Simulated Anneiling

Hoho, a pun to do with numerical optimisation.  Is there anything funnier than numerical optimisation?  If so, I don't think I've encountered it.

Today's article is about, you guessed it, tea from NEIL.  I.e., tea from Teaclassico.  Thx, Neil.  I have written extensively about "TC" before, and how Neil, simulated or otherwise, has a unique talent for separating me from the contents of my wallet.

At the time of writing, we have just had a partial lunar eclipse.  Being able to see two celestial bodies moving past one another, actually moving while one watches, is quite something.  Naturally, it has a strange effect on the psyche, and there have been outbreaks of lycanthropy, but otherwise we're all fine.

After shaving my palms, I settle down with some "1990s Fu Lu Gong".  I couldn't find this for sale on the Teaclassico web-site, but I am not a clever man and may have missed it.

Most striking is the loose compression, which is clearly "hand compressed".  I think it really means that someone put a large stone on the leaves and then, usually, stood on it, so perhaps it should be "foot compressed".  Such things don't impress me, ever since I was in a restaurant that claimed their salad included "hand-torn lettuce".  My brains have been in a liquefied state ever since, so I am no longer about to judge the hand/foot compression of a tea and its virtues thereupon.

As ever with older teas, I pack my little teapot to the brim, based on the principle that it is almost impossible to overbrew these old fellows.  The result is unexpected: there is absolutely no aroma, and the soup (while richly-coloured, as pictured above) really has very little flavour.

I know, I know: people who hope for flavour from their tea are such newbs.  We should be content with the feeling of the all-consuming CHAQI that surrounds us and penetrates us and which binds the galaxy together.  Hoping for some character to enjoy in the mouth immediately marks us out as a dilettante.

Nonetheless, this is thin and watery tea.  It ramps up (just a little) in the second infusion, to give the scent of heavy plums (the fruits, not the genitals).  Happily, it begins to smell just like an English country garden in summertime.  It is almost the precise simulacrum of my grandmother's old farmhouse garden, in fact, and this immediately makes me happy.  That said, there is not much going on in the flavour, still, nor anything in the throat.  It is cooling on the breath, and active on the lips and tongue, and is, perhaps, therefore more of a "sensations" tea. 

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The night (morning) is young, and so I ditch the Fu Lu Gong and head into 1999 YIWU OLD TREE territory.

I miss those days, when every cake was YIWUZHENGSHANLAOSHUCHAWANG, but they are gone forever.  We can revisit them, though, with tea sessions such as this.

Once again, due to my innate dimness, I fail to find this tea on the Teaclassico web-site.  Once again I hope you will, Gentle Reader, take pity on us miserable offenders and point out my inevitable mistake.

The photograph above makes me thirsty, again, and I have just consumed nine pints of tea.  Such is the power of good leaves.  We can see large fragments - these have a sweet scent that already trumps that of the Fu Lu Gong.

The smooth, woody stability of this tea reminds me of brewing up an old table.  The colour, pictured above, is as satisfying in its heaviness as is the (for want of a better word) CHAQI.  While the mystical forces of the cosmos surge through my body, leaving my shakras and dantian trembling, I conclude that this sweet, sharp little tea is most welcome on a cold morning in March.  It is simple, it is a touch thin, but its woody sweetness just keeps on giving.

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Young Boy's Sweets

young boy's sweets

rolling towards the back seats

ready for take-off

Neil Before Your Maker

Say what you want about drug pushers, they know how to get the job done.  I strongly suspect that NEIL of Teaclassico used to push narcotics / finance revolutions in his past, because he really knows how to get me to buy tea.

I feel unsafe around him.

If this isn't a Taobao image then I'm a monkey's uncle.

Let's open the batting with a "1990s" (aren't they all?) Phoenix tuocha.  (It is from the Dalian Lanjian outfit.)

As you can surmise from the spooky blue glow in the above photograph, this sesh kicked off in the thin hours before dawn, when the children are dormant and the voices in my head are at their most muted.

It's a tuocha, yes indeed.  You're looking at the tight little lumps of rock-hard leaves and concluding the same.  The weird thing about this session was that it occurred the morning after a rather heavy night - the heaviest in my college calendar, in fact.  They say that booze disrupts sleep, so maybe that's it.  Either way, this tea has some serious healing to perform.

