Spring 2010 “Pure Bud Feng Qing Black Tea cake”

19/02/2011, posted by Cha in tea

This little tea cake is pressed from Spring 2010 Feng Qing black tea. The tea is made entirely from small bud (no leaf) Feng Qing black tea from Lincang. The taste is super-smooth with malty and floral notes. Typically black tea is not pressed but in the last several years we have pressed black tea into cakes with great success. Black tea is suitable for aging and undergoes a gradual mellowing. Compressing black tea slows the aging process and makes the tea suitable for drinking as much as 5 years into the future. The compressed black tea cake is also quite bold and lovely in its appearance!

That above is the vendor’s description (Yunnan Sourcing). While I do love this tea, I found it not much different from a (very good) Yunnan gold.  Perhaps, because it is a cake, I expected  something different.  However, I am pleased with the taste and it’s smoothness.   The cake is easier to break than a regular shu or sheng puerh cake and the leaves can be separated easily. I broke just about for  two brewing sessions, one with a gaiwan , and one with a yixing teapot tomorrow.

As for most of new teas, I brew them first using a gaiwan. Since I am not always sure what to expect , the first infusion is very very short (you can see that in liquor color) , so I can guide myself  on the next infusions. Tomorrow, I’ll have better results for sure as I know now what to expect.

There were plenty infusions, but only three pics are included in this post. I imagine I will post again about this tea at some point.

Long Jing, from Jing

06/02/2011, posted by Cha in tea

This should be a rare tea, but I think now it’s the most common type of green tea in stores (and that raises some questions).  If you can get enough information about the grades, it is very difficult  to distinguish them, at least in Europe, where the offer is pretty limited.

Categories like lion‘s peak, dragon, cloud, tiger or plum, or like Shi Feng, Mei Jia Wu and Xi Hu are very nice as a information, but difficult to actually understand it, because it’s very difficult to actually drink from all categories.

I think for us,  the European (and not only) consumers, this information is difficult to grasp.  I think even the tea makers themselves don’t differentiate all  grades (does any one have any information about this?). As I see things, Long Jing tea is sold by different providers,  some include location data, some not.  I tried Xi Hu and Shi Feng, but also varieties who were simply listed as being from Zhejiang, or some with no provenience information of all.  While their leaf was somehow larger than ‘usually’, the liquor did resemble  a Long Ling. However, with so many grades and subgrades, what is a fake Long Jing? Still, I did tried some that were definitely fake .  There were crafted in such a way that the dry leaf resembled (somehow) a Long Jing, but the wet leves not at all. It was stated many times on twitter than 90% of the Long Jing from the market is actually from Sichuan. How can one actually distinguish? I have as reference the teas from some trusted providers,  and some tea I had in Hong Kong. But is that enough?

Leaving the origin besides, in my Long Jing quest I have learned many ways of brewing it.  I have found that high quality Long Jing can be brewed with near boiling water, while lower grades require a cooler water.   I learned that the you can either wait for the water to cool, or you can choose different brewing methods that produce a slightly variation in the water temperature.

The pictures were made 2 years ago. I did not post anything about it because I was overwhelmed with so much information out there. I have forgotten the details about the provenience, but it’s one of the best I had. And I think that is the only thing that matters.

Red Pearls

31/12/2010, posted by Cha in tea

This tea is not a usual red tea. It comes from Taiwan and it’s name was given only in 2007.  I don’t know how you can obtain this tea other than directly mailing Stéphane Erler.

What’s very nice about it is that it actually  has cinnamon notes  and it’s very very sweet. It’s one of the best red teas I had.   The tea is  made from a luanze oolong cultivar and also rolled as a oolong tea (!).  Further more, the tea has been roasted four times after being fully oxidized.  You can read more  tasting notes about this tea here .

I have this tea for a while now, but it is one of those teas that you don’t want to stop and take photos because it is that good.

My only concern is to be able to find more of this tea after I finish my current stock.

