2008 ChunyunXiang Spring cake

I can't remember when I bought this, but it's probably been over a year ago. Since that time it's been sitting in my tupperware container that's been appropriated as a tea chest (I'll eventually draft or use Sketchup to get an idea for building a tea chest). The first couple of infusions haven't produced much apart from an airy sweetness. But once the leaves unfurl and begin opening up, a taste of melon, honey, and hay persist through different infusion times. I pushed it a little too hard, and the hay taste became more pronounced, bordering on vegetal. But unlike other green teas that are oversteeped, this didn't have the horrible burnt taste.
It's a little bit different from other spring cakes I've had; it's not light with a sweet, green taste to it, but rather richer. It actually reminds me a little bit of steel barrel aged white wine. But for how hot it's been lately, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Xiaguan 2009 Gray Crane Iron Cake

I've made quite a dent on this bing, and I've noticed that it offers fairly similar tastes to Xiaguan's Baoyan brick. A nice rustic sweetness meshes with a woody taste and a lightly bitter finish, with later infusions turning sweet and very light. For $14 this is definitely a good bargain for solid sheng pu'er.

2008 Xiaguan Baoyan Jincha

I'm almost finished with my 2008 Xiaguan Baoyan Jincha. Will I buy more of it? It's hard to say. Smoke, leather, and brown sugar are all that I can taste in the tea, with the later infusions taking on a sweet grainy taste. But honestly, I can't taste an overwhemingly difference between the jincha and Xiaguan's offering of their iron cakes which are priced cheaper at http://www.jas-etea.com/products/-2009-Xiaguan-Yellow-Crane-Iron-Cake-Pu%252derh-Tea-%252d-357g-Raw.html and for more product at 357 grams vice 250 grams.

Perhaps due to the warmer weather with temperatures reaching in the 100's, my tastes aren't inclined to the smoky, leathery teas and I'm finding them a tad overwhelming. Whatever the reason, this jincha is made with the same formula as Xiaguan's Baoyan brick (at least I think it is because of the "Holy Flame" moniker), but it just doesn't taste quite the same. The "Holy Flame" Baoyan bricks that I do own taste like mulled cider with hints of wood and the leaves are tinged with a beautiful rust brown at the tips due to the oxidation process. Perhaps it's due to the lighter compression with the bricks, or the increased surface area, or even because I've had them longer and more exposed to Virginia's humid climate that they've aged more than the jincha. But I'm still not in the mood for them just yet.

What I am in the mood for, and a lot of it, is the Ti Kuan Yin oolong. With its lightly nutty and vegetal taste, it's bridging the gap between a green tea and a strict black tea. But I still doubt I'll buy more than 100 grams at a time considering I've got several bings and bricks of spring harvest sheng pu'er to go through!

Pu'er Favorites the Second Time Around

I enjoy trying new things unless I'm feeling exceptionally grumpy, and sheng pu'er is no exception. But, it's comforting to continually explore the same tea: I usually notice different notes that went previously undetected. Over the past year, I acquired three bricks of the Xiaguan Baoyan, which I plan on letting age, one bing of the Kunming Guyi 2006 JingMai, three bricks of the Yiwu Yongpinhao 2007 Fall Harvest, and one Xiaguan Baoyan tuocha. Right now while I try to make time outside of work, I'm slowly chipping away at each bing and brick with the exception of two Yiwu Yingpinhao bricks and the Kunming Guyi bing.

My final thoughts on the Yuannian 2008 JianCheng 1094-I originally noted some muscatel and malt flavors about a year and a half ago. This has subtly changed with the malt fading away into a rustic sweetness in the background and the muscatel becoming muted. As of now, the flavors mesh wonderfully with each other, but there's nothing special about this decent tea.

Yunnian 2008 JianCheng 1094

I've almost finished off the Yongpinhao Yiwu Fall Harvest brick, so I decided to unwrap a new bing.  And the Yunnian 2008 JianCheng 1094 Wild Green bing is pretty good!  The compression was light enough that I could pinch off pieces of the bing and separate the leaves with ease.  The leaves are all whole which I'm starting to prefer over the mixed compression of tea leaf fragments, half leaves, and whole leaves.  The whole leaves seem to make the earlier infusions much more palatable than tea mulch.

I used enough leaves to fill the yixing 1/4th full and rinsed the leaves once.  All the sequential infusions taste very similar to the Yongpinhao Yiwu fall brick.  I haven't decided if this is caused by the proximity of the bing's storage to the brick, or if the leaves are from a similar plantation.  I can't really recall the brick being very aromatic, though...

Whatever the reason for the taste similarites, whether it's a storage error or just circumstance, I enjoy the taste of this bing.  Grape, muscatel, and a slight malt character mesh together to remind me of red wine.  These notes on tasting are all tentative since I'm thinking the bing's tastes will change with future tea sessions.

