Life in Teacup

my favorite green tea of 2011

2012-01-02T11:38:00.000-05:00

I got a small pack of this tea and fell in love with it. This tea is called "white plum flower mountain peak" (白梅花尖), name after its production area, which is a mountain top with a lot of white plum flower trees. It's a beautiful name for both tea and a place! And you know I love plum flowers!

This tea is from an area right next to the producing region of Huang Shan Mao Feng. The appearance of this tea is quite similar to Huang Shan Mao Feng too, due to the similar processing techniques used. But this tea has a lot of nice nuances, floral, herbal, incense, and something subtle and mysterious that I had never experienced before. I only got a small pack of the first flush harvest. Then the friend who gave it to me said he thought 2nd flush is the best. This just kills me, as I don't know yet if I can get more of this tea next year.

Probably we have to face a fact that there are more teas in this world than we could ever get hold of... So what can we do? Enjoy what we have and keep dreaming for more...

tea away from home (2)

2011-12-24T17:33:00.000-05:00

Here is some previous discussion on tea and tea aware away from home.

Winter solstice! Hanukkah! Christmas! The most wonderful time of the year!

Once upon a time, I wasn't really enthusiastic about this time of the year - cold, dark... But with time being, I feel have deeper understanding of the holiday season, and can see its natural causes. Why do people in different cultures all have various celebration at this time of the year? I believe it's nature's schedule. This is the time when daylight is the shortest, which means we are having more and more daylight from now on. How exciting! The darkest time of the year gives you the most hopeful feelings. Besides, in traditional societies in most regions of the earth, this is the time when there wasn't much agricultural work to do. So it's the time to enjoy the storage from autumn harvest, have a good rest, and prepare for the spring.

For my holidays, I am soon away from home again. Well, I will be visiting my 2nd home and my 3rd home soon! A few updates of this blog have been scheduled for the next a few weeks.

These are some tea ware that I've used on the road, and will take some of them with me on the coming trip.

This is (part of) the kamjove teapot that I discussed here. It's one of my road trip favorite because it can be used for almost all kinds of tea, and the mug is a perfect green tea glass!

This Petr Novák tea bowl is one of my favorites for both trips and home. It can be used for all kinds of tea, and can be used as a perfect brewing vessel for green teas that requires hot brewing temperature and easily sink to the bottom.

This is the above tea bowl paring up with a Yuuki Cha kyusu for yan cha. This is one of my favorite kyusu. It's small enough for gongfu brewing. Besides, it straining screen makes it an excellent vessel for certain types of teas. I discussed on using this kyusu for a puerh brick here. It's price is blissful for its quality! For a few times, I had to hold back my desire to buying a second one of the same kyusu :-p It's just so perfect. Besides, it looks and feels sturdy, and therefore a great piece for trips.

This is a Yunnan Sourcing teapot, which I've seen from photos of quite a few Tea Chatters! It was a great deal, and very well made for its price. It's not a thick-walled teapot, but somehow seems very sturdy. I use it for dark oolong, sheng puerh, and sometimes, shu puerh too, if it's not stinky. On the road, if necessary, I might as well use it for greener oolong. But there hasn't been such needs yet as I usually would carry a gaiwan set anyway.

This is a very convenient heat-resistant plastic bottle with a strainer near the top. I use it a lot in summer for cold brewing tea. Besides, it's good for hot-brewing too, as long as the lid is not screwed tight when the water is still hot (otherwise the built-up steam pressure could be troublesome). In the past summer, on my road trip, I've used it a lot for hot brewing of a favorite Shui Xian. At the beginning, I felt it a little wasteful to brew a good yan cha in this way. But the tea turned out very well brewed in this way, the pot did a perfect job, and the aroma along with the tea dance made people jealous :-)

All this being said, I am not going to take a lot of tea ware with me on the trip. I don't really feel I have to have tea every day. With all the dim sum, Mongolian lamb hot pot, egg tarts, roasting ducks... waiting for me ahead, I will be ok skipping tea for a few days :-D

a visual aid on 24 solar terms for better understanding of tea calendar

2011-12-11T13:01:00.000-05:00

Going through the statistics of this blog, I've noticed that the tea calendar is one of the most popular posts. Although I understand people are keen to learn about tea harvest time line, I was a little surprised to see people's vast interest in that calendar, as I feel I've made it rather geeky and dry :-p

Then, the other day, I was fascinated by a douban (a Chinese social network focusing on books, movies and culture) friend, 青简's photo album of the 24 solar terms. It's absolutely beautiful! For people who are not familiar with the 24 solar terms, these pictures tell all!