It is sharp and dark, with a "black" character to its flavour that might be due to its storage.  In common with my approach to all older teas, I used tons of leaves, because it's almost impossible to overbrew old tea.

Bad move.  Tuocha still retain much of their potency, thanks to that arrested development induced by the compression, and I was made to pay the price for my hubris.  Tail between my legs, suitably humbled, I took some leaves out of the pot and got things back under control.  The result is a pleasingly sharp (sharp!) woody sweetness, much as you might expect from an older tuocha.

The scent of this tea, curiously enough, is one of its better features: it makes me feel relaxed.  It is the scent of Good Times.  Does that make any sense at all?

It must be said that I didn't buy this tea; at $139, it's still just a tuocha, after all - even for all its lovely scent.

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The same cannot be said of the next cake, which is, I have concluded, probably two parts cocaine to every three parts maocha.

This is the 1998 CNNP "Zhencang" Hongyin [red label], which, if you value your bank balance, you would be well advised NOT TO TRY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.  I mean this.  The addiction will take hold of you after just one session, and, as happened with me, you will be both terribly grateful and yet simultaneously terrified (and quite a bit poorer).

You can't see the cocaine in the above image, but rest assured: it is there.  Waiting.  Your neuroreceptors are buzzing at the prospect, I can tell.  This tea knows that, and sits there, rubbing its hands and cackling to itself, like Donald Pleasence sitting in a turny, black SPECTRE chair.

Be afraid.

Is the above image beginning to impart the reason for the fear?  This cake is thick, and sweet, and decidedly deadly.  It smells humid to say the least.  Perhaps, if you do not like humid tea, then that will be your salvation, and will allow you to resist this cake.  Perhaps.

The fragmented small leaves are only the slightest bit grey.  This tea tastes not just wet, but soaking.  It really is humid.  Mineral in its core, sweet and carrying a long throatiness, it grips every part (every part) of the flesh with tingling sensations.  The breath is like ice.

My diary has "the aftertaste is purest library".  Hide your $279, because this is a mammoth of a tea.

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Slow Malbec

slow Malbec

the taste of the steak

before it arrives

E-Z Listening

(Note: the name of this article is pronounced "EE ZED listening".  It's my article, and so I get to decide how it's pronounced.  I choose English pronounciation!)

Sometimes, you don't need your world to be rocked.  Sometimes, settling for "aww yeah" is just fine. Sometimes, a pu'ercha simply doesn't need to kick derrieres, nor take names.

Today is one of those times.  Both of these cakes came from the now-departed splendour of Origin Tea, which has sailed off into the Undying Lands of Elvenkind, far out across the western oceans, beyond the sunset.

The first of the fine pair of E-Z (zed) listening cakes is something named "1990s Round Tea", which is probably an English rendering of "yuancha", a straightforward descriptor for bingcha.  I wish I'd discovered Origin before I did: as it happens, I should be grateful for discovering it just before it closed up shop, a few weeks before it set sail.

As the photography might hint, this session kicked off before dawn.  A father of two fine young dudes  needs to either drink before dawn, or not at all.

Before dawn is a good time to drink teas in the E-Z (zed) listening genre.  This particular "round tea" is crisp and pinewood in its sweetness.  It needs a lot of brewing, straight for the get-go, to get anything resembling character out of it.  Uncomplicated and tangy, it is a basic tea that has been aged quite well - presumably HK following by Taiwan, if this follows the pattern of other Origin Teas.  The nondescript name of the tea is fitting for its character, but that's OK.

Not every tea has to shake the world.

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Also from t'Origin, here cometh the 1999 Kunming "Red in Red".

There's something rather smug about these "X in Y" names that rubs me up the wrong way.  I cannot quite put my finger on it, but something is ab-so-lutely wrong about Westerners using this phrase, even though it is a straightforward translation of a phrase that simply describes a zhongcha character in its usual encirclement of eight other zhong characters.  The irritation I feel for the affected nonsense of the phrase "X in Y" is not unlike the irritation I feel concerning use of the phrase "tea master". 

Just a personal beef there.  And aren't personal beefs the best kind of beefs?  No-one likes impersonal beef, after all.

Tar-like, cloying, and strong, this is More Like It.  There is compact, dense sweetness that could only have been acquired from hot and humid storage.  The Taiwanese component of the storage, if it existed, must have been significant in duration, because it has "aired out" considerably.  Some activity remains on the tongue, suggesting that the humidity has not claimed the entirety of this cake's soul.  It is not particularly complex, but it endures.  

