bit overdone on the humidity. Not so that it is off in any way but just a little flat. No huigan But it is still thick mellow with a nice aftertaste and some warming qi. if not as interesting as it should be still very enjoyable. Better than shou any day.

Grasshopper it is such a tease to go to grand tea and see simplified characters for less than a grand. Have you tried the 80s little yellow label that they still have in stock?

[GN?] Have you tried the 80s little yellow label that they still have in stock?

[grasshopper] I am ashamed to say I cannot recall. Yat used to keep reviews (including my own poor scribblings) on his website, but those went away. Lew and Anodyne, both tea maestros of deserved repute, keep extensive tea diaries. For that and much else they have my admiration. I drink tea while hunched over desk-work at my office and home--obsessing with tiny matters outside the realm of tea. I have a few Little Yellow Label cakes, but none from Yat. And I've said before that storage is more important than any other issue in the flavor of aged sheng. "Little Yellow Label" cakes from various sources are likely to have zip in common. Buying aged pu'er mail-order is risky. Yat sold me some great aged sheng over the years. Best regards, ~grasshopper (Sheng of Last Night: Wrapperless 80s XG Jia Ji Tuo Cha, wonderful beverage, provenance enegmatic, 5g per 100ml gaiwan)

07 Jinuoshan Tai Yang Gu Youle Shan

The couple of years in humid storage shows up in a good way. Dark grain, mushroom and camphor are also in attendance. Nice.

SOTD" 04 everlastin Manzhuan I really enjoyed the first four infusions. but then got a little harsh although it could have been my brewing as I was working. I really enjoy the flavor of mazhuan tea. This cake was stored in HK but I kinda doubt it made it into the basement .

nite time session of 90s little yellow label.

I was down today, so after my morning sheng and before my evening shu (which was an absurdly fantastic session of SF), I pulled out 4g of Puzhen. It was so good to me.

Need tea to breath...

I'm visiting a university in Zurich this week, where we are drinking a rather decent tea called "Raw Pu-erh", kindly provided by an outfit called Anteaques. It's strong, which is important when the Swiss drink only weak tea.

I have also been roaming the streets looking to slake my thirst for kunst. I love kunst, particularly when visiting a foreign city. Thankfully, Zurich has a thriving kunst scene, apparently specialising in French and English kunst, which is my favourite kind. Their Kunsthaus is, for example, a nice place. Expensive, but nice. Then again, good kunst costs money.


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

I'm drinking my morning cup of SE Memorial, and googling what the heck kunst is...

it's what they call European 'ladies of the night'

Hobbesoxon said:

Thankfully, Zurich has a thriving kunst scene, apparently specialising in French and English kunst, which is my favourite kind. Their Kunsthaus is, for example, a nice place. Expensive, but nice. Then again, good kunst costs money.


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

Click to expand...

I'll never get used to these European spellings.



See, teatime? That's how you do it on a gentleman's site.

SOTD: First was the XZH 2007 Huang Shan Lin - JingGu Da Huang Ya (large yellow tips) - this was a relatively different type of sheng. It was relatively subtle but with interesting complexity. While I find the taste difficult to describe the mouthfeel was rather good - it had a somewhat light tannic texture to it (if that makes sense). It somehow reminded me a bit of the KuZhuShan but without the fruitiness. Wow - I'm having a difficult time describing this tea but I did enjoy it. Oh, and some of the leaves were very large indeed.

Next I had a sample of the 2002 Yiwu "Ancient Spirit" which is available from YS. Well this is indeed one of the wetter stored teas available from Scott although it doesn't have any "basement" storage flavors. However it did have some underlying bitterness that I didn't completely enjoy. I imagine this as being due to the "plantation" leaves although I'm not sure if this is really the case or not.

Well after having both of these teas in a short time span, I really had to eat something and I felt pretty wired for the next few hours. Unfortunately I'm not sure if it was due to one tea more than the other. Together they were only about 6.5 gms which is usually my "dose" for a single tea so I didn't actually drink more tea than usual although I did drink it faster than usual.

