Purple Haze

Gentle Reader, I hope that you are easing pleasantly into the summer, in whichever way you ease best.  The end of the academic year  here feels like the climax to a bad movie: more, and more, and more pressure / examinations / socials... and then pop!  Sudden silence.  

All that remains is the high-pressured whine of the accumulated guilt of that huge pile of papers that needs to be written, and those grant proposals that need to be sent off for review.  As a consequence, it sometimes feels that this job is as much about talking about what you want to do in future (via grant proposals), as much as doing actual research.  Sadly, "I want to drink tons of tea" doesn't seem to cut the mustard, as far as talking about what I want to do in future.

The sun is shining (just about), and so let's make some hay.  I seem to have been added to Jalam's "tea club" mailing list: this is the second xiaobing that has made its way to me in as many months. I am not complaining!

The 2014 Nannuoshan "Ziye" [purple leaf] is packed with summertime sweetness, atop a base of true and surprising bitterness.  BOLD is the man that sends real tea to his tea-club, rather than nondescript crowd-pleasers!  I approve wholeheartedly. 

The "purple" flavour of ripe fruits is always welcome, and very well-suited to the character of Nannuoshan, which is likewise fruity. So good, in fact, is this tea that I have a second session with the same cake in the afternoon, using a new set of leaves in the pot.  This tea is ab-so-lutely perfect for low-intensity summertime quaffing.  Perhaps I'm just in a good mood, from the season.

There is vibrancy abound in this little number, and that satisfying sweetness is made interesting by the unsociably bitter base.  I can imagine tea-club members being terrified by this bitterness, and that makes me love it twice over.

The remainder lasts me several days in my lab, and I drink it as a priority, due to its haute deliciousness. It seems to last forever, and it stays unbroken in its sweetness as the infusions come and go.  Purple tea is so very good for the summer, and this cake is a friendly example of the genre.

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Trinity Term, I - III

I

FORTISSIMO

is when everyone

sneezes at last

II

little fireworks

reflected in the eyes of

little boys

III

saying goodbye

to the old professor

at his funeral

Be'elzebub and Aged Fish

When in 1816 that great Romantic poet, Lord Byron, wrote his famous verse

"I've got a love-Jones for your body and your skin tone"

he may well have had the 2014 Laochatou from Dubs in mind.

Laochatou [laow-char-toh] is the crystallised evil that is left over after the composting process for making shupu has completed.  They are, perhaps, the kidney stones of Be'elzebub.  Happily, when you brew those little badboys, they can produce some really satisfying tea.

Rock-hard and with a distant scent of shupu, they are almost comically inexpensive.  Such is the profile of by-products from making shupu.  The cost of these at Dubs is listed at $5.50 / 50g.  Paul writes that these are, in fact, made from springtime Bulangshan - we are thus primed for some tea with potential for power and endurance.

This is precisely what they deliver: power, and endurance.  They really do last forever.  It is cooling, and strangely smooth - the flavour of a pebble that has been eroded on the ocean floor for aeons.  It combines the activity of good leaves with a slug of pure molasses.   It tastes almost exactly like gloopy molasses syrup.  At $110/kg, the lab might well benefit from such a mighty and potent little fiend.

You should try these, if you like shupu, and if you like your teas dark and heavy.

---

The main event today is the 2005 "Gaoshan Qingzing".  Aren't they all gaoshan and qingbing?

At $40, this amusingly-wrapped cake could be a bargain.  It is cloaked in a wrapper that looks a lot like "big green tree", which it obviously is not.

We have fragments of smaller leaves, pictured above, with a most welcome aroma of aged sweetness.  This is a decade old!  2005 is a strangely long time ago.  I was just starting out into the second year of my graduate degree, and was married to my dear wife in the same year - after meeting just one year before, as it happens.