Pu'ercha is so very satisfying: even a straightforward tea such as this makes for a comforting and enjoyable session.

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Dawn Station

dawn station

loose suits, distant stares

empty coffee cups

dawn sun

and double espresso

melting the frost

And onto Beijing

In an ideal world, you will be reading this by the time I have made it to Beijing, via Shanghai, Kunshan, and then Suzhou.  My research programmes in China are keeping me busy, and I'm hoping to visit my friends in Maliandao's Taochaju and Fengmingyuan while in the capital, in addition to (if he's not in Yunnan) Mr. Dog.  I am hoping it all works out...

Before I left, I spent some time with some purchases from dear departed Origin Tea.  I wish I'd got to know Origin before they stopped trading, as I have had some very nice, and very nicely-priced, older teas from them.  (Or, rather, "him" - I think his name is Tony?)

This is your normal "white wrapper" entity: it's of known origin, its age is probably a guess, but it turns out that the tea is very decent.  Let us not get ahead of ourselves, however.

What you probably cannot see here is that the tuocha is rather small, being just 100g.  It was a mere £7.50, which is deeply inexpensive for something that might have some age.  I admire the fair pricing.

When brewed, it looks rather appealing:

This tea was at the recommendation of TG, my friend from East Anglia, and he certainly knows his onions.  And his pu'ercha.  The healthy little leaves have a shicang [humid-store] aroma, and they are dark (and perhaps even a little dull) on the exterior face of the tuocha, as if the humidity had been intense.  I expect, from their appearance, that they are a touch younger than "1990s", but that is not terribly important.

Far more important is the fact that the orange-red soup carries the flavour of pure, sweet mould that reminds me of the Hunan Fuzhuan that I loved back in July.  The body of the brew from this tuocha is silky; there is little huigan, just the dark, raisin-like flavour of sweet mould.  The humidity has been a bit extreme (hence the dull surface): all that is left is the fuzhuan mouldiness, and so it tires early.  It is cheap and quite cheerful, though.

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Much more serious is the 1980s "wild arbor" maocha, of which the following sacks arrived...

This loose-leaf tea looks rather tasty, as you might agree from considering the photograph below.  It has the chocolate colour of old maocha.

Even though the first infusion shows that the tea is not yet fully awake (which is unusual for maocha), the initial aroma is solid in its sweetness (if short-lived), while the soup is soft and rounded. 

It transpires that this tea is not very thick, and that it requires some long brewing to get proper "tea" out of it, but the result is excellent: as pictured above, we find ourselves with a fantastically dark soup.  Brewed long and hard, with lots of leaf, it is tarry and sweet, while always being soft and comforting on the stomach.

Yes, it is weak, in the way of most aged loose-leaf pu'ercha, but you can always add more leaves.  Under-the-tongue dark sweetness prevails.  At the end of the session, I have used quite a lot of leaves, and so I pop them into a container and take them to my lab for extending brewing as a "background" tea.  This one is priced at £70 / 300g.  Not cheap, and probably from the 1990s rather than the 1980s, this is worthy of comparison to unaged modern shengpu.

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Changing gear, but staying in the 1990s, I'd like to include another humid cake - this time from white2tea.

The leaves do, indeed, seem as if (i) they hail from the 1990s, and (ii) have been through Hong Kong.  There's a good chance they were there in Hong Kong when the British were, in fact.  The dear old chancellor of our university, the Lord Patten of Barnes, often likes to talk of his time as governor of the Fragrant Port, and he speaks with genuine affection.

This is sharp, potent tea.  It is thick, dark, and red, as you will conclude from examination of the image below.  The sharp sweetness dwells under the tongue for whole minutes.  I am reminded that Mr. Dog does seem to know his way around a teapot.

Amusingly, his label notes, "I have been CHUGGING this lately".

I can see why.  It is eminently chugworthy.  I enjoy its density and cleanliness, which is admirable for old HK tea.  There is no shicang [wet store] character, as if it had been aired out, but it has the thick tar-like profile of tea aged in significant humidity.

What enormous fun.  At $150, it is definitely worth considering.  Again, compare that price to modern, unaged shengpu and see which you'd prefer.  I have made my choice...