Since 2010 almost ended, I want to thank you all who read this blog and I wish you a Happy New Year.

1999 yiwu shu puerh

26/11/2010, posted by Cha in tea

Definitely a shu I like . I’m writing this post 10 minutes after, and the aftertaste is still pleasant. I can’t define the taste, but some keywords that I can come up with: sharp , clear.    Drinking this tea feels like erasing a  whiteboard, where my head represents the whiteboard.   Without considering the warming effect, I think there are few shu puerh that had such an effect on me , effect that goes beyond taste .

There were more than seven infusions, but this is where I stopped with photos. I had another ’round’ of tea later.  The photos were made in a different tea session. For any tea that I write of, I’m trying to have at least two sessions. One to take the photos and one for the complete experience.

This tea is a sample i received from Canton Tea. Too bad I can’t afford one right now, but If you can, I highly recommend it.

Mi Lan Dan Cong Oolong

06/11/2010, posted by Cha in tea

When speaking of Dan Cong you can never be right.  I remember a while ago this was the only ‘flame war’  in the tea word that caught my attention.   I will not define Dan Cong, but here is what babelcarp says:

dan cong (Dan1 Cong2) = literally Lone Bush (单丛 or 單叢 or 单枞 or 單樅), implying

• (1) a tea tree or unpruned shrub rather than a low shrub as in large plantations
• (2) the promise that all the leaves in a package come from a single plant, or
• (3) in Fenghuangshan, all the leaves are harvested from a cultivar descended from a single Shuixian tree growing in that mountain range

This tea is also found under the names : Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea, Feng Huang Dan Cong Tea, Dragon Phoenix, Fenghuang Dan Cong, Shui Xian so this Dan Cong would wall under the third definition.  Mi Lan translates (I guess ) in Honey Orchid.

This tea has indeed a floral characteristic and it’s sweet and goes many infusions. Too bad my camera batteries went out. I could not take pics with all the infusions. As with many oxidized oolongs, it’s hard to go wrong when brewing this tea, but still, I prefer not to pour directly on the leaves.

Pre Rain Mo Gan Yellow Buds

17/10/2010, posted by Cha in tea

This was one of my first quality yellow teas. Till then, I encountered only fake or horrible yellow tea from local vendors.   Here is the description Jing Tea offers:

Update:

A very nice and informative post about yellow tea (not this one) can be found at Life in Teacup, by Ginko.

2006 Nan Qiao Factory Cooked Puerh

02/10/2010, posted by Cha in tea

I have received a generous sample of this tea from Canton Tea Co.  I must say, this is one of the teas that shows me just how green I am  when it comes to tea.   This tea is a cooked puerh, but If I wouldn’t knew, I would say it’s a raw puerh. Leaf, liquor , taste, everything is like for a raw puerh. Why is then this tea a cooked puerh?  That will be my research topic in the following  weeks.

I used my  shu puerh teapot to brew this tea and some cups that I usually use for that type of puerh .  In the near future  I will   try to brew this tea again  with another teapot and a different set of cups.

This tea is great, but I found out that If I shower my teapot at the early infusions, the liquor has an accentuated note of bitterness . So in order to avoid that, I used  short infusions, and I showered the teapot only on the last infusions.  Even when the tea had notes of bitterness, I could feel the sweet aftertaste immediately after.

There are eight infusions in the pics, but they were not the only infusions. I left the leaves in the teapot to have a session of tea later.   It was simply to much tea to drink in a single session.   The guys from Canton recommend 10-15 infusions, and I strongly agree. In conclusion, a very nice  (confusing ) tea.

This tea is available for purchasing here .

Update:

Here is a pic with the  wet leaves:

2003 Yiwu Raw Puerh

28/09/2010, posted by Cha in tea

This tea goes in the “I shouldn’t drink this tea alone” category.  The taste was wonderful from the first infusion, when the leaves weren’t even unfolded completely. It had a somehow fruity taste and in effect it was chilling. I can still feel the aftertaste even now after 1 hour since my last cup.  It was one of the teas that go on the back of the mouth by itself.   Stéphane has a better description here ( You can also acquire it on his blog ) . I had only one sample, but I  am considering to save some money so that I can acquire a full cake  .