The soup is clean, clear orange and its first impression is: AGED FISH.  This particulary fishy note is one that I associate with sub-CNNP, and it not something that I have come to appreciate.  (Note to self: this is a whole different class of fish to the almost-pleasant Dayi fish.)  It is cooling, and clearly caffeinated.

Thankfully, the second and subsequent infusions lose the fish and gain a strong, pine-like sweetness.  I can take pine, in preference to aged fish, any day of the week.  The sharpness is rather appealing.  I interleave brews of this cake with the Laochatou (started the day before).  The Laochatou continues to be powdery and sweet.  By contrast, the 2005 Gaoshan seems to be rather unsettling on the stomach, which is not a sensation that I typically receive from tea.  The fishy character eventually returns, and I finish the session after some four infusions or so.

AGED FISH: just say "no".

---

I have altered the

bed time - pray that I alter it

no further

Better Dead Than Red

Ave, Reader, full of tea,

blessed art thou among drinkers and blessed is the fruit of thy zishahu.

It has been one month to the very day, at the time of writing, that I have foisted my missives in your general direction, and I trust that this lunar cycle has been favourable to you and yours.  I have come to conclude lately that my tiny little world is so very tiny, and my mind likewise, that I have very little idea about life beyond my immediate Schwarzschild radius.  

This even goes for understanding that the weather is not the same the world over: as I sit here in Middle England, comfortably chilly, and wearing a cardigan, I am reminded of an academic visit to Paris last week.  The entire city was so very, very hot that I had to [sharp inhalation of breath] remove my cardigan.  Not even a waistcoat.  There was not a single necktie in the entire city.  And this was in May.  Baffling.  Happily, I was back in England within 24 hours for the purposes of seeing my little family, and so I was able to resume normality quite quickly.  However, the experience was traumatic.

I suspect that the root cause of the problem here is that I have trouble understanding that some people are not me.  That doesn't sit easily into my aforementioned tiny mind.  So, when I kick back and write about hongcha, I naturally assume that you are totally into hongcha in the same way.

Imagine my surprise when I tried some of these teas out on friends and colleagues only to discover that some of them did not like the tea.  Again, completely baffling.  This is hongcha, and it's good hongcha - what more is there to say?

You might have guessed from the (pagan druidic?) wrapper that this little cake is from Ee-Oh-Tee.  Check out those leaves, with the rusty tips.  There's your hongcha right there.

It seems to be made from Mengsongshan leaves, and Ee-Oh-Tee notes that it comes from the same leaves as the 2014 "Yuanwei".  Commercial confidence surrounds the exact location of the village, so that comparison might not be entirely helpful, but you get the general idea.  It's pu'ercha gone red.

I admire a tea-maker with both the Jones and co-Jones to use good pu'ercha leaves for the purposes of making either (i) shupu, or (ii) hongcha.  You are, essentially, guaranteeing yourself some chunky, meaty, beefiness.  Never has beefiness been in such strong demand as when you sit down with a pot of the ol' hongcha, because you don't sit down with a pot of the ol' hongcha expecting a prissy, fussy, delicate experience.  No, you expect to be slapped upside the head, and then insulted.  You expect a bit of a fight.  Hongcha is not supposed to go quietly into the night.

At a cost of 28 Britishunits for a mass of 200 S.I. grams, this is not too terrifying in its price.  I think that's appropriate for something like hongcha.  Isn't it interesting that if you just leave the tea as it is, and make a shengpu cake, then the result sells for £54/200g, but if you turn those same leaves into hongcha, then the price approximately halves?  Mystifying.  Cue enraged letters in the "comments" section.

This cake is as precise and clean as one would expect from Ee-oh-tee, and I like the fact that it has been tested for pesticides in a credible manner.  I like even more the results of that test, which suggest that it is clean.  This fact alone rather recommends it to my shelves, for some daily drinkage in the lab.

Like the puer'cha that it once was, this little hongcha lasts forever.  Importantly, its carnivore-pleasing strength seems undiminished when brewed with lesser water-quality, during the working day. 