2007 Yiwu Yongpinhao 4735 Fall Harvest

This sheng pu'er is quite enjoyable. Light, fruity with freshness, but darker fruit flavors, including a grape note and tannin character are present in the tea.  This is quite possibly the lightest sheng I've had so far: in a literal sense.  Packing my 120 ml yixing full of leaves yields tea that lacks a thick texture.  The complexity of the tea makes sipping enjoyable.  The lighter muscatel tastes are first noticed and closely followed by the darker tannin taste.  I personally enjoyed lightly breathing in with some of the tea on my tongue, much like tasting whiskey, because it actually enhances the flavor.  Succinctly, this tea reminded me of a lightly oxidized formosa oolong. 

This sheng is pretty forgiving with regards to brewing methods.  I was able to use 10 seconds in between each infusion, and the amount of leaves used varied from enough to fill the pot halfway when wet, to the leaves pushing the lid off and out.  But increasing the leaves to that extreme only seemed to make the tea somewhat stronger.  

I will be ordering more of this tea. It's not excellent enough for me to rave over it, but it's good enough that I could drink it every day and be satisfied.

Kunming Chuncheng 2006 Arbor Yinhao Tuocha 50g

I took off the paper of this tuocha and smelled the leaves with anticipation.  Hmm, tobacco-ish and tea-like! So far so good, but when I tried this, I started to gag.  This tea is incredibly astringent and tastes awful, even after 5 infusions! I never form a full opinion of a tea after just one tasting session, but this one left a very strong impression on me.  Maybe, just maybe, some age will tame it out, but for right now I can't drink it.

Lincang Yinhao 2007 Te Ji Tuocha

I've made a large enough dent in my small pu'er stash to justify opening the wrapper on this tuocha.  The predominant smell is sweet hay and the compression is tight but not impossible to pry leaves off.

The taste is simple but straightforward: hay, sweetness, astringency, smoke, and bitterness.  Each of the tastes can be picked out rather easily from the tea since they don't meld together into complexity.  This tea doesn't have a lot of middle notes to it.  It's just a little bit of sweetness and astringency as it enters the mouth, and then smoke and bitterness as it reaches the back of the tongue.

This tea never really evolved from the first few steepings.  I've become somewhat accustomed to tea being a little bitter than I'd like for the first two cups since the infusions are very short and it's often hard to decant a teapot precisely within 5 seconds or so for the first infusion.  And a few seconds late means bitter, astringent tea.  But this tea was smoky and bitter throughout several sessions and the flavor beneath the smoke and bitterness was hay.

All of these flavors combined to produce a tea that was ultimately forgettable. The smokiness was overpowering and never really smoothed out to add complexity to the tea, and the hay flavor never developed any sweetness or fruitiness or anything.  Maybe 10 years or so would be beneficial to this tea, but there's certainly nothing redeeming about it now.

Chawang 2006 Yunnan Silver 50 gram tuocha

I've let my yixing rest entirely for a day in the hopes that my shengs would taste fresher instead of a mishmash of all the shengs I've brewed in it. A tuocha is a portion of tea that is compressed to have a mushroom cap shape. The tea that I bought has an insane compression. I usually use a knife to pry off flakes of compressed tea, but for this tuocha I had to stab the head with my knife and tear off a single portion of pu'er. I was deathly afraid of stabbing myself, which I've done before, and I didn't care to repeat have a cut finger. But now that there's a portion of the tea pried off, wedging the knife in to the surface should be a lot easier compared to penetrating a rock hard layer of tea.

I have no idea the amount of tea leaves I used in my yixing, but it's enough for the wet leaves to fill it up halfway. tea notes as follows:

5 second infusion: Keemun like character, nothing bad. It's not sweet nor bitter, but predominantly middle range with an orchid like taste.

10 second infusion: darker tasting start, no change in the middle, abrupt finish. No more keemun taste. Fruit component coming in later. I'm still not convinced that this is a good sheng, maybe an adequate one.

18 second infusion: start same as above. Dark, vegetal, some pleasant bitterness similar to raw veggies. The finish/aftertaste is fantastic. Lingering, light, and refreshing.

25 second infusion: still the same start. Light, fruity finish, possibly peach.

30 second infusion: same except the finish and aftertaste are more noticeable.

35 second infusion: the same as above

45 second infusion: the darkness of the start has lightened up a little. Now it resembles a Keemun taste, but lighter, contrasted with the heavy mouth feel of the tea. The sweet finish is still very much present, perhaps diminished a little bit, and slower to begin. The tea leaves have now opened up fully and there are few whole leaves in the bunch. I expect the flavor to drop off dramatically.