All these pictures are taken by 青简，a woman photographer who takes photography merely as a hobby. To tell the truth, I always feel pictures like these are much more enjoyable to me than a lot of million-dollar pictures I saw in some galleries and auction houses. But admittedly, I am a layman and know nearly nothing about arts. So I dare to give silly comments aloud :-p Some of my professional artists friends wouldn't say things like that. Sometimes they wouldn't say it because they have better understanding of arts than I do. Sometimes they wouldn't say it because, as I suspect, they simply want to be polite :-p

China is a large country, just as there are quite a few different climate zones in the States. Some of the pictures in the photo are typical of southern China, and some are typical of the North. However, majority of the Northern Hemisphere share a lot of similarities in the solar terms features. Currently in my life in New England, I observe the 24 solar terms all the time, and would feel somewhat lost if I can't find a Chinese calendar at the beginning of a year. In fact, some of the solar terms, such as solstices and equinoxes are featured on most western calendars too.

Here are 青简's photos, starting from Li Chun (Start of Spring). The sequence is the same as what I've put in my tea calendar. Additional notes are available in the tea calendar if you would like some more references. But, like they said, a picture is better than a thousand words!

1. Start of Spring

2. Rain Water

3. Awakening of Insects

4. Spring Equinox

5-9...

10. Summer Solstice

11-15...

16. Autumn Equinox

17-21...

22. Winter Solstice

23-24...

You can see all the 24 picture in 青简's album here!

tea world

2011-12-03T10:35:00.001-05:00

The fun of tea business, tea blogging and tea swap!

Interestingly, I used to think tea drinking is mostly restricted within a relatively small group of people. But just in few years, tea has led me into interactions with people of more countries than I had ever had interaction with in any university or any metropolis.

I haven't been keeping track of all my tea interactions. So there are probably some flags left out of this picture. But I am sure this picture will be growing!

(In the above picture, Brazil is the only country I haven't had tea interaction with yet. I just couldn't help putting Brazil flag there because Brazilian national soccer team is always in my mind!)

wondering what 7542 is like after 10 years?

2011-11-23T00:56:00.002-05:00

Before I start, let me clarify that a lot of opinions in this post are my personal opinions. This doesn't mean these opinions are not shared by many people - in fact, they are confirmed by a lot of tea friends and tea professionals. But I do want to point out that in discussions of dry-stored vs. wet-stored puerh, there are always different opinions and different observations. The differences may not be about right or wrong, but rather due to individual tastes and from which angle the observation is made. The collecting and storage process of "88 sheng" is largely from the collector's own narration, so I would take it pretty much as a fact instead of opinion.
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7542 is one of the most popular Dayi products. It's known for its solid quality, plain price (that's if Dayi doesn't keep inflating prices) and typical Meng Hai style (thick liquor texture and powerful sweet aftertaste). Although 7542 is intrinsically good, it's current reputation has a lot to do with the famous "88 sheng" (８８青饼), which is 7542 product from approximately 1988 (most likely from 1989-1993), collected by a Hong Kong merchant Chen Guoyi in 1993, for about $2 a cake (now, everybody is jealous...). 10 years later, in 2003, when Mr. Chen released his collection to the market, it was sold out very fast at unprecedentedly high prices. The current market price for 88 sheng is more than $1500 or even $2000 a cake, that's if one can find an authentic and well-stored cake.

88 sheng is a very interesting phenomenon in a few ways.
1. It's a legend of 7542, an inexpensive tea to begin with. It demonstrates that the value of a tea doesn't entirely depend on original cost of tea leaves.

2. It's a legend of dry storage and relatively dry storage. The tea was stored in Yunnan (supposedly dry storage) for its first a few years, and then stored in non-humidified warehouse in Hong Kong, which was, at that time, very untypical for Hong Kong tea industry. Nowadays, more and more collectors in mainland China, Hong Kong (such as the famous Cloud) and Taiwan (such as the famous Shi Kunmu) favor dry (or relatively dry) storage. More or less, the confidence on dry storage originated from 88 sheng.

