Chiptunes + Shoops

The Easter Vac.  It is a sacred time.  Not least because my college has, it being the end of term, wound down.  This means two things: (i) all the academics get to focus on sweet, delicious research; and (ii) I have the time to combat a Dark Breakfast every day, followed by a remedial diet of chiptunes + shoops (i.e., shupu) upon hitting my lab shortly thereafter.  

Bacon followed by shoops is the only way to fly, I have concluded.

Knackered 2003 Fenqing wrappers

As if picking up the psychic vibrations of the times, my homes from back home, Mr. TG, sent an e-mail to tempt me with some large doses of the aforementioned shoops + some shengpu.

As Oscar Wilde once said, "I can resist anything except temptation."

This is, in fact, a 2003 cake made by an outfit called Xiangzhuqing Tea Co.

TG (pronounced "TEEDJ") noted that this used to be available via the mighty bushido-laden Bannacha, but that it is now out of stock, and that I suck.  It seems that TEEDJ himself purchased his cake from Chawangshop, but, again, I cannot seem to find it listed there, and, again, I suck.

"Like, whatever", I thought to myself, in my native Valleygirl accent.  I busted out the sample from TEEDJ, which, pictured above, rather reminds me of my day job, in which we sometimes have to extract samples of tuberculosis DNA from the most antisocial of patient byproducts.  Say no more.  I count my blessings that I'm only exposed to the data, rather than the... original material.

Apart from looking like pestilent faecal matter, then, the 2003 Fengqing cake is allegedly "old tree".  Again, this causes my inner Valleygirl to start with the "whatevers", because why in the sweet bowels of Hades would you make shoops out of good laoshu leaves?  You wouldn't, of course.  If you think you're drinking "old tree" shoops, then the chances are quite reasonable that you're not, and that you're gullible, and that, like me, you suck just a little bit.

Edit: this isn't shupu, my notes are incorrect - it is shengpu, and the suction is all mine.

I've never brewed human excrement laden with infectious disease-carrying bacteria, but I suspect that this huangpian-infested, red-tinged leaf is not a million miles away from the charms that we might anticipate from such an experiment.

That is not to say that it's bad, far from it: what we have here is merely rather "rustic", let's say.  It is a Lincang cake, and it is smooth, and rather cooling.  I dig mightily on its sweet and mouth-watering satisfaction.  If it started out "red", which I suspect, then it has nonetheless managed to retain some its oomph, 12 years later.  The background is malted redness, and there is some Lincang grainlike sweetness in it - the impression is one of "decent minor-label artisan cake".  It is not the world's most complex tea, but it has much to recommend it, in its well-balanced way.  If inexpensive, it might be worth a look, although I cannot find its price due to the aforementioned negative pressure gradient that surrounds me.

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Enough of the pussyfooting around: it's time drink dirty shoops.

The tiny wee picture above tells us that this is really rather dirty, in that sub-CNNP manner.  Thrills indeed!  This 200g brick will set you back a staggering twenty American bucks via Awazon.  It's cheap, it's nasty, it's just what I needed.

Let's do this.

Did you ever have a tea so rancid that all of the thick, greasy Chinese hair that was embedded in the leaves voluntarily got up and left, because it was too nasty even for thick, greasy Chinese hair to tolerate?  This brick is exactly like that.

Pictured below, we have some sort of... I'm going to say "webbing" embedded in the mixture.  Would you believe that it smells like rank heicha from Hunan?  You would?  Well, it does.  It has the scent of nasty tobacco, just like Hunan bricks of deadliness.  I'm just going to point out the epidemiological fact that this area of China has some pretty serious throat diseases - moreso than any other region.  I can hit you up with some project publications on that if you wish to see the data.

Now, I'm not suggesting that there is a causal link between drinking TEA THAT COMES FROM THE COLON OF SATAN and illness, but I'm going to leave the idea in the back of your mind.

The photograph below rather summarises my opinion of this tea.

It is dark, it is thick, and it is very (very) dirty.  TEEDJ notes that it "responds well to filling the gaiwan with leaf", and so I went heavy with the quantity.  I was rewarded with a very strong, knock-out dose of surprisingly sharp shoops.  It is so very smooth and so very powderlike that I fall instantly in love.

My current lab tipple is WUZIDENGKE from Menghai, which is amazing.  I have tins and tins and tins of this stuff sitting in my lab, thanks to Dubs.  Given that its name means (approx.) "five sons pass Imperial exams", this makes it a fantastic gift for academic colleagues, all of whom seem to get muchos chortles out of the name.  However, so thick and nasty is the CNNP brick from Awazon, that I am considering changing gear from time to time.  