55 second infusion: light and orchid. The "finish" I've been tasting is really an aftertaste. It's only present after I've consumed the entire cup of tea, and it's lighter and not quite as blatantly fruity.

2 minute infusion: very light taste, woods and orchids. It only took a minute for me to realize that this is what hot water tastes like when I pour it out of my yixing to clean it. The sweet aftertaste is still there, but coming through in wisps. I think this tea is finished.

Overall, I'll have to give it a few more sessions before I decide if I should buy more or not. The aftertaste is extremely sweet. I hope it's not caused by ethylene glycol, haha. But the predominant character of the tea is just so-so. It's just sort of dark and green tasting, but without much complexity or range of good flavors. What can I say? This tuocha cost me 2 cents per cup to drink, so I wasn't expecting too much from it. And I was not disappointed.

Update: I've had several sessions with this tea and can fully understand its low price and why it won a silver award for some sheng pu'er tasting in China. The tea itself is really nothing to write home about, having a little bit of a keemun character to the baste notes but there is a distinct fruit component to the tea that is vibrant, sweet, and refreshing which appears when the leaves unfurl. I'm giving the pu'er the benefit of the doubt and attribute the taste to the leaves, but at the same time I wonder if it's been enhanced, though I have no idea how to detect it. The fruit component comes into play when the leaves fully open up, so if the tea were intentionally modified, I think the factory would have to add the flavoring to the insides of the leaves, and then roll and compress them, so that when the leaves fully open up the flavoring agent would be released. That does not sound very feasible at all given its low price, but then again I've only seen pictures of a handful of factories producing pu'er. Ultimately, though, this tuocha is very decent based on its fruit component and its price. I would not hesitant to order several more.

Chunming 2007 Yunnan Pu'er Seven Color Spring

Today I had the pleasure of trying this small 100 gram bing of sheng. It's fairly mild and benign, but it still has a good taste to it, not unlike the Kunming Guyi 2006 JingMai Spring bing I have which is considerably bigger (350g) and has a bigger kick to it. Camphor and menthol tastes are there along with a little sweetness, but the overly medicinal taste and sweetness of the Jingmai bing isn't present. At first when I tried this tea two days ago I kept thinking that I was tasting the Jingmai's flavor that had seeped into the yixing clay. I scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed, and soaked the teapot, rinsed it out, and kept trying to brew the tea and taste drastic differences between it and the teas I'd already had. No such luck.

Still, it's not as sharp as the Jingmai, and a nice light fruit note contrasts with the very heavy mouthfeel of the tea. The finish is very clean, with maybe a little sweetness lingering on the back of the tongue. The last infusion hasn't yielded very much change from the first infusion, apart from a slight reduction in astringency. However, there was not much astringency to begin with.

Overall, I like this little bing. I think its small size may have contributed to some slight aging that took the edge off any bitterness or astringency, which is still very much present in the Jingmai bing. It's not strong in taste nor caffeine, but the flavor that is there is good and simple. I'm beginning to wonder if all spring cakes are supposed to have a camphor taste to them (who knows? Maybe that's when the camphor leaves start to fall in Yunnan), but I'll obviously have to have more spring teas to determine that for certain. However, I don't think I would save a bing of this tea for later drinking. It's pleasant and mild enough that you could drink it immediately.

Nov. 15th: I've had a total of 11 infusions of this tea, and it's still good. The tastes have gotten lighter, with the fruit and camphor fading into the background, but a simple green sweetness pervading throughout the tea. It kills me how I can spend so little on tea leaves that will last for two days of continued brewing, and spend 4 times as much on chopped store brand tea leaves that will last for 2 steepings.

21 Nov: The same tasting notes as the last time. Using enough leaf to fill the teapot up halfway, there's a rustic sort of taste to it that I can't pin down. I can taste the camphor of the tea leaf, the bitterness, and the sweetness, but there's an underlying taste that's hard to describe in the first three infusions. It smells somewhat like the leaf. Later infusions make me think this is a similar tea leaf and recipe to the Kunming Jingmai spring bing. It's heavily mentholated with camphor, and a nice taste underneath it, but it's not quite as sweet as the Jingmai bing. Still, I like it.

29 November: 15 second rinse

5s infusion: mild and timid at the start of the cup yielding a satisfying taste with wonderful aftertaste that is sweet, but with rustic, woodsy tastes lingering.

5s infusion: bitter with "chewy" feel and wood note. Mild sweetness.

mid-cup: same taste with sweetness poking around. Mild astringency.

Bottom: sweet, sour, same tastes as above.

15s infusion: too long, mostly middle tastes with bitterness and no sweetness. I've used too many leaves. Instead of a good strength, the tea is overwhelming, coating my mouth, and hard to taste subtleties of subsequent cups.

~I've removed several of the leaves from the teapot and the familiar taste is coming back with camphor and menthol in the aftertaste.