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Addendum
June, 2015

This is a session with the 1980s maocha.  The close, sweet humidity of the extraordinarily long leaves is calming.  I feel a little dizzy after being woken at a very early hour by dear Xiaohu.  This is a good tea, for old maocha.  Not weak, as one might expect, it is instead energetic and (damply) sweet.  Even its deep, red soup is reassuring.

(0,0,0)^T

Origin Tea! 

Oh, maths jokes, you so funny.

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I have recently wailed like a banshee concerning the large multiple of prices for unaged tea, with respect to price even from last year.  Rather than just blub like a schoolgirl, I thought I'd do something constructive offer some alternatives.

Actually, that stated, these particular alternatives are no longer available because Origin Tea has ceased trading.  The principle remains, however!  It is insufficient merely to whine about the world - suggestions for its improvement must be offered.

I don't know much about Origin Tea, but I gather that it is held in high regard.  Paul, of white2tea, speaks very highly of him, as does THE JAKUB, which was good enough for me.

These cakes were all blindly acquired, believe it or not, on the recommendation of TG, my teachum from back home in the Old Country, "where men are men and where pigs are afraid".

TG has opinions that are mighty, and therefore I crumble before them, unable to resist, merely able to point my browser wherever his decree suggests.

It's a white wrapper, and it claims to be "mid 90s" Hongyin [red mark], which may or may not be true.  What I do know is that this cake is unto mine tastebuds as a detonator cap is unto trinitrotoluene.  This cake weighed in at £63.  Sixty-three.  Three-score and three.  Now, take a deep breath and compare that to the prices for unaged cakes of the like that we have been drinking lately.

I am not saying that this cake has great gushu material, as do modern cakes from discerning vendors.  What I am saying, however, is that this cake slices like a ninja and cuts like a razorblade (in the words of that Daoist monk from the 1990s, Vanilla Ice).

Those of you with functioning one or more function oculus orbis will notice a little cheeky frosting on the cake.  These are not the droids you're looking for - move along.

I am totally ready for this cake to be a fake, but I know it's going to decent because TG likes it.  The leaves, apart from that bijou frosting, are big and dark.  My internal magic 8-ball is currently reading "ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES".

I like nothing more than a tea that plays hard-to-get, and which takes a few infusions to get into its stride.  That always suggests to me that there is some serious content locked into the leaves, such that aging wouldn't strip it of its heart and soul.  Sure enough, this cake takes two or three infusions to reach combat speed.  By the fourth infusion, it has locked s-foils in attack formation.

Dark, almost burgundy, this is really rather disco.  I appreciate its substantial heaviness, which arrives on the tongue like a Heaviside step function.  Zoink.  Heavy tea, straight away.  Its sweetness endures, seemingly forever, although its "flavour" is subdued.  I'm OK with subdued flavour, as any chaqi pseudospoon will tell you.

Vibrant, soft, and full, this is a hugely fun tea.  A father of two, I don't get out much these days, and a one-on-one combat session of this nature at the teatable is definitely up there in my "thrills" category.

By the fifth infusion, it tires, but that's fine.  It is, let me iterate, sixty-three pounds.

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Peek ye at these little chaps.

We will start with the underbing, which is a bit more towards the dry end of storage; well, Taiwanese "dry", anyway.  Taiwan "dry" is not quite as terrifying as Beijing "dry".

Commissioned!  That means "nice", does it not?  Above, we see the standard green-label Zhongcha clothing.

I have, as you may recall, Gentle Reader, been converted to 8582.  It was not a difficult conversion, it must be said, and now I tend to welcome its long-leaf charms to my table on a regular basis.  Pictured above and below, this "commissioned" version may be seen to be packing particularly nice leaves.

We have Hong Kong-style humidity twanging away in the background, which has been aired by Taiwanese storage.  I seem to have consumed almost nothing other than HK-tea-aired-out-in-Taiwan, lately, what with Origin and Teaclassico selling cakes from this (entirely delicious) subgenre.

The image above is from, I think, the second infusion - and which tells you probably all you need to know about this 8582.  It's good.  There is dense sweetness, and it has the heavy mahogany-upholstered flavour of properly-done 8582.  I know that this cake isn't going to win any prizes for exquisite complexity but, does it need to do so?  This cake costs, and I chuckle as I write this, £65.  I would take this literally any day of the week (even Monday) over something unaged for 2x to 3x the price.  Why take the risk?

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Let us turn our hearts and minds unto the moderately more humid of the pair.

"Light traditional HK storage" sayeth the label.