I'm just not sure my white blood cells are up to the job.

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SK LFG

SK LFG

WTB DL TP

1G PST

When Shi'itake Gets Real

Gentle Reader, let us parley.  I have three good 'uns for you this fine morn: one solid, one stanking (sic), and one that could only be described as being like the planet-eating deity, Unicron.

Let us open the batting with "solid".

Ah, the delights of the pre-dawn sesh.  It is called "burning the candle at both ends": aiming to have something resembling a social life in the evening, after the dear children have been coaxed to bed, and then rising early to have some tea, being paradoxically unable to sleep, even though immensely tired.  

Thusly, tired, and yet unable to sleep, I make matters yet worse by taking on a hefty slug of caffeine.  It is a cycle that I have, at the time of writing, managed to break simply by going to bed immediately after my children, for a night or two.  Sleep heals all wounds, and I have latterly discovered my love of it.  I have become rather good at sleeping, in fact, and have made something of a hobby of it.

The "solid" cake is the 2007 Chenyuanhao "Guafeng Laozhai".  I cannot recall from whence cometh this one, but it might be Dubs, or the now-vanished Origin.  Or someone else.

The leaves, pictured top, are unusually dark, even at 4.30 a.m., and they have a mightily-enticing scent of tobacco.  I am a vicarious tobacco consumer, initially from my father's distant pipesmoke, as he puffed beyond the jurisdiction of my mother, at the end of the garden, and more recently via pu'ercha.

This cake, like much of Daddy's pipeleaf, is solid, sweet, and rather clean.  Unlike the contents of the patriarchal pipe, this tea also has a note of fishiness to it.  That is not a matter of immediate concern, given that almost everything out of Japan (and the tea!  ho ho) smells of fish.  It is a full and heavy little tea; its "GFZ" character is typical, and, therefore, welcome.  I liked it, but not enough to pursue.

---

The "stanking" tea is the 2001 Changtai "Red", from Dubs.

My diary has, and I quote directly, "This tea stinks, like Nurgle."  For those few of you not familiar with the collected works of Games Workshop (i.e., for anyone who has not previously been a teenage British male), Nurgle is the Plaguebringer, a deity of pestilence and decay.  He looks like a smiling, fat Buddha, except he is green and decomposing.  The 2001 Changtai cake is exactly like this.

This is $150 from Dubs, and the cake is grey (grey!) with humidity.  I like my tea so wet that it's likely to decompose before it gets brewed, and so this appeals to me greatly.  I like teas that have been colonised by as-yet undiscovered bacteria, which may or may not confer super-powers on the imbiber.

"Heavy minerals" notes my diary, which is par for the course.  Its tangy, humid warmth pushes its way through the dried-out soul.  However, as you might expect, the excessive pestilence of this cake has given with one hand, only to take away with the other.  It does not endure, and the fairly low (for its age) price reflects its various qualities and limitations.

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And then there was the Unicron.

I really like this cake.  It is the 2000 CNNP 7532 "Tiepai", from the aforelinked Dubs.  You know this is a cake that needs to be owned the minute that you break it open. 

Does the above image convey a sense of thickness?  I think it looks rather like a serious claret.  You probably cannot detect, from the photograph, its sweet and floral scent, even though it has the dark red-brown character of good age.

Unlike many other cakes of this (comparatively reasonable) price-range, which is $140, its scents and residual aftertaste are well-developed, and suggestive both of good leaves and good storage.  I must confess that I brewed the entire 25g of the sample to gain this degree of thickness, but that's fair game.  The result is Unicron, plain and simple, crunching his way through planet after planet.

"This tiepai cake is pure blackness."  Note that "tiepai", meaning "pasted brand", refers to the probability that this cake is some sort of unorthodox pretender, dressed in an authentic 7532 wrapper. That said, one has to keep an open mind.  If the wrapper contains Unicron, then it's all good.

---

Balliol

Charles! you look young!
back from India I see
how is Lucy?

my name is not Charles

I've not been to India

and who is Lucy?

That's the Essence That You're Smelling

Friends, Romans, Homeboys.  Lend me your ears.

