One Tea for a Billion but a Hundred Teas for One

I recently breached the psychologically significant ceiling of 100 different pu-erhs in my private collection not counting samples.  I also have various dianhong, white, green, oolong, and herbal teas tucked away in canisters all about the house.  So when I ask my husband quite innocently, "What tea do you want to drink tonight?",  he just lets me to choose. (Sometimes rather grumpily I might add. )

I have an ipad app to keep track of the pu-erh.  Luckily when it's evening we can limit ourselves to 40 shu selections.  But I try to air out shu at least a day before I drink it so we have to go with what's loaded in my immediate shu queue - four small porcelain containers crowding my dining room table.

I break out the 2010 Hengfu Lao Hei Cha- a smooth and roasty, slightly woody undemanding tea with the barest hint of licorice and mint.  It's an uncomplicated tea suited for evening relaxation after a complicated day.   Most of my shus fall in that category.

Shus definitely provide a broader range of flavors than coffee, but shus hold only a pinky's worth of depth compared to sheng.    When I try to enumerate the shu flavors I've encountered below,  it should seem that shus can more than amply provide a respectable diverse range of flavors:

• wood/bark  - Mengku, XG Baoyan, Fuhai brick
• cola - the Gong Ting cakes
• coffee - MGH Chocolate Bar, YS lao cha tou
• rootbeer/sarsparilla(when it has more licorice flavor) - Menghai Caravan to Tibet
• malty/roast grain
• creamy
• brown sugar/burnt sugar
• plum/prunes/dried dates
• licorice/hyssop - Menghai GNWL
• herbal/medicinal/minty/camphor
• dried mushroom
• compost, dirt, forest floor
• wet blanket/dish rag
• pond
• dried fish/dried squid (only in scent)
• mold/mustiness

The reality is that shu often can taste just like shu and one most often mumbles, "Oh, it's not so bad...".   When I drink shu, I normally seek comfort of the rich and smooth variety.  Comfort my friends is the most common reason why billions of people drink the exact same teas day after day.  It used to blow my mind that a billion people in India drink a similar over-sweetened milky concoction called chai despite India being the biggest producer of leaf tea in the world.  If you think about how complex and diverse Indian culture is with a crowded pantheon of Hindu gods,  is it not amazing that everyone enjoys the "one" tea?

I know very well my 100 teas are excessive when at least a billion people get by with just one.  I wish I could see the peak but there is a deep tea restlessness in me.

Two Degrees of Separation

The company I work for has four operational researchers from all corners of the world - Turkey, Russia, Texas, and China.  Our Chinese scientist happens to be from - you guessed it - Kunming and his friend - you guessed it- happens to run a tea business back home.  ( I must be more diligent about this kind of connection right in front of my nose...)

This wrapper is for a sheng his friend pressed from tea leaves sourced through his in-laws who own a mountain with hundred year old tea trees. He gave me a sample of this very 2008 sheng to taste which I have in my queue. (My husband says I have DSB- deadly sheng backup - an acute syndrome caused by having too many untasted unopened shengs to sample.  If I tried to taste them all in one sitting, I would probably die.  )

My co-worker could not tell me anything more about this sheng but said he would send any questions back to his friend.  I will faithfully report back this weekend the tasting.

The wrapper definitely says :
qiaomu gǔshu (乔木; "tall tree", 古树; "old tree").

2010 HLH Yiwu Cha Wang's Consort

Today I whipped out another Birthday Beeng contender, the 2010 Hai Lang Hao Chawang Yiwu recommended by Jakub.  HLH does not reveal an exact location in Yiwu for this cake but they have been known to source from Yi Bi, Gua Feng Zhai and Ding Jia Zhai villages. At $205 for an entire cake, one would hope that this is 100% finest Yiwu ancient arbor to be had.

The scent is rather muted, but the first sips reveal that this an elegant tea with a special delicacy.  After the second brew I notice a sweetness under the tip of my tongue which is a first time experience for me.  I didn't know the undersides of my tongue had taste buds. Then after the fourth brew, sweetness spreads to the undersides of the entire length of my tongue as well as the usual topside. It is one of the few young sheng that doesn't outright bother my stomach.  This tea is not as fruity or intense as other Yiwus I've drunk and I could not convince anyone to do a Yiwu vertical tasting today so I'll have to compare this against other Yiwus another day.

The term Cha Wang (tea king) has been overused to promote products with less than regal standing and I wonder if I will ever meet the true Cha Wang.  Wang implies a more obvious show of power- this delicate flowery Cha Wang could easily be overtaken even by a Bulang commoner.  It's more apt this tea is the king's consort than the king himself.  Actually I will downgrade it further to the consort's handmaiden or one of the king's many concubines as observers of any palace politics would know that even the king's consort is someone to fear.

I received my 10g sample from Yunnan Sourcing at  $9. I used a 5g sample in a small glazed clay pot which was more than enough to experience the Yiwu charm.   So $4.5 for a lovely session among four friends is a bargain by today's standards.  I mistakenly ordered green tea at a London pub once for ~$4.5 and was served a stale FooJoy bag. (Actually my husband informs me that there is almost no difference between a fresh FooJoy bag and an aged one).  But would I plunk down $205 for an entire Cha Wang?  Alas I'm not smitten so much that I would put forth an amount which can also get you a Nexus 7.   

The Cha Wang leaves weren't in the best of shape and they did not look as plump as the HLH promo photos.  The leaves also reveal a fair amount of red oxidation.  I guess I expected glorious perfect leaves for $205 a cake. The 2011 Cha Wang 2 is a further record busting $240.

