Visiting California Part 2: Tea with LATA

Way back when, a few of us tea enthusiasts in the greater Los Angeles region met regularly to drink tea together. Most of the original crew have moved or moved on, but some of us have stayed in touch. 

During my recent trip to California, I had a chance to meet up and drink tea with some of them.

We drank a handful of teas, including some well aged liu bao sent from Su, our friend in Malaysia who has been drinking and collecting tea for many years (Su, the pic is a shallow amount of a very late infusion, so don't think we messed it up! It was good).

We also drank xiao huang yin (little yellow label), a tea now upwards of 40 years old. I thought to myself, "Bears, we are aging, too: I remember when this tea was in its early thirties!" Another measure of time passing, I updated my New to Pu'er? post, and realized how many years went by since I last tasted fresh raw pu'er productions. Pu'er and other teas I've aged now bring me nostalgic pleasure in part because they have aged with me. Remembering when I bought this or that tea in China, who I was with, where our lives have taken us thereafter: some teas have become a consumable part of my past, a medicine for remembering to remember.

Sentiments and tea philosophy aside, the visit reinvigorated my passion for tea, which I rue to admit had smoldered. Our drinking gave me fresh inspiration to write this blog again.

Thank you for reading. Expect new content at least somewhat regularly. I will be reviewing a book and maybe a website or two, and I'll update on how some of my teas have aged, including my own production.

2002 Menghai Factory 7542-208

I used to think our friend Su kept her tea a little too dry for my taste. I felt that way until trying her 7542-208, supposedly a special production that contains higher quality (i.e., older tree) leaf.



The tea above neither looks nor smells traditionally stored, of course. Su doesn't run a wet storage facility. But it does look rather well aged for a 2002 tea, and the strong, sweet and woody aroma of the dry leaves foreshadows the deliciousness to come.

Bitterness appeared quickly, as did some smoke early on. Yet, the smoke and the aromatic woodiness of the tea reminded me of cedar planks, a trait I associate with Banzhang and some Pasha teas, a good sign that this might indeed have some older arbor leaves from those areas. It moved into more complexity, some "younger" floral notes floated above an almost leathery taste.



The aftertaste was thick and lasting, and the tea remained velvety soft in the mouth. Yesterday I drank this tea with a friend, and I used too much leaf, making some dryness appear early that later softened. The tea is potent enough that a little less leaf than normal might better highlight the complexity.

We drank probably 20 infusions of this tea before retiring for dinner, and it held up impressively.



As usual, many thanks to Su for providing a great experience. This was one of the best stored examples of early 2000s pu'er I've had the pleasure of tasting.

2011 Dayi 7542

Finally, I tried Dayi's elusive 2011 production of 7542. For some reason, Dayi was stingy with their releases, and when I was in China this year, no vendor had enough 7542 to let anyone sample.

It seems Dayi corrected the situation, and a sample was included in the China Cha Dao pack as an example of plantation tea.



And it is! But Dayi has a reputation for blending reliably good, ageable tea--a reputation which, in spite of the innumerable competitors now in the pu'er market, and in spite of rumors of processing tea at too high of temperatures, appears to have withstood all tests. At least, it has so far.

Steaming leaves in the gaiwan smell of tobacco and smoke, and although the smoke doesn't appear in the flavor of the tea, the tobacco does, along with a more herbal element, savory and sweet like tarragon. The texture is oily.



Other flavors appear later, include a sour/citrus element, some butter, a heaping dose of bitterness in later infusions. Concomitant with the bitterness, the mouthfeel and aftertaste appeared in the middle infusions, lasting longer with subsequent infusions until the tea outlasted me, around infusion 14 or so.

The bitterness makes the tea unpleasant to drink now, but the signs are there that the tea should, hopefully, have enough "oomph" to calm into something decent after aging. With no lack of "decent" sheng pu around at similar or lower prices, this particular example doesn't merit my wallet. But for someone who wanted factory-style tea, this tea would suffice.

2010 Dayi 7562

As mentioned in my post on the 7452 cake, the 7562 recipe offers heavy competition in the realm of Menghai shu pu. A little grittier and less refined than 7452, the 7562 brick's blend contains more heavy fermentation leaves. This yields a greater complexity than the aforementioned cake, but sometimes at the cost of brewing tenacity and usually making it less "easy" to drink.

This year's 7562 is certainly more complex than 7452. It's earthy, chalky, woody, mineral, and aromatic. The earthiness and chalk/talk are bold and bolder still after the tea cools in your cup: a shu lover's shu pu.

As the tea brews on, it lightens some, tasting of bark and then of wood, eventually tasting thinly of rocks--or, at least, tasting the way rocks smell. All in all, it gives the impression of wet stored sheng pu'er but without the mold smell/flavor and with more punch.

7562 lasted a few infusions less than 7452, perhaps 9 good infusions. Knowing of its limitations, I used a lot of leaf to get this many out of the tea. I think that, using less leaf, the tea would have a smoother feel, but taste less rich.