2014 EoT GFZ

I have, it must be said, fallen a little behind with my writing here.  You know that I love you (long time), Gentle Reader, and you know that I would never abandon you without good reason.  The reasons are good!  But they are reasons nonetheless.  I could talk about a new academic year.  I could talk about the overwhelming crush of having the indescribable pleasure of (somehow being left in charge of) running a lab that is populated entire by ninjas.  I mean, these people actually have shuriken, and know what a "caltrop" is.  (If you didn't have to google the word "caltrop" to know it's meaning, you are my kind of town.)  I could also talk about evenings and week-ends spent programming two malleable young minds, who are simultaneously draining every last ounce of vitality that I have, and yet whom I love more than anything.  They are like parasites that I somehow wish to see thrive, because I have some sense that they are, in some baffling way, extensions of (the least bad) bits of myself.

But you, Gentle Reader, are above such quotidian quota.  You are, in a very real sense, rocking the free world, and you demand tea.  I am but your humble servant.  Let's put our tetsubin to the metal.

You may have gathered from the images in this article that I have been sucking at the ever-beneficent nipples of the Essence of Tea.  This is an outfit run by a man who speaks like the leprachaun from the "Lucky Charms" advertisements, who used to live in possible the greenest and most pleasant part of our green and pleasant land, and who recently upped sticks and moved to somewhere out beyond the Thunderdome.  I imagine his ginger locks blowing in the wind as he rides his motorcycle out in search of a battle to secure more gasoline for his makeshift homestead.

The first deposit from that copious lactation is the EOTGFZ.  It is a tea that is so massively costly that we might speak of it only in capital letters.  If you have to ask what they mean, you really shouldn't be buying this tea.  But you, Gentle Reader, are fluent in over six million forms of communication.  You know that the price of this tea is not unadjacent to £340/357g.  You chuckled when you read the product description that wryly observed "this may seem cheap next year". 

However, you would dig, in far out and happening ways, its precision, and its GFZness.  It is really rather good.  It is probably the most accurate sample of GFZ terroire that may be obtained.  I am grateful for the opportunity to add it to my limited understanding (or approximation thereof).

2014 EoT Yunyun

Yunyun!  It sounds like a Chinese girl's name.  The kind of girl who would wear big spectacle frames without any lenses in them.  I have an undergraduate student exactly like this.

This tea sells for £60/200g (a.k.a. £96 / 357g equivalent), which, for modern-day EoT pricing, means this must be as rough as your mother's facial stubble.  Only you, Gentle Reader, know the precise extremity of your mother's roughness of stubble.

The product description reads like a Stephen King slasher.  Man meets friend.  Friend tells tale of calling in at out-of-the-way service station ["gas station"].  Friend meets withered old crone in said service station.  Crone invites friend to macabre village of the damned.  Friend accepts invitation, only to find village is far from the beaten track.  Friend dons crucifix and readies his last bullet.  Crone introduces friend to 400-year-old "tea tree".  Friend sucks on leaves of said tree under the light of a gibbous moon.  Crone sells now-moist leaves to friend for low price.  Friend returns to the land of the living with only the leaves and a distant stare to show for his travels.  Man takes leaves from friend, presses them into bingcha, gives them a silly girly name, then puts them on web-site.

It's a tale we've all heard a thousand times before.

"Darkened with age, this would be appealing.  Now, it is fine, and clean, but somehow unattractive.  The overall effect is a hint of Menghai base, a roast-sourness above, and it is perhaps the latter that makes it seem citric."

Vendors' habits of not naming where their teas originate is not at all annoying, and it does not frustrate me intensely.

2014 EoT Duquan

Duquan!  Doo-choo'an.  This is a name with some charming Mandarin sounds.  It is EoT's most expensive cake, after the EOTGFZ, weighing in at £89/200g (£159/357g).  Selling xiaobing to make the tea look less expensive used to exercise me, when the practice first started en masse some years ago, but now my numbed, insensate nerves do not even register.  Do it, I say!  Sell 'em in 100g, even.  Sell it like wulong.  Let the chips fall where they may.

I tried this tea as maocha, thanks to the eternal milky generosity of EoT.  That particular maocha tasted very much roasted, which EoT's owner notes as being caused by having stored my sample in an unfortunate location (not to be disclosed, but please feel free to chortle as if I had).  This sample, from EoT's new abode beyond the Thunderdome, seems much better: its leaves are long, green, and fresh and do not at all taste of EoT's car (!).  They have a deep sweetness that seems just fine, again very much unlike EoT's car.

