06 Menghai Caravan To Tibet

More shu.  I know.  Due to the cooling weather, my system has been more sensitive to sheng lately so you may get an endless winter stream of shu reviews.

I drank four different shu's this morning- technically I got out of bed at noon.  In continuation of my cheap shu project, I popped in the $6.80 Tianpin Ripe to slug with my fried egg on chinese leftover brunch. Ever since re-uptaking my pu-erh obsession,  I'm just not interested in spending time cooking and will resort to bare minimum to keep my system going especially when the cook is out. Chocolate bars for dinner last Wednesday was a bit of a low point- sad considering I used to be a serious cook but a tea junkie must get a fix before all else.

For $7, the 07 Tianpin Ripe is passably decent- i.e. I drank three small cups of it. I had a handful of shus that I either spat out or refused to do more than sipping recently so even being able take it down means much.  If you don't have this brick, you're really not missing out.  If you did get it, it just adds to your pile of cheap shus with a woody profile.

When I don't quite get the fix I need,  I immediately have to go into the arms of another  tea I know that will do me right.  So I brought out my 2006 Menghai Caravan to Tibet.  "That's more like it!",  I tell myself as I sip the first brews.  Menghai Factory released this unique one time batch to celebrate their 2006 media stunt setting out a caravan of 99 horses to travel the ancient Tea Horse Road.  This tea of course did not take this arduous journey. (I also forward readers to Phyll Sheng's post for further reading.)

Flawlessly smooth and balanced with just a hint of sasparilla- I can rely on this solid shu.  Thick body with tangible mouthfeel, I'm satisfied. Whew, now I can go onto take care of laundry matters.  To think I didn't snatch more of this up when Scott was just giving these away for $15. I wasn't forced to drink shu back then. All you youngsters quaffing sheng without a care and being sniffy about shu- be ware- it could happen to you one day.

These high end Menghai shu's are no longer an interesting experience to me but they represent to me a baseline quality like drinking a nice VSOP brandy at the end of a day.   I personally prefer the robust maltier more livelier 06 Menghai Sanjipu(my Menghai ATF) over this CTT but I'm lucky even to have both.
 
For interested readers, I also have the 2006 CTT sheng which remains unopened. Back in 2006, I found the Menghai blends to be too rough and so I've intentionally decided not to open that beeng.

Shoveling Compost

Yesterday I went for a run at the Berkeley Marina when I was welcomed by tall mounds of pristine black gold.  Several times a year, city of Berkeley dumps municipal compost at the Berkeley Marina free for anyone to lug away. After trying to run a mile and half, I got excited and returned with my truck and a shovel.

The word "compost" shows up in many a bad shu review.  But after breathing in and tasting compost dust for an hour,  I'll never be so casual to overuse such hyperbole again. 

Ira has unexpectedly sent me a welcome box crammed with timely tea.  After a trying day, it warms my heart to see her handwriting. I know I've turned into a samples hoarder but winter is coming and I want to be ready.   I've thus far kept up my two month no-buy pact.  Tonight I brewed up perhaps one of the most expensive shu bricks to cross my path.  Although I am itching to use the C word on the latent wodui,  I've decided not to post anything further and let this sleep.  The shock is too much even for me.

Golden Memories and Palate Preferences

I drank a gushu sheng blend today but could not force myself to write a tea review.  The reader survey was quite mixed as to what people wanted more of.  A third die-hard pu-erh heads of course only wanted more of their fix. Even for myself, when I'm not drinking it, I want to read about it.  But more than half responded that I should write whatever moves me so today we go for two delicious brown stuffs that isn't shu. 

 For every one of my friends, I like to play a little guessing game- predict whether or not they would like a particular new food or tea they haven't tried before.  I feel an extra glow when I start truly understanding a friend's palate.

Every month or as often as I can manage, I lunch with two of my best work friends who left last year to join a startup in San Francisco.  We used to enjoy so many good chocolate bars together in times past and  I try to bring something to continue on our chocolate camaraderie.

Last month I had brought two raw examples from Pacari  - first I was dubious that skipping roasting of the beans would result in a superior bar.  Even though it's conched, it definitely is less sweet with high acid notes making it an acquired taste. My friend who loves comfort food did not take to this new fangled taste. My Swiss friend- an adventurous eater and a partner in pork of course did.  Preferences does not indicate raw bars as a genre are good or bad as raw bars take a particular palate to appreciate.