---

Some months after drinking the above, I bounced into BIG TREE RED, which sounds like a Menghai special production but is, in fact, hongcha.  I think that outcome pleased me.

As pictured above, this hongcha comes from Dubs.  The web-site suggests that this is priced at $35 for "0.050 kg", and I wonder if there was a problem with the placement of the decimal point there.  Thirty-five bux for 500g would be in line with my expectation for good ol' hongcha, while the same price for just 50g would be in danger of raising an eyebrow.

I suppose that it is at this stage I would be pointed in the direction of the text that describes how the leaves come from 100-200 year-old trees and that they have been massaged by the inner thighs of pretty, nubile teavixens.

Those teavixens really drive up the price.

I like Lincang.  Lincang is rough, unapologetic, and great fun - and that's where these leaves originate.  I can't say that I've ever had Lincang hongcha before, and so I'm attentive as the kettle kicks into gear.

To say that I brewed this tea hard is something of an understatement.  I brewed this tea like nuclear fusion.  I brewed this tea like Odysseus on an Ithacan goat after a decade at sea.  Pile those leaves high, and pack that little pot to the brim.  The result is solid, sharp, and potently cooling.  It soon drops the pretence of being candy-sweet "hongcha" and gets down to the serious business of being red pu'ercha.  It cuts through your life like a hot knife through churned lipid solution.

Drink this tea and conquer the world.  Teavixens and all.

---

French Windmills

French windmills

always remind me of

English windmills

Dark Breakfast

One of my favourite posts over at the Duke of N's boudoir occurred recently ("Breakfast Tea"), in which our erstwhile correspondent showed us his breakfast.  As I mulled over "aged mushroom broth" and other delicacies, I reflected on the fact that it is not by a man's works that we shall know him, but by his breakfast.

One's breakfast speaks volumes.  It is intimate, personal, and absolutely honest.  When the excrement hits the fan, which is the single meal of the day that you just have to get right?  When travelling?  When wanted by the government for crimes that you didn't commit, escaped as a soldier of fortune to the Los Angeles underground?  Of course, that meal is breakfast.

It is the ultimate insight into a man's soul.

I then went on to consider my own breakfast: I have a notion that I have come to call (in the privacy of my own head) by a unique name that sums it all up:

THE DARK BREAKFAST

Now, some breakfasts are just breakfasts.  They are functional; they are getting us where we need to be.  Most breakfasts fit this description.  However, a DARK BREAKFAST is something else: a DARK BREAKFAST is a breakfast that is so powerful, so cosmically significant, that it warps the very fabric of the remainder of your day.  It sends ripples forwards and backwards in time, rearranging meetings, changing schedules, manipulating the very nature of reality itself.

Behold, THE DARK BREAKFAST.

The DARK BREAKFAST has no aged mushroom broth. It has no fresh green tea served in the local style. Rather, it is something darker, more fundamental, more cosmically terrifying. It changes minds, lives, souls.

The tea on offer here is not delicate; rather, the tea suitable for the DARK BREAKFAST is overbrewed, potent, and extremely evil. It has all the charm of antifreeze.

My college is particularly well-suited to the DARK BREAKFAST. Settings are placed four chairs apart, to give we, the humble supplicants of the DARK BREAKFAST, suitable room to spread out our liturgy / broadsheet newspapers / daemonic scrolls.

Quietly, the DARK BREAKFAST works its magic. Timetables subtly begin to rearrange; meetings begin to become more fluid concepts than their absolute presence in one's diary might otherwise suggest; priorities and deadlines themselves begin to shift. Truly, the DARK BREAKFAST is a rarified and incomprehensible ritual.

Happily, college also has a chapel to relieve one's soul of the burdens of the DARK BREAKFAST...