It is yellow, cooling, and enduring, and plenty of numbing sensations that suggest quality.  (The tea, not EoT's car.)  I begin to question my brewing skills, because I manage to distress this tea in its second or third infusion, in a way in which I distressed the Yunyun.  There is an edge of sourness, no doubt caused by my brewing, which nonetheless terrifies me as it reminds me of the sourness of dry storage gone awry.  I suspect that I may be somewhat out of practice with the ol' tetsubin and resolve to redouble my efforts.

Again, we are left wondering where Duquan might be.

Next up: Yuanwei.  I recall, when I tried the clutch of maocha many months ago, that this tea came out right on top, by an unassailable margin.  If you were thinking that you might assail this tea's margin, think again.

It has the buttery scent of thank-goodness-it's-processed-properly, which is a good hedge against future sourness.  Those of us who live in colder climes need to fear the road to sourness like we would fear the path that leads to the Dark Side.  Ironically, fear itself is that which leads one to the Dark Side!

Breaking the trend, we are told that this cake has an origin, that it came from China, and, more specifically, that it came from Mengsongshan.  I totes dig the Mengsongshan, and so this may explain the aforementioned margin-based unassailedness.

It is decent and safe, in a way that I felt the Duquan not to be.  At £54/200g, I teeter on the edge and come down on the side of "perhaps next time".

Finally, some 2000 Kaiyuan GREENSTAMP.  The wrapper, pictured above, looks nubile.

Check 'em.  Red, dark, little - this is Tea.  Actual Tea, not your silly modern stuff.  It has the humid scent of somewhere that you wouldn't want to take a good suit.  We are told that this was a special order from a Malaysian "tea master".

Gentle Reader, I feel as if we have known each other sufficiently long for me to confide in you that whenever I read the phrase "tea master" I immediately, and with neither forethought nor hesitation, punch myself square in the face as does Edward Norton's character in Fight Club.  I bunch up my right hand and just slam it into my own face.

I just thought I'd throw that fact out there, should it be relevant.

"Gosh - this is tremendous."  I don't tend to write that in my diary very much, and even less when in the context of tea.  Superdense, woody, thick, wildflower.  It's like tea cocaine.  That is meant in an affectionate, caring way.  The £140 price tag suddenly looks a lot more reasonable than it did at the outset.  Given that w2t is packing plenty of punch at around that price, I feel that this is something I could get behind.

Well.  It's done.  My face is healing slowly, after reading "tea master" again, from the above.  My thirst is slaked after much suckling at the udders of EoT.  I am appeased, and about to roll over like the mangy cur that I am, into a state of fitful slumber.

If you hear whining and yelping, Gentle Reader, it is merely my passing dreams.  I bid you good rest and fine drinking.

Addendum: notes added to the 2009 EoT Nakashan suggest that this tea is either caught in a bad place, during its aging process, or that it has some processing faults.

(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.

The New Old Half-Dipper

The ol' Half-Dipper is coping with some changes, which you may or may not have noticed - it is the common story of a tea-site.  I thought that I might offer you an explanation, Gentle Reader, which is much-deserved given your infinite patience.

Back in the day, I somehow managed to write an article on this web-site almost every day, which was perhaps a  testament to exactly how much spare time doctoral students have on their hands.  I started as a graduate student in 2004, and met my wife-to-be in the same year.  Happy days indeed!  I drank a lot of tea.

Since graduating, in more recent years, I've written articles for publication on Mondays and Fridays, which fitted with the timescales of my post-doc status of the time, in which I was effectively working for a senior professor.  If you've ever served your time as a post-doc, you know that it can be busy, but there is a certain rhythm that allows you to, for example, drink and write about tea on a moderately regular basis.

The big change to my life happened in October of last year when, in a moment of uncharacteristic and substantial foolishness, my university decided to appoint me as a member of the faculty.  It subsequently handed me the steering wheel for a research lab.  Bear in mind that I cannot drive, and that I get asked to prove my age when I try to buy alcohol (heh).

Since that time, life has consequently become more and more rapidly accelerating.  It is a hugely enjoyable time, and it gives me the genuine privilege of working with some massively talented students and researchers - but it does mean that, as our lab grows (approximately doubling in size every six months), the opportunities to drink and write about tea decrease proportionally.

The new ol' Half-Dipper will, therefore, be a little less regular in its publication, and we will make permanent that arrangement that I have been trialling recently, with a summary article every week or so.

Let's kick off this new old Half-Dipper with an investigation of a recent week of annual leave, some of which I managed to spend at the tea-table.

The 1998 CNNP "Apple-Green" tuocha

I basically spent the mornings of the entire week with some mind-wreckingly good tea from an outfit called teaclassico.com.  Full disclosure: the proprietor, Neil, sent me a big box o ' treats without charge.