3. It's a legend that's Not replicable. Many legends are like this. Once it has happened, it won't easily happen again. Otherwise it's not a legend. Nowadays, 10-year-old 7542, although not extremely easy to obtain, is not rare. But if you see one, including the one in my collection that I am going to talk about, please do NOT think it must be comparable to 88 sheng. In my opinion, 88 sheng is not replicable for several reasons:

a. Although people say, big factory products like Dayi's have "stable formula", it's all relative. Tea, as a biology products, can't possibly have absolutely stable formula. Not 7542 products across all those years are of the "same formula". Besides, life of each batch of aged puerh is unique. Even when strictly controlled storage conditions are used (as nowadays more and more used in Guangdong, China and Malaysia), it's impossible to guarantee the same 10-year outcome.

b. 7542 production is larger and larger. Even for the same quality, probably no one should expect to make as great a fortune out of 7542 as Mr. Chan did. No one should... but "88 sheng" did ignite many people's dream of fortune :-p

c. When 7542 was first released to the market, it was one of the few, if not the only one, (relatively) dry-stored big factory routine product puerh over 10 years of age. It changed many people's view of puerh, especially people who supposed puerh all had damp taste and didn't think they liked puerh at all. So the legend of 88 sheng had its historical background. Later on, such style is more and more commonly seen, and is no longer deemed as so much of a unique style.

d. The early 2000s puerh madness also contributed to the legend of 88 sheng. Some people, after tasting 88 sheng, expressed slight disappointment. Usually it's not because they didn't think the tea was great, but because they had expected more "out-of-the-world" taste that they didn't eventually find in the tea. To my understanding, the problem is less likely of 88 sheng, but more likely of unrealistic expectation.
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Now here is my own version of 13/14-year-old 7542.

I think it's a very powerful tea. The aroma is not as prominent as some other puerh of similar age. But it gives great warmth and strong sweet aftertaste. The tea is already quite drinkable. But it should have great potential for further aging. When it comes to sheng, I am more of an "aroma" person. I value the honey-like aroma in some sheng, and often fear that such aroma would disappear with aging. But the strength of this tea is not at its aroma, but at its rich texture and thick flavor. So to me, there is no fear of loss in aging :-)

Overall, this is one of the sheng puerh that I like very much. But there are a few other sheng that I like better. I don't think this tea is a legendary tea (otherwise I would become so rich haha...). But I think it's a great tea.

Hua Luogeng - a tea loving mathematician

2011-11-11T14:38:00.003-05:00

Today is the 101st birthday of Hua Luogeng (华罗庚，1010-1985), one of the greatest contemporary Chinese mathematicians. He was an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and a foreign academician of United States National Academy of Sciences.

The picture above is today's Google logo on its Hong Kong website (google.hk). The 1+1 indicates Hua's significant contribution to solving Goldbach's Conjecture before its "1+1" stage. Up to now, Goldbach's Conjecture is not completely solved yet and deemed by many mathematicians as the most difficult mathematic problem ever.

In China, Hua Luogeng is best known for his innovative work on Integrated Approach, which was applied in many industries, as well as various other aspects of the society. In the google picture, the teapot and teacup indicate this achievement of Hua's. Hua was known to be a tea lover. His work of Integrated Approach germinated when he boiled water for tea and pondered what would be the most efficient plan to boil the water, rinse the tea ware and brew the tea.

Hua was not only a genius scientist, but also a very interesting person.

In 1930, at the age of 20, he was invited to work as an assistant professor in Tsinghua University, one of the best universities in China. By that time, he only had a middle school (equivalent to 10th grade in the States) diploma but was already one of the most promising young mathematicians in China.

Between 1936 and 1938, he was a visiting scholar in Cambridge University and published his influential work on Gaussian theories. At that time (and even today), a graduate degree in a world class university like Cambridge would guarantee one a tenured position in China. But Hua didn't apply for a degree diploma, because he didn't think it would make any difference for his life.

In 1938, China was already dragged into war, and most provinces of the country were under Japanese military occupation. Some of the best universities and best scholars of China recessed to the Southwest. There, life was hard, people were short of everything, but they continued their academic lives, and drank tea every day! (I expressed my admiration of Kunming Era in this blog.) At that time, for many Chinese overseas, China was the home that they couldn't go back. But in the year of 1938, Hua left Cambridge for Kunming, joined his Tsinghua University colleagues in teaching and mathematics research.