This post also has two little side stories.

The three photos depicting tea  are from the same infusion.  The main reason why I posted them is to show the effect of cup color on tea color.  You may not believe it immediately, but besides the color, the taste also gets affected. Keep in mind that the cups are made of same material and have the same dimensions. Only the color differs.  The green cup had a somehow ‘fresh’ feeling while the brown one made the tea ‘stronger’ and some (forest-autumn ) notes were distinctive .  Interesting.

The teapot was initially intended to be used for green tea ( gasp) . I have read that many successfully use yixing teapots  to brew green tea (with extra care), but I failed. I was not satisfied, the results did not compare to a gaiwan. Now , this teapot is used for raw puerh.

Snow Dragon

17/09/2010, posted by Cha in tea

Besides the well-known puerh teas, or red teas, Yunnan also produces some excellent green teas . They are usually made from the da ye (large leaf) variety and have a distinctive flavor.   Usually, they support a larger number of infusions than other green teas and in terms of price, they are cheaper.  I usually acquire 250g or more tea from this category and use them on a almost daily basis.

However, Yunnan also produces white teas. The tea called Snow Dragon is one of them. Its looks is as impressive as it’s name.  The are meticulously hand-processed, each leaf being twisted by hand. Based on my readings, “Snow Dragon” is made entirely from small bud shoots picked in a 3 day window of time . I can confirm the small bud part based on the look of the wet leaves.

When brewed, the leaves unfold and produces a transparent liquor , with hints of yellow. Even if it’s so meticulously  crafted, this tea is very forgiving. However, if you pour water directly on the leaves , the tea will bite back and your infusion will be slightly bitter. Be sure to pour on the wall of your gaiwan or, if you don’t want to do quick infusions, wait for the water to cool first, and eventually , use a smaller quantity of leaf.  Another thing that I like about it is that you can obtain a great number of infusions (for this category). Six or seven infusions is not uncommon.

Initially, I imagined this tea was a green tea, even if  I acknowledged the white tea characteristics.  Upon further reading I found out it’s white and suddenly, it  became  obvious.    This serves as a proof that I have yet much to learn.

Luanze Oolong – Gao Shan

13/09/2010, posted by Cha in tea,video

This came in one of the samples Stéphane has sent me when I acquired some teaware from him. I have to say, the teas from him are something else.  Initially I imagined the softness from these oolongs is from the charcoal, but after brewing tea  with plain water  I can say the charcoal isn’t the only reason why the oolongs from him are so soft on the throat and back of the mouth.

I had some notes regarding the taste but I can’t find them . Describing a taste is something I don’t like to do anyway.  I remember I was very surprised.  The first infusion was a little bit strange, but I think it was caused because I didn’t pour correctly.  And I was using a somehow big quantity of leaf so I was sure to use short infusions.  After the first infusion, the tea was very consistent and as I got near the end infusions, I remember the tea changed a bit to something more familiar.  It was a nice experience. The confusion at the first infusion actually added more value to the overall feeling.

Because I video recorded the first infusion (by myself) , I didn’t pour correctly and I got the tea to open right only in the second infusion.  Somebody familiar with oolongs and gong fu will see that in the video. A note on the samples I received: they yield a great number of infusions . After I brewed a lot of infusions in the first round, I had another round several hours later.

This Luanze Oolong – Gao shan is from Shan Lin Shi , Taiwan , and was harvested by hand in 10 April , 2009.  This info was all available on the sample I received.

Luanze is an oolong cultivar from Taiwan, while Gao Shan means High Mountain .  Shan Lin Shi is a high-elevation tea growing region in Zhushan, literally Evergreen Grove Creek ( according to Babelcarp )