This actually caused me to reevaluate completely how I go about buying tea, such was the magnitude of the fabulosity of the tea.

Decent CNNP tuocha leaves in the old style

The tea market is a strange affair: modern pricing has inflated the cost of modern tea to tear-inducing quantities; even a few years ago, the same tea could be bought for a fraction of its current price.  These price increases have been passed onto consumers, and there are now very few outfits that provide good, modern tea at a reasonable price.

I would count white2tea, Chawangshop, and Yunnan Sourcing as my current "go-to" tea vendors, who have managed to keep a cap on prices, and I spend almost no money outside these three (excepting direct purchases via Maliandao or Taobao).  Other vendors are in no way bad, but their offerings are now frequently double or triple (or more!) the price of equivalent cakes from previous years, and I simply could not bring myself to pay that much.  In many cases, this is not the fault of the vendor, due to the cost of maocha - but, whatever the cause, the result is the same.

Price increases could be argued as being a good thing, if the farmer is seeing more of the profits.  We see signs of this throughout Yunnan, particularly in places such as Laobanzhang.  To estimate the proportion of the price increases that reaches the farmer is rather futile, given the lack of data.

Gloopy, strong, clean - what else do you need?

We have older teas, however, that have already reached a price ceiling, of sorts.  The only way that modern tea can comfortably be priced at sky-high prices is if all vendors simultaneously increase the prices of their older teas, but this they have not done - perhaps due to that intangible (and soft) price ceiling on older teas.  There is, after all, a limit to how much an old tea is worth, without demand for it increasing hugely.  With demand often confined to modern teas, hence the price rises, we have the strange effect that price pressures are tightly focussed on modern teas, but less on older teas.

Yes, the prices of the super-classics have gone crazy, but I maintain that there is a class of good, aged teas that has not seen the price increases of either the very modern or the very old teas.

Therefore, drinkers such as me, and perhaps even you, Gentle Reader, are being driven away from spending their money on modern teas (excepting obvious "white whale" bargains!) and instead spend their money on older teas.  This was previously something that I did not do, at scale, but where now I would much rather spend X units of currency on something of proven vintage and aging, than spend the same X units of currency on something modern, with all of the risks that arise from uncertainty over processing, storage, etc. Why take the risk, when older tea costs the same?

In that spirit, outlets such as Teaclassico are well-placed to capitalise on this new category of consumer, which comprises drinkers who are looking for reasonably-priced older teas, of similar price to modern cakes.  We are searching for those cleverly-prices teas from the mid-range, between modern and aged, and places like Teaclassico are meeting that need.  Such vendors are unhindered by trying to sell you modern cakes, and so can afford to price their aged tea at reasonable (Taiwan-esque) prices.

The first tea that meets my quality:price threshold is the 1998 CNNP "Apple Green" tuocha, shown here: this is $83/250g ($119/357g equivalent), which makes it much less expensive than many modern cakes.  Admittedly, this tuocha is not a grand tea, but it is (i) strong, (ii) aged, and (iii) priced nicely, which is a fine place for a tea to occupy, whereas modern tea can claim only (i) at best.

It is a heavy red-orange, as befits tuocha from 1998, and it very smooth, very heavy, and very enjoyable in the mouth.  It has a smooth, "beefy" sweetness that is clean and soft; it cools and tickles the tongue, and has the liveliness of good tuocha.  Purchase of this tea seems straightforward.

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One step up the food-chain from the tasty 1998 Apple-Green tuocha is this 2003 Menghai 7542.  This could very well be the last 7542 before Menghai Tea Factory flipped over into Dayi.

2003 Menghai 7542

We're one step up the price ladder here, at $129/357g.  The cake started out in Hong Kong, and ended up being stored in Taiwan for some years.  This is a common story for the cakes from Teaclassico, which leads me to conclude that Neil has spent some time with sellers in Taiwan - this is no bad thing, as I never get to Taiwan, and I like the storage there.  In some ways, an initial period in HK followed by a cleaning-out in Taiwan is an optimum, as far as my tastebuds go.

Even the leaves look "Menghai"

It is a heavy orange-red, as you might see below, and has a sweet and tarry body that reminds me of other 7542s from this era that I have enjoyed with Apache.  It is clean, and cooling, and quickly fills the mouth.  There is a good quantity of Menghai house character, and this surely must be the best protection against fakery that one could hope to achieve: a recognisable house character.