In 1946, Hua was invited by Princeton University as a researcher. He worked there till 1948. In 1948, he was awarded a tenured position as a full professor in University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But in 1950, he gave up his tenure and returned to China. In the next decades, throughout all the political storms in China, he wasn't treated fairly all the time. I am sure he and his family would have had a much more peaceful and comfortable life in the States. But by giving up that kind of life, Hua made significant contributions to mathematics research in China. In addition, a whole generation of Chinese mathematicians and computer scientists owed their enlightenment and mentorship to Hua Luogeng.

In 1985, Hua Luogeng died of heart attack in Tokyo, Japan, right after he finished an hour-long research lecture. He experienced a fast death at the podium. I think, this is one of the best and luckiest ways of dying.

So today we raise our cups to celebrate the life of Hua Luogeng.

blog sale: Petr Novák tea ware (2)

2011-11-02T14:11:00.004-04:00

The last blog sale of Petr Novák tea ware generated a wave of excitement. I was contacted by quite a few people about each of the single-copy teapots and tea sets. This enthusiasm (mixed with my own selfish desire of having more of Petr's tea wares...) led to the decision that we should carry Petr's tea ware in our web store. So now we've got more teapots, tea sets and tea bowls!

The last blog sale was very helpful for me to learn about American and Canadian tea drinkers' preferences. Besides, not all Petr Novák fans' wishes were fulfilled from the last blog sale. So before the new shipment of Petr's tea wares go to the web store, they are available in this blog sale, with a special discount. There are various factors to consider for the store prices and they are not finally determined yet. But it's guaranteed that prices in this blog sale are much lower than future in-store prices, and the prices are some of the best that one can get in North America. Those of you who participated in the last blog sale may notice that prices of this sale are even better. For this we thank Petr for coordinating this bulk order!

US domestic shipping for each piece is $7 (insurance included). $2 shipping for each additional piece.

Shipping to Canada by first class mail is $9. $2 for each additional piece (no insurance, shipment number is available but online tracking is usually unavailable until after the package is delivered... yeah it's silly...). Shipping to Canada by priority mail is$20. $2 for each additional piece (with partial and dwindled insurance, a better online tracking, but sometimes slower than first class mail... it's puzzling...)

People in Europe or on other continents may consider contacting Petr directly through his blog, his website, or by email (which can be found in his blog). It's much better to get it directly him to avoid multiple times of international shipping, save the costs and painful waiting. But of course you are welcome to get it from me if you are so thirsty for a specific piece of work!

Following photos are from Petr's google album. You can find much more photos of his other tea wares in that album. Just watching the album is a lot of fun, especially if you love window shopping ;-)

Sizes are measured with a ruler, precise to + - 5%.

Volumes are directly from Petr. I didn't re-measure them, but by experience, they all look quite precise to me. I've realized that recently there is the trend of measuring volumes with chemistry lab accuracy :-p So if you feel you really really need the specific volume (I am talking to you science and engineering geeks...), please let me know how you would like it to be measured (e.g., to the rim, room temperature, by weight of water replacement or graduated cylinder...)

If interested, please email gingkoheight at gmail dot com in 1 week. First come, first serve. All questions are welcome! If I can't answer them, Petr himself will!

Items will be shipped in 1 week but sooner if possible.

Some complementary "gifts with purchase" are at the bottom of the list.

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1. White Shiboridashi Set, with one shiboridashi and one tea bowl.
There are 5 sets of them. All similar but with small color, pattern and size (+ - 3%) variation.
Volume: 110ml. Diameter of the shiboridashi is 3.75"

2. Black clay teapot.
Volume is 130ml. White glazed surface inside.

3. Shiboridashi set with one shiboridashi and one bowl.
Volume is 140ml. Diameter of the shiboridashi is 4".

4. Black Shiboridashi Set with one shibo and one bowl.
Volume is 110. Diameter of the shiboridashi is 3.75"

5. Snakeskin Shiboridashi Set with one shibo and one bowl. (This style has quite a few fans on teachat!)
Volume: 140ml. Diameter of the shiboridashi: 3.75"

Oh they are all so handsome! I want to keep them all! :-D
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I am not sure if it's a little too devil to add to the temptation... but here are some complementary "gifts with purchase". Buyers please choose one :-D

These are some teas in my personal collection that's not available in market, at least not before I secure more of them :-)

1. Tie Guan Yin red tea, 2 small packs with 5-7g each. Well I guess you can find some TGY red tea in market, but not this one, because it's made by my friend :-D

2. 1960s Phoenix Dan Cong, 8g. Haha, I know...

