Bus Ride to Yiwu

This Monday, I brewed up 90's Yiwu from Hoffman sent to me by Emmett in an effort to get a better grip on dry storage. For those of you who are aspiring to age sheng in the dryer colder climes of the world,  it helps to know how you will like the taste of such dry-stored tea. If you don't and you have tongs of it, don't worry.  You'll grow to like it.  Dealing with such cognitive dissonance is one of the our most useful and necessary defense mechanisms not only as a tea drinker but as a generally well-functioning human being.   MarshalN has mentioned that my teas are aging very very slowly but I take comfort that my beengs are not dead. It's the start of foggy season in the Bay Area which means I'm cheered up every morning to see my hygrometer register 60% inside my tea closet.  Delusions make life more palatable and I'm solidly clinging onto the notion that DIY aging in Berkeley will turn out.

When I brew up the Hoffman Yiwu which must have spent the latter part of it's life in Hoffman's Marin cave, I'm surprised how young it tastes and how long my own teas will have to go. Then I notice  this sample tastes like a blend.  The fruity notes of Yiwu are accompanied by a plantation roughness which recedes after subsequent brews.  By the sixth brew, the lesser leaves turn sweet or have toned down.  The web lore has us believe that pure mountain cakes were kind of rare and blends tended to be the norm before this century so it makes sense this nineties cake is a blend.  According to this informative bannacha article, the Yao minority who live in the wilder parts of Yiwu cut most of their ancient tea gardens to grow rice as recent as fifteen years ago as price for their tea had been dirt cheap.  What regret.

I'll take the HLH Yiwu Chawang as a benchmark for readily available pure Yiwu.  And out of curiosity, I brew up the 2012 YS Gao Shan Zhai which was an enjoyable session but now I don't remember much other than marveling that good quality Yiwu's don't bother my stomach as much.  I wonder how this Hoffman's cake compares with other Yiwu blends. A friend brought me a cheap cheap tong of 6 FTM blends which I have never touched but tonight's the night to crack open the Spirit of Yiwu blend to see how Hoffman's supposed Yiwu fares.

I've held a low low opinion of 6 FTM ever since the 2005 Year of the Rooster Cake.  That astringent smoky production probably  accelerated if not triggered the start of my sheng problems.  My friend got this 2005 6 FTM Yiwu Yinji blend at Meliandao for less than $4 so I was expecting a flabby barely Yiwu experience.  But instead I get a decent Yiwu sweetness. Not too complex but fantastic for a $4 beeng. Probably in 2005, 6 FTM could still source decent maocha. I dare not buy any new 6 FTM now even for cheap.

Let's take stock of the rides I had to Yiwu. At the top end, a deluxe 4x4 limo service took me to a half- day tour of the highlights of Yiwu.  Like such high-end luxury tours, that HLH was definitely overpriced.   At the bottom end, a bus ride dropped me off on the outskirts of Mahei.  Another was an old school communist van tour packed with some frowning lao tong zhis.  But I still managed to get to some part of Yiwu and enjoy the views. Even if I can a afford nicer ride, it's fun to see what the local bus action is all about. There's uncomfortable sardine packed bus rides of the South American and Indian variety, but this FTM Yiwu but is more like a country Korean bus, roomy and not a bad way to travel for cheap.  I've read repeatedly that early few years of FTM production were of decent quality. Probably 2004-2005 is some cutoff point.

Are boutique productions always superior to mass produced beengs from big factories.  It's mostly true when there's a steep cost differential. A $4-$15 beeng cannot compete fairly with a hand-crafted $200 beeng. You can watch the 6FTM company production video here to see how such low grade industrial beengs are made.  I've ripped the most interesting shots below in case you cannot tolerate the brutal dramatic soundtrack or the terrible buffering from China.