Of course I never put all my eggs in one basket and I brought a crowd pleasing trad bar. The Wild Boar chocolate bar  I was enticed solely by the wrapper but it ended up being a surprisingly charming bar all the way through. The bar itself had simulated bites out of it along with a frieze of a boar lying on the bottom.  Even though it's a clever way for this chocolatier to give you less chocolate- they do it with such style that I don't mind.  Even in the world of pu-erh, a pretty wrapper and neifei gets you further than a uninspired communist one.

I love pork and boar above all and that's what made me jump at this boar bar. If a vendor sold a beeng with a cartoon boar, I'd probably be would be all over it.  Sometimes when I feel a little down, I recount my memories of enjoying the most delicious wild boar bacon once fried up and fed to me by my dear husband.  But I try hard not to overuse such golden memories and have to rely on the lesser remembrances of a recently enjoyed BLT with a favorite friend.  Perhaps dear reader you have a very different kind of golden memory than boar bacon sizzling on a cast iron fry pan. 

The weather is cooling down which means I can start mailing chocolate bars out to my friends around the country which was the occasion for this today's 23 bar purchase.  Also now that my company has moved to a new location,  a new visiting season has started.  Nothing is more heart-welcoming than handing out chocolate bars.  ("Yet another picture of organized food," my husband quips. )

05 CNNP 7581 Brick vs. 07 Menghai Adorned in Red

If you are not a shu drinker and just want to get to the heart of the matter- I will sum up that 05 CNNP brick was too gnarly and the Menghai was respectable but failed to capture my heart.  Shu drinkers  read on.

This 05 CNNP brick sells for $8.5 at tuochatea so you can imagine how dirt cheap it must have been back in the day.  Actually you don't have to imagine because you can just take the way back machine to find that something similar was $5.90 for 4 bricks(a kilo) in 2006.

Even a wild tree brick was $5.90 per 4 pack kilo back in 2006. Who's enjoying such tea now I wonder.   I normally do not dabble in such shus but I had a cheap shu experiment in mind to determine if I could find a enjoyable cheap sub $10 shu.  

When I break off a piece this CNNP, it's all very flimsy and powdery and I'm having misgivings about even brewing it up let alone sending it down my gullet.   As I am currently suffering heartburn which I'm blaming squarely on this cheap shu- I try to think of situations where I would be desperate enough to drink this CNNP which is at least more potable than the Numi brick. My husband drank it without too much complaint. Me- I'd rather drink Lipton than this brick.  Here is square evidence that cheap bad shu does not improve into something worthwhile with age and I really wonder how or why I bought two bricks with such confidence. I have a Lucky 2006 7581 which now appears to be amazing next to this miscreant. Tuochatea says this brick is "based on 7581".

I was so distraught, I went straight into the arms of the lighter fermented 2007 Menghai Adorned in Red.  I sigh with relief at the smooth respectable taste of a high-end Menghai shu. But the CNNP put a shu curse on the night, I did not love this Menghai.  Actually I have many fine Menghai ripes such as the 06 Caravan to Tibet, 06 San Ji pu, 06 7452 and 06 7572 and I don't love them either so it's nothing unusual there.  

Thus far, the only cheap shu I have enjoyed is the 06 Dehong Plateau. 

Finding Mr. Tong

Unlike some of you who might confidently purchase a tong of tea without batting an eyelash, I remain a one-of-everything postage collector.  I really do want to meet that one special sheng that I want to get a whole tong of.  At my rate of consumption, seven beengs in a tong means I'll probably drink it until the end of my days. I know I'm not marrying this tong but whoof- it's been much more difficult to find an ageable tea that really captures my heart than I originally thought it would be.

All my tea friends have been actively and perhaps even unknowingly playing matchmaker to find this Mr. Tong. You can see in the photo below that it can take years for me to even to seriously go through the candidates.  (But a pu-erh drinker can never have too many samples especially when one is trying to stick to a two month no-buy pact...)

Instead of storing samples by region or year, I reserve a special basswood box for each person. Ira represents the right half of this picture with two large boxes.  (You can click on the image to see the flickr original and hover click to see which boxes belong to each tea fellow.)  Each box represents unknowable hours of research  from the sender and surprisingly there is zero overlap even without explicit coordination.

Puerh collecting is one of the few unique hobbies where you can share so fully with another collector.   I appreciate how each box is a time capsule of that person's particular palate.   A majority of these samples come from the internet and many are no longer so readily available.  After being out of the scene for six years, I'm grateful to be able to makeup for lost time.

Multiple times a day I'll peer into each box selecting a tea to drink.  I enjoy imagining each person peering intently into their computer often late into the night studying reviews to make a purchase decision.  I like to figure out their collecting habits, which was their splurge purchase or impulse purchase.  Even if I don't find Mr. Tong, I'm ever grateful that I'm even able to try such a bewildering array of teas.  Thank you.