3. 1996 Menghai Tuo, 10g. Somewhat similar to the 1996 Xiaguan Butterfly Spring Tuo, with a deeper tone.

4. 2011 Wild Oolong and 2010 Wild Oolong, 10g each.

5. Tong Cheng Small Orchid old tree cultivar, 15g. Similar to the Tong Cheng Small Orchid in the web store but from old trees.

Besides, an option of teacup -
6. Korean celadon small teacup. It holds about 60-75ml. Diameter is 2.75". (I think I only have 2 or 3 of these, so first come, first serve.)

found a new way to clean white porcelain tea cup!

2011-10-28T18:36:00.000-04:00

Warning - those of you who always stay neat and organized may find this strategy totally useless... but indeed it works for me...

I don't have a photo to show the effect. But I swear it works! I've seen quite a few online discussions on how to clean porcelain teacups. But to be honest, I didn't read most of them thoroughly... because... this problem just doesn't bother me much. Most of my frequently used porcelain teacups have layers of tea stain, lighter or heavier, always! There are few days of a year when they look bright white, and that's because my dear partner has cleaned them for me :-p

I've learned that baking soda is one of the best things for cleaning porcelain. That's what I use, very occasionally, when I need to pretend being neat and treat some guests with bright white teacups. But baking soda should be used with care and shouldn't be used to soak the porcelain ware. I remember when I was little, when my mom wanted to "deep clean" some dishes, she would soak them in baking soda water, and the dishes would eventually gain a "scrubbed" handing feeling.

Recently I used a teacup with heavy tea stain for red wine (I do this kind of messing-up very often...), didn't quite finish it, and left the cup there for a night (usually I am not that messy...). But then the second day, when I wash that cup with plain water (and I never use detergent for teacups), the wine stain and tea stain both came off, and I had a bright white cup in my hands!

So next time, if a porcelain cup is too heavily stained, I would use it for wine, and wait till the next day to wash it. Lazy people can always find a way out, haha!

I guess, it's because the tea stain is slightly alkaline, and wine stain is slightly acidic. So they perfectly neutralize with each other. Probably vinegar, cider or lemon juicy would do the same?

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Announcement: A big box of Petr Novák tea wares (beautiful teapots, shiboridashi, teacups...) have arrived today! Most of them will be available in Life in Teacup online store soon. But before that, some special blog discount will be available. So stay tuned :-D

2011 wild oolong

2011-10-23T15:38:00.000-04:00

2010 wild oolong and why this tea was made are recorded here.

Now here is the 2011 version of the same tea, made by the same people. Actually there are quite a few changes!

One obvious change is the dry tea leaves. The producer is still exploring how to make such a tea fits the taste (including visual tastes) of a broader range of tea drinker. The dry tea leaves look more "ordered" than last year.

The flavor, I feel, is slightly closer to that of some Taiwan tea, while remains a taste resembling some herbal medicine. A friend commented that this tea shares some similarity to Dan Cong. I don't think it has a lot of uprising fragrance that's commonly found in Dan Cong. But this tea does have a strong throat feeling which some people may feel resembles Dan Cong to certain degree.

The leaves indeed look much prettier than last year!

A very interesting tea! I look forward to finding out what 2012 version will be like!

A concern, which is also a general concern for tea, is that it will be harder and harder to find enough tea workers in the harvest seasons. This may only slightly affect prices of some popular teas, but will largely impact the production of some "boutique" tea and "experimental" tea.

Big Snow Mountain sheng puerh ball

2011-10-14T10:56:00.000-04:00

These little tea "balls" were produced in 2010, used tea leaves from Big Snow Mountain （大雪山）, a tea district in Lin Cang region, near the town of Meng Ku. In my personal opinion, it's one of the regions that produce puerh that can be quite tasty when young.

What's special about these balls is, they are hand made with whole leaves from big trees.