I invite you, Gentle Reader, to share with us your own morning ritual.  You never know, you may also be a partaker in a DARK BREAKFAST.

caught behind

the Chinese elders -

slow breakfast

---

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as the Overlook Hotel likes to remind us. I set aside time at the week-end to park my rather tired carcass at the teatable, reaching for the velvet-lined container that contains ritual samples sent direct from that archpriest of darkness, w2t.

Like some other teas from Dubs, this is named after a (presumably classic) album from bygone years. My visiting mother appears to know "54-46 That's My Number", which is, according to Google, by Hoots and the Maytals, and which lends its name to this tea.

At $175/200g, this is not inexpensive - but that's fine.  If anything, it actually helps me to relax and drink the tea without being too concerned about whether or not I will be buying it.  We are so far beyond ambiguous purchase territory that we can just drink the tea.  I appreciate the freedom.

Behold the bold soldier: this is a big ol' "gushu" tea in the real style.  "Very nice; where does it come from, Brain?" I ask myself.

My closed fist (figuratively) slams into my own face as I check the Dubs web-page for this tea, to find that it comes from "hush-hush origins".  C'est la vie - another anonymous tea.

This tea is, in a very real sense, "guns of Navarone tearing up your battlezone".  Broad, smooth, punchy, fresh, zesty - and curiously familiar.  That familiarity lingers in my mind, tickling my sensitivities, reminding me of something forgotten, something beyond memory.

The risks associated with buying new tea are non-trivial.  Who knows how it'll end up?  I really appreciate the opportunity to try this sample, however hush-hush its origins (ahem), as it reminds me exactly why I like pu'ercha.  If you like straightforward, potent, sweet-straw broadness with hints of warm breadiness (Mengsong? is that you?), at least a sample of "54-46" could make you as happy as made made me.

It certainly cuts the karmic knot formed from that morning's DARK BREAKFAST, at the least...

Notes added to the 2005 Mengyang Guoyan "Laobanzhang" - this has come on very nicely in six years.

Greatest Hits

You might remember the 2005 "Daxueshan" from Shuangjiang Mengku.  I liked it, back when it was $30.  You just cannot (cannot!) argue with prices like that.  I recall that Apache and I didn't argue with prices like that, when we got our collective purchase on.

These days, Dubs is selling it for $70.  You might like to give it a try - that price is looking very nice, for the sheer density of trouser that is on offer here.

Now, in 2014, it is sweet and honey-like.  (I'm talking about the Dubs version here, by the way, not my own English-storage version.)  I love the storage characteristics of this cake, where it is both sharp and mouth-watering, in a fine manner.  It is pungent, long-lasting, and I love it.  I don't think it's possible to have too much of this cake - it'll always go down well.

"Greatest Hits" indeed, and not one to pass by.  What was straightforward power back in the day has mellowed into a depth and complexity that far exceeds the asking price.

---

I had to Google the name of this cake: the 2014 "Apple Scruffs", also from Dubs.

It turns out that this is the name of an album (of course), from George Harrison, which refers to the post-Beatles groupies who pretty much stalked the ex-members of the group.  I haven't heard the George Harrison album, but feel as if I have a good idea of its qualities, based on the other albums that have been turned into cakes by twodog of Dubs.

The picture below might give you some idea as to the time of year that I sunk this sample.

This is an autumnal cake.  I am aware that I usually employ that phrase in the same way that one might say "he's got a nice personality", but, in this case, it all seems to work.  The maocha comes from the Xigui area of Lincang.  I am loving the Lincang, longtime, as I seem to say fairly regularly.

This cake had everything going in its favour: at the time of drinking, I had just finished the week-long admissions exercise, in which almost all members of faculty have to set aside their work and interview prospective candidates for our undergraduate degrees.  It's a huge undertaking, and gets lots of (well-deserved) scrutiny from the press, to ensure that we're doing our jobs and not simply admitting our friends / donors / etc.  After that week, there is a few sweet days before Christmas lands.  Apple Scruffs arrived in that perfect hour, after hard work and before the holidays.