Comments from anyone else that has had the 2007 HSL recently?

All I had was a bit 'o Bangwei, which decided to be tart/sour today.

The large leaves were mostly on the top. The '07 DianGu and Puzhen has large leaves throughout the bing, but Huangshanlin has their biggest on top, with somewhat smaller leaves underneath. I've always considered it to have major league qi, so I'm not surprised you were affected, what with plantation caffeine on top of that.

2011 Chawangpu Jinngu Yin Xiang -

A bit floral for the first couple of infusions along with predominant grain notes. Definitely needs a more leaf to get enough flavor and the kuwei seemed to be a bit stronger because of that. Chaqi was noticeable and decent. Though I have to say I'm not a huge Jinngu fan.

1) Like Yiwu, Jing Gu teas fill out after some years. Ideally, you'd taste them after about 3 years.

2) After Jingmai and Kunlu (Royal tea garden stuff) teas, Jing Gu are the best Lancangs. Thing is, like Kunlu teas, the good stuff are from fairly small groves, while there are tons of crap to mediocre teas. In this day and age, all of the good stuff is spoken for. Gotta realize...Lao Banzhang? It's surrounded by essentially 7 villages that comprise the Banzhang area. Lao Man'E, XinBanzhang, BanPen, these guys are known, but there are villages like Baka Long and Baka Nan as well, and we NEVER see bings said to be made from them. That's because much LBZ is either all fake, or heavily adulterated with these neighboring Bulangs. Same with Bingdao. Tiny grove, the size of the best Jing Gu or Kunlu tea groves. However, it's surrounded by lots of neighboring old tree Mengku that tastes sorta like Bingdao. Yangta is the biggest of the old tree Jing Gu groves, and there are no particularly similar-tasting neighboring old tree groves nearby. Have a Yangta, you've had 'em all. Floral wood, sugarcane that's slightly fruity, cools throat, little qi, little complexity. You just want a good one because the mediocre stuff is extra boring and thin. Xiao Jing Gu, centered around Kuzhushan is pretty popular for good aroma and good huigans, and in general, the old trees tastes pretty close to Bingdao, IMO. Also tastes better than most "Bingdao". Huangcaoba is good as well. However, most of the rest of Jing Gu is taida to the max, and the good stuff is pretty hard to come by. The annoying thing is, the puerh industry and chatter is all very "helpful to vendors". They don't talk about stuff that's hard to profit from, and they talk incessantly about things that aren't *that* great. So only hobbyists gets to ask for top Jing Gu with cakes runs of 20-70, while everyone else mutters about how Jing Gu isn't very good. They also clamor for Man Nuo and Xikong, and all the other obscure stuff. And pay though the nose for it.


Today, I tried out some '07 XZH 8582. Top flavor is uncoordinated and relatively low--much like YS '11 Wuliangshang without quite the vegetalness. Some nice camphor notes, as well as a very subtle berry jam note. This has qi, to my surprise, and it also lasted longer than I usually expect it to last. There isn't a big enough difference between this and '10 XZH Osanzhai for my comfort. There really was lots of better teas around at not completely unreasonable prices way back in '07. Makes those puer.livejournal posts about how over-expensive XZH 8582/7542 is compared to a Dayi 8582-801 look like rank idiocy. And these XZH were not really great deal in comparison to simply paying for the good stuff like Huangshanlin.

Makes sense that it would need some time to fill out. A little humid storage probably wouldn't hurt either. Thanks for the detailed info on Jinggu.

Yeah? Well, as you may or may not know, this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2010-Changt...232?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eaf438470

is a Kuzhushan. Plantation that is well done. I do believe you've had some homely experience with this tea, and correlating what I said previously with that tea should give you a practical example. Only two areas Changtai does consistently well...Yiwu and JingGu. The 2001 Jinzhushan is a fairly popular product in its way, even though it's overshadowed by the more famous Yiwu.