Can there really be a $100+ young sheng which lives up to the price tag?  Do these hyper-expensive teas really taste better than mid-level ones?  Social scientists who have done blind taste studies in the realm of wine indicate knowing a high price of a wine triggers us to enjoy it more. However,

“individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine.”

I highly recommend listening to this freakonomics podcast episode on whether or not expensive wines taste better.  Do these findings translate to the world of sheng? The first issue of Art of Tea had blind tea tastings of 11 teas from 2000 by various experts and the results were all over the place.

Emmett has an interesting review of the MGH Yiwu Guafeng Zhai which is composed of mostly big leaf huangpin.  Even though he states the brew is not as complex as high-end GFZ, he enjoys it enormously.   After reading his post, I dug out the biggest leaf sheng I've got- the 2006 Douji Dayeqingbing. I quaffed quite a bit of it today and yesterday which offered heroically unflagging brews of pure refreshment on the same set of leaves.  This Douji has a cooling mouth feel that is immediately enjoyable - one need not think to enjoy this tea. The leaves are still giving so I may try to brew it up again tomorrow.  Even though this Douji is less than twentieth of the cost of the Cha Wang, I actually enjoyed it a lot more at a visceral level.  One cannot discount the simple enjoyment factor in our tea pursuits. 

Feel Good Tea Blogs and Other Random Musings

Just as in your tea consumption, you need a varied diet when reading tea blogs.

If you need the cold hard truth and real thinking- you head straight over to MarshalN because he is tirelessly challenging us to drink better teas, think for ourselves and not lapse into complacency.  

But sometimes you don't want to think critically about all the mediocre tea you've bought.  You just want to feel good about puerh in general.  That's when you head over to read sunny blogs like Wilson's Traveling Teapot.  Wilson exudes the most overwhelming aura of positivity. You can tell straightaway from the title font of his blog that he will provide you a cheerful experience and it's rare he meets a beeng he does not like.  He's mostly a shu drinker and he always manages to focus on the positive.  (I had not been too keen on my Haiwan and Menghai shus but he fixed that for me and I'm excited to retry them. Thank you Wilson!) 

However, when making a purchasing decision based on blog reviews- you might weigh the blogger's hit ratio compared to your own. It's difficult not to be biased by other reviewers especially when their blogs are your daily comfort food. Wednesday night I was really struggling  with the Hengli Chang.  Despite such high praise from so many bloggers, my palate was giving me an alternate opinion which I have to save for another post.

In our family, we are always brutally honest about restaurants.  My mother will dish out a pithy analysis like "MSG and sugar covers up cheap ingredients. Let's never come here again." Some families don't think it polite to state negative opinions so they end up going the same mediocre restaurants over and over again even when there is definitely better food out there. While it's easy to never patronize an establishment, it's harder to avoid a bad beeng you just bought and it's better to think kinder things of it because most likely you are going to be drinking it for days to come.

It's near impossible to avoid mediocre teas.  The very definition of mediocrity would dictate that's what fills most of our shelves.  Pu-erh is the only category of tea where plantation leaves are held in  disdain.  It's all plantation for almost every other type of tea out there. I actually don't want to be drinking mind-blowing off-the-charts-cha-qi-sweat-inducing old tree teas every day.  I just have to find a good balance.

(The above photo is taken from the Hayward Shoreline. Those of you who live in the Bay Area may be surprised that a city with as much industrial and trailer park charm as Hayward could hide such a natural gem. It is by far the loveliest bay trail bicycling in the East Bay with a surprising diversity from salt pans, grasslands, to pickleweed marshes- but best of all you can still enjoy the industrial landscape on the other side. I love drossscapes and I think the contrast is what makes it doubly enjoyable for me. )

First Date with Hengli Chang

The Cha Ninja kindly traded me a sample of 1997 Heng Li Chang Bulang for various 06 Banzhang and today this treasure was patiently waiting for me at my doorstep.  I was planning to brew it up this weekend so I can invite friends but I just went for it tonight.

Even the first rinse brings out a pungent musty yeasty aroma which I now recognize that trad stored scent but this one smells more like a mix of Korean monastery wood posts, oatmeal soap, and dry egg yolk- all in a good way.   The first few brews are dark, bitter and fuzzy tasting so I skip ahead a few brews.   

Starting the sixth brew,  this Heng Li turns into a sweet amber concoction- more maple syrup than any other sweetener.   The sips also taste a little more drying in the mouth and throat and I start feeling a teensy weensy bit of astringency in my esophagous.  Power of Bulangs are not overrated if 17 years with some traditional storage hasn't entirely tamed this bitterness.

I finally peg the continuing fuzzy flavor in this tea to lucuma icecream.  Icecream made from fresh lucuma, a Peruvian fruit, is one of the world's most intriguing yet comforting flavors. It's like the spirit of hot porridge made into icecream form.

I know the half-dipper said this is a tea with "trousers"  but for me, this Bulang is a tea wearing fuzzy slippers.  I guess I expect trousered teas to have cleaner lines of flavor.  I'm grateful to have had the chance to sample the famous Heng Li Cheng Bulang but on first go it does not match my particular preferences.  This tea is very different from the aged shengs I remember in Korea which had a cleaner more savoury medicinal mushroomy reishi flavor profile.   

The Cha Ninja also sent me a bonus '03 Bada sample which is also traditionally stored.  I will try Heng Li Chang a few more times with the Bada to see if traditional stored cakes are for me.  Tonight was a much needed education.