As with many good Lincang cakes, we have yellow-orange (autumnal coloured?) tea which is both fresh and very fruity.  It is very decent quality, although my diary notes that "this is very good, but I have several like it".  If you're looking for solid drink-it-now Lincang, Apple Scruff is $45/200g and looking decidedly reliable.

---

The Gentlest Sound

the gentlest sound

drenched by an April shower

of apple blossom

Keep Your Friends Close

One of my favourite things about teapeople, which probably involves you, Gentle Reader, is that they are, without exception, "dudes".  

I don't mean that in the American sense that teapeople have XY chromosomes and a collection of dangling, sensitive organs that nature has chosen to place on the outside of the torso; rather, I mean it in the American sense that teapeople are cool like the Fonz.  If your average teaperson were a character in Top Gun, they would be Iceman.  If they were a Bond film, they would be Casino Royale (2006, not 1967).  If they were a Transformer, they would be Soundwave.  If they were an East-Coast gangster rapper, they would probably be Raekwon the Chef, or perhaps Ghostface Killer.  There can be no doubt that if they were a character in the Star Wars universe, then they would obviously be Boba Fett.

I'm saying that teapeople is Good People.

This is an impression that returns to mind when my bulging letterbox spews forth generous teagifts from the four corners of the globe, although mostly from that corner that includes south-east Asia.

The first of two such gifts is from William of Bannacha, he of ninjitsu and bushido fame.  We may recall that he is romantically linked to certain individuals from Jingmaishan, which gives him ample opportunities to cruise the proverbial tea-curbs of Yunnan, looking for the proverbial hot (tea-related) action.

On receiving the above post-card from W of B, my youngest son (now two years old) pointed and said "Mama!"  I consoled my dear wife with the fact that Xiaolong had, at least, pointed at the youngest of the three ladies on the postcard, pictured above.  I have never seen my dear wife in colourful Yunnan gear, but it's a good look.  I can imagine that going down really well on the streets of our tiny little English city.

Along with the postcard, W of B had slipped me a length of "2014 Xiaohusai Yikeshu".  It took some serious Googling to unpack the name of this tea: "xiaohusai" is, it seems, in the Xibanshan region of Mengku.  (Booyeah! methinks, for I delight most heartily in Mengku teas.)  Further Googlation reveals that "yikeshu" means "single tree".  I consider myself edumacated after so much a'Googlin.

W of B notes that this is one of his "red" teas, but, even then, it is really good.  I kick back and try to avoid my MONOLITHIC OVERBEARING ALLCONSUMING prejudice concerning red pu'ercha, and instead get down to enjoying it.  It is fresh, crisp, and very clean - for some reason, I seem to enjoy its delicacy and sweetness.  "I am reminded of selections from Essence of Tea", my diary has, which is surely a compliment, given the precision targetting of your average EoT ordnance.  

I slam the entire sample into the pot, because, hey, red tea is pretty much impossible to overbrew.  The result is as big and as fat as your proverbial mother.  It's very good - and I begin to suspect that those trademarked Mengku lovebites are making their mark on my affections.

---

As if my magic, a laser-guided payload of EoT 2014 "Longlanxu" then arrives on target.

The eldest of my two sons, Xiaohu, seems to have developed a genuine capacity to enjoy (i) his father's pu'ercha, and (ii) his father's real ale by the tiny sip.  I am stunned, because I can explicitly recall despising both tea and beer until I was at least a teenager, and then some.  Happily stunned, it must be said, because I get to live the dream and kick back at the teatable with my big boy.  I laugh as I write this, because I clearly remember being very interested in his opinion of the teas that come past our teatable - he is my independent validation set.

Additional bonus points are scored when Peter Rabbit and his other friends also join us (pictured below).