Chunk-y

As with many strong, good teas, this one takes a good two or three infusions before it reaches full speed: it needs a good run-up, which usually always corresponds to good-quality tea in my experience: it has tons of contents, and does not throw them all away in the first infusion.  Perhaps it is this "locked in" character, taking several infusions to rouse, that made it such a good candidate for storage.  Warmth, depth, mahogany: this is solid tea, with a penetrating, woody sweetness that leaves me feeling strangely calm.

Again, it is actually cheaper than many modern cakes, and is guaranteed to be good for aging - because it is already aged.

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The prize for this week of teas is shown below.

2000 CNNP Zhencangpin

The "Zhencangpin" [lit. treasure-store product; e.g. "collector's item product"] designation is shown in the calligraphic text under the yellow zhongcha character - otherwise, it looks like standard yellow-label.  However, that calligraphy makes all the difference: this is a big, bad cake.  Big!  And bad!

Delicious

The photograph of the leaves shown above makes the mouth water just from the image alone.  That's when you know it's good tea: when the photograph of the dry leaves makes you thirsty.

This is the only tea in the collection from Teaclassico that I actually drank twice, taking two precious days to enjoy it.  This means that, as far as I'm concerned, it is really rather fine.  It is a not insubstantial $220/357g, but compare that to modern cakes and you will be immediately convinced that this is, if not a bargain per se, then at least a very properly-priced cake (given recent pricing).

It is heavy, full, and continuous in its woodiness.  Again, there is a HK background of humid, mineral characteristics, but this has been sharpened and cleaned by the Taiwanese storage to magnificent effect.  In price, storage, and character it is almost precisely what defines "good tea" for me.  This is a personal decision, but it hits every single note that I need a fine tea to hit.

"OAK-PANELLED STRENGTH", I have in my diary.  Elongated,velvety, and strong.  If you have the opportunity to sample this tea, you may well be as enamoured as I was, during that week of annual leave.  Purchasement, as with the other two cakes shown here, is straightforward.

Everything that is good in tea

I hope that Teaclassico builds on its start, and that it continues to keep the pricing right - I will certainly be keeping an eye on their inventory from here on, as my buying habits have been forcibly changed.

Thanks again to Neil for a great week of teas that made for some excellent summer mornings.  The "Zhencangpin" was so good that I actually invented a new non-parametric Bayesian stochastic process during the session, and documented it over 17 pages in my log-book.  Not many teas manage to be both a great beverage and a muse...

Warmth at Dawn

Well, the "warmth at dawn" certainly isn't coming from the sun. This session took place before the sunrise, in the grip of the cold English winter. It rained for many days, reducing our already-dark little Northerly country into the kind of blackness that you might imagine on a moon of Neptune.

The warmth came, instead, from a rather decent shupu that came from Peter of Pu-erh.sk.

Menghai, for it is they, produced this dense little chap: it is the "7262" cake.  You may or may not be able to squint your eyes sufficiently to determine that the leaves in the above photograph are dark, separated, and rather well-treated (for shupu).

Good shupu should be soft, in my opinion.  I like a good, rounded edge and I prefer some backbone.  It turns out that this cake, from the people who invented shupu, is really rather delicate - which is quite a surprise.  It is so delicate, in fact, that I could easily imagine Essence of Tea selling it.

Peter sells this cake for a sizeable 73 Eurounits, which is quite Big Money for a shupu cake.  For comparison, my eternal nubile and delicious 2003 Fuhai 7576 was 37 Americanbux.  You've got to be careful with the pricing of shupu.

That is not to say that this Menghai 7262 is in any way bad - it is made by the greatest single collection of shupumongers in the world, after all - but it does not, in my opinion, compare in price to more affordable shupu cakes.

Later, the Menghai 7262 continues to impress, with its stability and tangy, mild kuwei [good bitterness] in the finish.  Menghai can make shupu without killing it, which is half the battle.  A cooling sensation fills the throat and nose, which is also rather unusual for "cooked" tea.  Its flavour is not forthcoming, but its texture, cleanliness, and cooling quality make up for that.  "It is exceedingly drinkable", I have managed to scrawl in my journal.

By the tenth infusion, though the dark-red ruby colour and silky thickness are unchanged from earlier infusions, the character has become somewhat "loose" and watery.  Menghai knows that its doing - it'd be a snip at a slightly lower price, I think.

I'm currently writing from Brunei, where the notion of drinking shupu would be rather welcome.  Actually, any good tea would be rather welcome...