Today, I fiddled with some 2001 Dayi 7542. Good qi, heavy flavors, strong cooling, pretty good endurance, tastes less damp than it usually does and more woody. Coating flavors is reasonably persistent. In comparison to 2001 HeShiHua Jingmai, it's more complex, much more qi, but thinner liqueur, and not as persistent aroma. Largely the same with the 2002 Tai Lian, but Tai Lian is much lighter and less aged in taste. Lighter qi as well, but about as complex in taste, and a better performer, aroma-wise. About equal in persistent coating taste. The Dayi 7542 is simply still awkward in taste right now, and is not as appealing as the other two teas on a crave basis.

I have to say that the last few times I brewed the Qian Jia Feng it was quite good. Mine is the 09 so that would fall in line with what you said about needing to wait at least three years. Speaking of Red Lantern, what Chang Tai bings would you recommend? How is the Yibang?

SOTD: Tea Urchin / ChaRen 2011 Autumn Mang Zhi - another understated autumn tea. This is decent enough for drinking now - some fruitiness and a bit of bitterness. I didn't notice any qi. This further confirms my thought that spring tea is really the preferred way to go more than 9 out of 10 times. That said, I can see how someone might like to drink this daily now since autumn tea is also cheaper. I would not keep this for storage though.

I have never bought from Red Lantern, and I typically will loathe anything from Changtai that's not blended by someone else. Some yiwu and Jinggu excepted. Houde sold a 2004 Jing Gu yesheng that I liked quite well. The sample of the '99 Yiwu was pretty good, if a tad boring. Changtai, in general, really prefers overly gentle teas, which doesn't work unless that tea's natural inclination is to be gentle. I.e., I've found the Old Chen Bulang rather abominable in its gummy untoothedness... I'm not sure how good that Yibang would be. All I'd say is that Yibang is a small-leaf tea, so you want to sample that first, to make sure it's not boring, and that there's still qi.

Speaking of Bulangs, I had a bit of fun with the 2003 Menghai Bulang Jingpin. This one faded a bit from view of the hype merchants because of accusations of fake teas (pretty much all threads in chinese I've found gets derailed about this). Either 2002 spring or 2003 fall (I think the latter). Today, I had a session that made me think of Banzhang... First off, it had this wonderful osmanthus-wood aroma in most of the early brews. Next, the qi is essentially on par with the XZH LBZ, and certainly more than the CGHT Ban'E or the Gan'En '05 or the Puersom '11. What was interesting about this qi, besides its strength, was the durability. Most pharm puerh, the early brews smack you hard and ease off, or the tea builds subtly so as you go deeper into a session. This qi *punches* almost every cup, past brew 10. The state of tea drunk was also very durable between cups, which was nice, actually. The huigans were there, sorta, but it's gotten old and aged, so is kinda subtle, but the tea really coats the mouth and the aftertastes shimmer in the back of the mouth and throat. The bitterness and astringency were fairly light, and in brews ~3-7, in a way similar to LBZ. It is not especially thick, however, and it does not have a rich taste, like the CGHT Ban'E in the early brews. Mostly delicate variations on wood, sweetness, grapes. Late infusion has that sweet grains of most all Bulangs. I enjoyed this tea very much. Even if it's "just" a random Bulang from elsewheres, it's really, really, good in my book, and I like this more than I do the 2001 7542, despite the much stronger and richer taste. More comparable to the 2001 HeShiHua. Stronger qi, weaker more complex taste, slightly weaker aroma, same sense of purity of single grove production.

Today I had a sample of a 2011 Jingmai from Bana tea. It was quite "green" and had floral notes and a typical (?) drying of the mouth, but not in an upleasant way at all. This was a rather good example of a Jingmai I think. I followed it up with a sample from Best Tea House of a 2006 Jingmai by the 101 company. It was remarkably similar to the '11 in almost all respects. It showed very little signs of aging in any way. The qi of these 2 teas combined was reasonably strong, but not overpowering at all. One or both of them also seemed to upset my stomach somewhat and left it churning afterwards. Sometimes I feel that these greener shengs with interesting mouthfeel and activity also tend to irritate the stomach more. One plus for autumn teas is that I think they are also generally easier on the stomach.