Even more amusingly, Xiaolong seems to want to join us, these days.  I am training a team of hardcore drinkers, it must be said.  Do I get to buy them tea for their birthdays?  (Currently, it's Octonauts and Lego all the way.)

What did Xiaohu think of the 2014 Longlanxu?  I think he dug it.

It is husky and sweet, and EoT tells us that this cake comes from the Bangweishan zone of Lancang County in Simao.  If there's anything I like as much as Mengku / Lincang tea, it's Simao tea.  They are seriously A1 remarkable about their mixture out there.

Tangy, punchy, eternal on the breath - it has the noticeably tannic sandpaperiness of good grapes for a good white wine.  I am baffled how Xiaohu seems to enjoy his (tiny sips of) this tea, but he's sipping happily. 

The uncanny part is that he has a slightly distant gaze as if he's actually tasting it.  Amazing.

Many teas are made weak by time and fate, and by agrochemicals - but not this one.  At £48, this is very good, and I seem to remember that it was the clear winner (by a long shot) when I tried the 2014 EoTs in their maocha form.  I  like it, and more importantly, Xiaohu likes it.

---

Breakfast Finished

breakfast finished

it seems that my pockets are

filled with lego

Ninjas Scaling Your Building

William of Bannacha is silent, but deadly.

In the popular vernacular, he is both "camouflaged chameleon", and, simultaenously, "ninjas scaling your building"*.  You won't ever see him coming.  And when you do, it's too late. 

*No time to grab your gun, they already got your wife and children / 
A hit was sent / from the President / to raid your residence /
'Cause you had secret evidence / and documents /
'Bout how they raped the continents

The greatest trick William of Bannacha ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

You might be enjoying your life, quiet like, all cosy.  "Everything nice, everything routine."  Then suddenly: blam, everything's changed, as an unmarked package from William of Bannacha drops through the letterbox.

It is the coming of the storm.  And Jingmai is its name.

Regular readers will know that I'm not the world's biggest fan of prissy, elegant, delicate teas that are all gentility and precision.  Jingmaishan teas, in my opinion, typically fall in this questionable category.  They are "accessible".  They're the kind of tea that you'd give to an acquaintance that you don't really like.

However, William of Bannacha, the aforementioned ninja scaling your building, has an angle.  He may or may not have married into the Jingmaishan family tree, and he may or may not have contacts. The kind of contacts whom you might expect to associate with a ninja scaling your building.  These contacts, perhaps unsurprisingly, know Jingmaishan pu'ercha the way your average Asian gangster clan knows white powder.

I think it's almost accurate to state that William of Bannacha, in between scaling your building, is the only person to have provided me with Jingmaishan tea that I can not just tolerate, but which I actually enjoy.  His 2014 line-up is more of the same.  Which is to say, that it is fine.

The first katana out of the saya from everyone's favourite building-scaling ninja is the 2014 "Jingmai Gushu".  The clue is in the name: it's from Jingmai, and it's gushu.  

Such is the extent of William of Bannacha's ninjutsu is that he even locates the origin of this tea down to the nearest square mile, specifically Dapingzhang tea garden, in Jingmaishan region.  In a world in which we are often told that pu'ercha comes from "Yunnan", such specificity is refreshing.

As is the pricing of this stuff.  William of Bannacha, upholding the honourable tradition of the bushido that governs his every action, prices his pu'ercha very (very) nicely.

This gushu version is fresh, sweet, and good.  It's like Jingmai gone to Heaven.  It has all the usual Jingmaishan nuttiness, and yet it still tastes nice.  The finish is enduring, like a ninja running for tens of miles after his latest assassination mission.  Where else can you get tea like this, these days?

---

Wasn't it Pliny the Elder who famously penned the phrase, translated into English, "Slice like a ninja, cut like a razor blade"?  Surely, Pliny was reflecting on pu'ercha imported directly from a mysterious Jingmaishan-based mafia outfit.