I brewed leaves from the back of the brick. As you can see, there's a fair amount of broken stem in the mix.

2010 Dayi 7452

You read that right, 7452, not 7542. Reverse the 5 and 4 of 7542 and you get a shu pu'er instead of a sheng pu'er. Funny how that works!

7452 is probably my favorite standard Dayi shu cake, which means it's probably my favorite shu cake of all time. Some years are better than others, and in some years 7562 sometimes beats 7452 for "shu of the year" in the Bearsblog "Teas of the Year" Awards.

I haven't tried this year's 7562 yet, but 7452 clearly wants badly to hold onto its title. It displays some of its best traits this year: richness, smoothness, clean earthiness, mineral/"rocky" flavors, thirst-quenching throat "feel", tenacious brewing, and an aftertaste that lingers in the mouth for an hour or more after drinking.

My two complaints with this year's 7452 is a lack of complexity, maybe highlighted by having drunk the Nan Jian Tulin brick too near in time. Second, 7452 has little aroma this year, but this could be my sense of smell (?).

1997 Menghai 8582

In the mood to drink tea tonight, and not in the mood to stay up late, I pulled out an acquisition bought via Will of teadrunk.org, a 1997 8582 he purchased on my behalf during his recent trip to Asia (thanks, Will!).



Upon inspecting the tong of tea Will bought, we quickly discovered the tea housed some insects. Evident in the photos below, but also by a couple of live ones found crawling around the packaging, and even a little critter in one of the cakes. Pictures of bug damage are below.

From upper left to lower left: wonky compression (my guess is, wonky decompression from stuff crawling around and/or wet storage), bug holes in wrapper, bug egg (?) casing on leaf, bug holes in nei piao. (click for larger pics)




Evident in the photos far above, the cakes face and back show the clear evidence of Menghai blending: tiny buds on front, big chunky leaves on the back. Da huang pian (big yellow leaves) and the occasional twig show the blender wanted to round out the tea. Forget your two-leaves-and-a-bud, sans-yellow-leaves, twigless, single-mountain fancy productions of today: this relic of the 1990s looks to have a bit of everything.

As far as the taste: the tea tastes younger and less wet than it looks. 13 years later, there's still a hefty amount of bitterness that ends in a classic hui gan. The woodiness of age appears early, sweet and aromatic, but not yet dark enough to have become earthiness. It gradually fades to a sharper floral note, which combines with the woodiness into a cedar flavor that reminds me of adolescent banzhang/bulang teas.

The tea makes me hot; perhaps the materials, perhaps the bug droppings, but something has made my hands into fleshy radiators and my brow perspire.



12+ infusions in, this 8582 continues to yield potent infusions. The tea is good, but needs more time.

More interesting photos: a dry huang pian leaf in the middle of this pic shows signs of being eaten; a wet leaf in the pot shows the telltale hole of feeding larvae.

Pu'er Competition Tasting - Three 1999 Menghai Factory Qing Bing

This past Sunday, Will of the Teadrunk Forum, Roy, Davin and I met up to taste a lot of sheng pu'er while drinking as little of it as possible. After doing a a blind competition tasting of eight young sheng bing, we moved onto these three 1999 Menghai factory teas:

Sample A:


Sample B:


Sample C:


The setup was three competition tasting sets. They were preheated with boiling water and decanted in the succession they were filled. We used 3g of tea brewed for 5 minutes. We attempted to create roughly equal samples in terms of the proportion of chunks to loose leaves.



This is the result, from top to bottom the teas are A, B, and C.

Sample A
We all remarked that A's darker color probably meant it underwent the most humid storage. Unsurprisingly, it gave off some mold smell on the tasting spoon. However, it did not taste as wet stored as it smelled until it cooled significantly, which was nice. Will and I instantly felt a rush of energy on our first sip, but otherwise the tea didn't offer much. Its flavors were relatively flat.

Sample B
Sample B tasted dry stored and young. Despite its age, the flavor had developed some fruit and just a bit of wood. It easily tasted the most complex of the three and had a good aftertaste. The dry storage made Will remark that of the three, this was his favorite.

Sample C
I liked Sample C best. It underwent slightly more humid storage than B and showed more development of wood and earth notes, but still complex enough in young ways (straw, a little smoke, bitterness on the tongue root).



Here are their brewed leaves. It might appear the white balance is off between photos, but it's a trick of the eye. Sample A's leaves are darker, B's the lightest, and C's brown.

A:


B:


C:


Unfortunately for me, tea C is the most expensive, over $400. Teas A & B are roughly equivalent in price, around $150-$180.

The teas are:

A: 1999 Menghai 7542, Sampan Tea
B: 1999 Menghai Big Green Tree, Sampan Tea
C: 1999 Menghai Big Green Tree "Dark Blue Piao", Hou De Asian Art