"Rank Cantonese sweatbox" might be more appropriate.  However, some of us happen to like our Cantonese sweatboxes somewhat rank, and so this one certainly satisfies that criterion.

Actually, it has been aired out in Taiwan (naturally), but the touch of HK is strong in this one.  [Darth Vader breathing sounds.]

Again, the leaves are bigger and badder and rougher and tougher, as pictured above.  Again, this cake needs a few infusions to shake of its hangover and get its act together.  I sympathise.

In the throat, this one endures well.  It is long, old Menghai from top to bottom, and it makes the tip of my tongue tingle.  Some people pay good money for a bit of tongue-tingling.  There is not a huge amount of "body flavour" to be had in this fine fellow, for it has traded its soul in the HK storage zone, but the throaty sweetness is well-developed and grips the base of the tongue.  Again, some people pay good money for tongue-base-grippage.

Now chortling like Evil Tentacle (from Day of the Tentacle), I recount the price of just 65 English pounds.  This tea lasts forever, I seem to have recorded, and I found its trad Menghai charms to be entirely calming.

While good old (0,0,0)^T may no longer be trading pu'ercha, such experiences give me hope that the future need not be dominated by extraordinarily overpriced unaged cakes.  Indeed, I have not bought the latter for some years, as a point of principle.  When good cakes such as these exist, I am more than happy.

Kunming: Not Just a Concrete Jungle

One of the oldest and least-appreciated factories, Kunming is a maker of magic, from time to time.  I recall the 1998 Kunming Zhongchapai, which I snaffled for the arrythmia-inducing sum of 280 RMB / cake in Maliandao, during a visit in 2011.  That was not exalted tea, but it was darned fine.  This article is about a second tea from that same stable.

The 1995 "9016 Shutuo" is, as its name suggests, tuocha made from shupu.  This is not the usual format.  Equally unusual is the fact that the shupu in question was seemingly made from leaves of a particularly decent quality - shupu is usually composted with leaves of a lesser quality, the reasoning being (perhaps quite sensibly) that one wouldn't wish to use laoshu maocha in a compost heap.

The result is that this 9016 is regarded within some circles as being a "benchmark" for shupu.  Taste the 9016, it is said, and you have something with which to compare all future shupu: if the tea in question is better than the benchmark, then you can buy it with confidence.  The opportunity to try the benchmark, provided generously by Peter of pu-erh.sk, was gratefully received.

There is not a huge amount that can be written about this shutuo, except for the fact that it is very (very) good shupu.  It genuinely surprised me with its strength, with its thickness of body, and with its throaty and enduring sweetness.  Its quality sticks out like a sore thumb, in a world awash with terrible shupu.  I absolutely loved this sample, and was thrilled to enjoy it over several days.  It lasted that long: it just kept going, and going - and going, and going.  In fact, I ran out of steam before it did.  After goodness knows how many litres of good tea produced from the same small set of leaves, I eventually called it quits and emptied my teapot.  This little beast is remarkable.

At 99 Euro / 250g at pu-erh.sk, it isn't inexpensive, but I am seriously considering it...

It's Old and It's Tired, but It's Good

Thanks to Peter of Pu-erh.sk for today's session.

The 1990 Zhongcha "Wild Raw" may be a literal character-for-character translation of "yesheng", which actually just means "wild-grown".  The leaves, shown above, are dusty and orange, in the "very knackered" style of old zhuancha [brick tea].  This is also suggested by the large number of huangpian [yellow flakes], which are normally not present in bingcha but which appear in zhuancha.  Amusingly, the huangpian look more like red flakes.

This is a friendly, warm, and comforting old tea.  It tastes old, with its smooth, edgeless profile, and it tastes sweet, with the vanilla of old bookcases, if such a thing exists.  The "knackered" feeling exerts itself again as we notice that it takes a good few infusions to reach full speed.  I am happy to be kind to this old tea, and to give it the extended duration in the teapot that it requires in order to deliver a full brew.  I am in no hurry, and this charming old fellow is very appealing.

This isn't the sort of cake that should attract a high price - it was probably exceedingly inexpensive when young.  It is not for sale, however, and perhaps that is for the best.  I can instead concentrate on the warming feeling it has placed in my belly, and in the fluffy, fully texture in the mouth.  There is no real huigan, but it would be churlish to demand one of such a tired, comforting tea.

I am always impressed by the wide range of experiences that one may have at the tea-table.