I find it difficult even to pronounce the name of this tea, pictured above and below, which is named "Manghong" gushu.  Coming in around the 60something Euro price-tag, William of Bannacha writes that Manghong character lies somewhere between the sweetness of Trad Jingmai and the bitterness of Mangjing (for which, see below).  The leaves in this sample, pictured above, are eensy weensy, and remind me of Jinjunmei and the like.

Some of William of Bannacha's cakes are "red" in processing, and this seems to be deliberate.  At the risk of meeting the business end of a casually-tossed shuriken*, I must confess that this variety of red processing is not really my thing.  I'm not very happy with tons of oxidation, unless I'm explicitly drinking hongcha.

*Given the rotational symmetry of a shuriken, we might reasonably conclude that every end of a shuriken is the business end.

Sadly, this Manghong cake is "red", and that makes it very difficult to determine whether or not I like it.

---

The 2014 "Mangjing", however, is green, the way every ninja's mamma used to make.

In the Mangjing, too, I find ultimately solace.  It is the Jingmaishan cake that it is OK to like.  It is bigger, badder, rougher, and tougher, and packs something of a (one-inch) punch.  Clean, fresh, silent, and deadly... when a ninja has finished scaling your proverbial building, you can rest assured that he reclines back at ninja HQ with a startlingly decent 2014 Mangjing.

You could probably dissolve the corpses of your victims in this stuff.  It's really rather tasty.

---

Flat Tyres, No Brakes

flat tyre, no brakes

sweating, red-faced fresher

hands me his prep

Dorje Ling, The Thunderbolt Place

Greetings, Mighty-Thighed Traveller from Beyond the Stars.

Your rippling torso is, no doubt, straining to contain the thousand pleasures (calories) that accompany celebrating the birth of the Holy Infant.  Surely, massive consumption of alcohol and rich foodstuffs is in the spirit of the season.  Somehow.

What better way in which we might collectively work off our accumulated requirements for penance than in the confessional of the teatable?  Brothers and sisters, let us pray.

We are gathered here today to celebrate the nuptials of this tea (interestingly packaged, very Indian) with my hongcha teapot.  If anyone knows any reason why this delicious-looking subcontinental filly should not be married to my charming old red pot, let them speak now or forever hold their peas.

"Wouldst thou wish to imbibe the produce of our labours?" quoth an e-mail from GOLDEN TIPS, apparently writing from their warm and comfortable position somewhere around the middle of the 18th century.  "Hellz yah", responded your humble correspondent.

And thenceforth, the two fabric-wrapped missives did subsequently wend their way from the Indies all the way to this sceptred isle.  Against the envy of less happier lands!

Fat stacks from India, pictured above, in their plural and munificent beauty.

2014 Arya "Ruby"

Reader, there is much written about the throbbing undercarriage of tea that is pu'ercha, not some little of it upon these threadbare pages.  However, as those among you serving a particularly long sentence for violent crimes against humanity will know, Gentle Reader, much of my Actual Life is spent sucking down hongcha.

In all its myriad forms, from "ENGLISH BREAKFAST" (i.e., the tea equivalent of 100% proof potato vodka, feel the healing power of the capslock) through to "Lapsang", hongcha maintains a firm and constant nippletwist on my affections.

It is a common enough trait among my kind.  We are conceived in hongcha.  We float in it from the womb.  It is the amniotic fluid.  It is the silver sea.  It is the waters at their priest-like task, washing away guilt and purpose and responsibility.

2014 Arya "Ruby"

When I hit up the local taverna on my travels; when I am slumped facedown in my gruel at some overpriced St. Pancras venue; when I am sat quietly weeping into my scones at Cream Tea in some country cottage or slick city-hotel alike; my bibendi prima is The Hongcha.

If they have it, I will wrap my consonants around the word of power, DORJELING, while Anglicising it (and therefore anaesthetising it) into something that sounds a little like "Darjeeling".