22 December 2008: Using enough leaf to fill the yixing up to the lid has yielded 5 very wonderful infusions. The sheng really hit its stride in the 3rd and 4th infusions with ephemeral sweetness that is impossible to describe. It's sweet, but with a chewy texture to it. Very good stuff.

28 December 2008: I've finally polished off this bing. I have enjoyed its camphor taste and creamy sweetness but the fruit tastes I noticed in earlier tastings have diminished, perhaps caused by the lack of aged pu'er or tips, in the center of the bing. I don't really think this would be a great candidate for aging; it's already tame and enjoyable as is. I wouldn't say this sheng knocks my socks off, but I really enjoyed the chewiness and creaminess of the tea.

Kunming Guyi 2006 Jingmai Spring

This tea has really changed since I first tasted it.  It could be my dry storage or it could be the additional months added to the bing.  Whatever the reason, the taste has gone from strong medicinal camphor with a sweet finish, to more refined tastes.  This sheng starts off with a prominent green taste that melds with a smooth creamy taste and mild sweetness. Camphor is still present, but it's more of an accent.  

The bitterness of the first few infusions has given way to an assertive astringency that eventually yields to a green tasting tea with mild sweetness, and progresses to an creamy, airy sheng in later infusions.  In other words, the tea's tastes gradually progress.

Caffeine-wise, this'll blow your head off if you're not careful. 

So to sum up the tastes in three words: astringent, green, sweet.

Yixing the Day After & Before the First Cup

Yesterday I cracked open my bing of Kunming Guyi factory's 2006 Jingmai Spring sheng pu'er. I like it; it's sweet and medicinal so far. But I used it in my little yixing teapot and the camphor scents of that specific tea seem to have lingered in the pot which makes for an interesting cup of Xiaguan Tibetan Flame brick!

I decided to also read online about the different ideas for maintaining yixing teapots. The information tag I got with my purchase was laconic. It simply said, "heat water, add one teaspoon to pot, steep 1 minute. Empty tea leaves when done and rinse teapot with water."
Very little information as to where the clay was sourced, how it was made, what benefits it has over porcelain, and all that jazz.
I found this odd, considering this is Chapel Hill; all the health food stores have massive poster displays on stands that go into great length with details and photos on where you're buying your food from, the farmer's name, the farmer's region's troubles with politics or threats of logging, and why buying this farmer's crop will allow him to have an extra goat or three chickens more. And then I wonder if all the store's chains have this poster display with the same amount of ink and paper, and then I wonder if the potato farmers have the same displays for them along with the bok choy farmers, and then I begin to wonder if perhaps the store would've saved money in the long run by simply buying the farmer a goat or three chickens with the amount of money spent on paper and ink and just have a handwritten sign saying, "GOOD FOOD."

So, buying something food related that doesn't have a display that goes into great depth about the digestive problems of the crops' earthworms is mighty suspicious. So, to the internet I went to find out more about the care of yixing.

And the amount of info I found was large. On youtube, I found a video of a guy boiling a teapot in water, and then adding tea leaves to season the pot. After all of this, he put toothpaste on a toothbrush and with some elbowgrease gave that pot a good, clean, fresh feeling. Hmmm. Another tea blog had a simple "rinse three times, brew a pot of tea, rinse teapot and let dry" for its advanced seasoning and maintenance advice, and offered that seasoning an yixing teapot closes its pores and makes it similar to a porcelain teapot. And one upscale site had a bunch of monotonous made-up advice which I've paraphrased: "One should first take into mind what sort of teapot would go best with a type of tea. Upon meditation and discovery upon the type of tea corresponding to the shape of the yixing, or as the Chinese are found of saying, Eyashwong, you must then put the teapot in a larger pot boiling water and place tea within the boiling pot, but take care! One must not make the resulting tea bitter or this shall affect the taste of the Eyashwong! When it is finished, one must then put on kidgloves or use all natural, unsealed bamboo tongs such as the type used in the Ming Dynasty (which we conveniently happen to have for a mere $45) to remove the teapot. But do not touch it with the bare hands! The oil of the hands might stick to the yixing, or Eyashwong, and forever mar the enjoyment of your teabags!"

For right now, I've decide to ignore all the advice except for the blog that said to rinse, brew, and enjoy. I drink tea to relax and enjoy it.

Xiaguan 2007 Bao Yan

This tea is a nice reminder that you don't have to spend big bucks for high quality products. $5 for 250 grams of tea is not a hefty price, especially when I wouldn't hesitate to pay twice the price for the same tea. The one word to sum the taste up is: rich. This is a nice, rich, thick tea that is reminiscent to me of a mulled cider. A little spice, some sweetness, but mostly a rich, dark, soothing taste.