2014 Castleton "Moonlight" (leftmost), 2014 Arya "Ruby" (rightmost)

I drink a lot of very mediocre DORJELING, Gentle Reader, and I am not afraid to admit it.  From time to time (read: when my homes from Chennai buy some for me), I tantalise my hongcha pot with Nilgiri.  This one time, in band camp, I drank Ceylon.

Strangely enough, though my father's family is from Kenya (like Obama!  Have we seen Hobbes' birth certificate?!), I only had my first Kenya single-estate tea last month, after getting a helpful new research programme funded over there.  The tea was OK.

2014 Castleton "Moonlight"

Imagine, then, the rapturous trance into which I slipped when the entire contents of this article were revealed unto me, like some warm, orange, sweet-smelling Apocalypse.

2014 Okayti "Silver Needles" (leftmost), 2014 Giddapah "Muscatel" (rightmost)

I actually enjoyed these teas between November and December of last year (2014).  The dudes over at GOLDEN TIPS keep sending me e-mails, slapping my figurative backside, and asking WHENOHWHENAREYOUGOINGTOWRITEABOUTOURGDTEAS.  Trying to get me to do anything (at all) is difficult; if you slap my figurative backside, Gentle Reader, I might add that you are not expediting the situation.  You are, if anything, causing me to pause and reflect upon the figurative stinging sensation in the posterior homoerectus.  And you do not want me reflecting upon the posterior homoerectus, rest assured.

Nothing good ever came of such reflections.

2014 Okayti "Silver Needles"

So, then, the teas.  Suffice to say that some of these teas are, like the cherry pie of Agent Dale Cooper in the 1990s, damned fine.

Names like CASTLETON and MARGARET'S HOPE are, to me, a little like reciting the names of the Thundercats, or the Masters of the Universe.  That is, they are words that are burned into my consciousness - they are concepts that are part of my hindbrain, the primitive id.  The package was like a "greatest hits" of Darjeeling.  It got my toes tapping.

Other names are previously unknown to me, but not, it seems, to Google.  Names such as ARYA and OKAYTI.  Names such as GIDDAPAH, which rather sounds like the start of James Brown's "Sex Machine".

However, all of these teas, without exception, were doubleplus good.  My favourites, perhaps expectedly, were the second-flush DJs.  Unlike pu'ercha, second-flush DJ is not lower-quality than the first-flush.  As Michael Caine would say, not a lot of people know that.  The first flush is nambypamby ladyboy tea (a little like the lace and frills of girly Jingmai), while the second flush brings the proverbial motherblanking ruckus in B minor (a little like the rusty juggernaut of nasty Bulang).  Needless to say, I like my battery acid, and so I loves me a pot of heavily overbrewed second-flush DJ.

Classics of the genre, such as Castleton "Moonlight", continued to thrill.  It was a little like Biluochun, actually, in that modern DJ way.  It pads the mouth with cotton wool.   Drinking the previously-unknown Arya "Ruby" was like listening to "Shame On A N*****" for the very first time.  That is some serious shi'itake.  ("BLAOW, HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW")

Plus, the caffeine from these DJs is like the aforementioned nasty Bulang: it slams into the consciousness like a the oft-lyricised vehicular homicide.  It will wake you up.

Other highlights of this assassin's backpack full of weaponry included the surprisingly hardcore "Avaata Supreme Nilgiri", which was a well-calibrated sniper rifle, in the Chinese lucha style.  I had no idea that my aforementioned homes in Chennai were drinking what tastes for all the world like real Chinese green, yet somehow given a badboy Tamil twist.

So then, to draw my conclusions, if you like your hongcha, then you will probably like GOLDEN TIPS.  Just let your mouse pointer wander - pretty much the only thing I didn't love was the Okayti "Silver Tips" and that's simply because I don't dig on white tea.

No-one really likes white tea, anyway, as everyone knows.