Each "tea ball" is about 8g. My only complain is it's a bit too much for one tea session of mine. But to make tea balls manually, this is probably a perfect size and good compromise between production and tea drinking. Besides, if I think 8g is too much, it's my fault because I was drinking this tea alone. Tea is meant to be shared anyway!

I used the little shibo from Petr Novak, my current favorite vessel for sheng! I should have given the shibo a better photo. Next time!

The "tea ball" wouldn't dissemble after a few infusions.

The tea went for quite a few infusions, probably above 10.

The tea leaves near the end of the tea session.

What I like most about this "tea ball" method is that all the tea leaves are preserved intact to the maximum degree. There is no prying required, which is both convenient and avoids damage of tea leaves. I have no idea whether this is a good way for long-term aging. Currently not many manufacturers are making "tea balls", as the manual work is somewhat exhausting and buyers are not very keen to it, because the beauty of the leaves aren't so obvious on a small "ball" as on a tea cake.

But interestingly, "tea ball" is not anything new. In 1960s, when tea experts uncovered and tasted some puerh from Palace Museum, the previous royal palace of Qing Dynasty, among all types of puerh, there was a type of "tea ball" as big as "ping pong (table tennis) ball" documented. The "ping pong ball" puerh sounds like 3-4 times as large as this 8g "tea ball". But they should look quite similar! I also wonder how the "ping pong puerh" was supposed to be consumed. Since it was already made in such small size, I guess a whole ball was supposed to be used each time, either in a large teapot shared by several people, or separated into a few smaller pieces and distributed to different guests.

thinking of Wegman's

2011-10-07T14:19:00.001-04:00

(In case some people are interested - a book club on Anna Karenina has started Today at http://unputdownables.net/! It's always fun to read with people, especially for such a long book with long sentences and all people's names long!)

This not exactly about tea. Wegman's is a grocery chain store. But the more I think of it, the more I feel it's not totally irrelevant to tea. My observations and thoughts are in 3 aspects:
1. Wegman's and tea drinkers
2. Wegman's and me
3. Wegman's and business

Wegman's and tea driners

In the past a few years communicating with tea drinkers, I have got the impression that many tea drinkers enjoy shopping at Wegman's. I remember reading Alex Zorach's (of ratetea.net) talked about his tea shopping experience at Wegman's. Marlena at Tea for Today wrote about her tea from Wegman's too. And I think I saw Wegman's mentioned in a number of other blogs and online tea forums too. For a few times, I saw Wegman's mentioned in some tea reviews and topic discussions on Steepster. So I did a quick search by googling (Wegman's site:steepster.com). The turn-outs are numerous, although Wegman's is not specifically a tea company. Interesting!

I guess there are a few major reasons why tea drinkers like Wegman's. First of all, Wegman's has a broader range of loose leaf tea than most other grocery stores. Secondly, Wegman's has a broader range of many other agricultural products (such as vegetables, grains and nuts) than most other grocery stores. In my observation, most tea drinkers have great interests in fine food and natural food, and Wegman's does very well in this aspect.

Wegman's and me

I lived in central New York for several years and went to Wegman's frequently. Later, after I moved to a region without Wegman's, I miss it so much! I even went to their website to checkout their pace of expansion, hoping they expand to my area soon!

Why do I like Wegman's? There are several reasons. First of all, as mentioned earlier, it has a broad range of things, especially fresh stuff such as vegetables (and of course tea, but several years ago tea was not yet as abundant as today). Compared with Wegman's, many groceries have very small veggie and fruit section, so small that it almost seems like they are determined to let us have very little fresh goods and drive us to the central aisles of the store where many processed foods are located.

Besides, I could find in Wegman's a number of things that I could hardly found elsewhere. For example, there was a time when I missed a kind of Chinese green beans very much. Before visiting Wegman's, for a long time, I had thought this kind of beans are not available in the States. Later I was so glad to find it in Wegman's. It's labeled "Italian flat beans" but it's the same as my Chinese flat beans. Wegman's has other things that are not so rare but most other groceries don't carry, because they are not what everybody buys every week.

As I remember, Wegman's was also one of the first groceries that had extensive bakery sections. Later on, a few more groceries expand their bakeries to sort of match Wegman's offerings. I grew up without bake goods ready to pick up on store shelves. At the beginning, I was attracted to bakeries because freshly made breads always taste so much better than shelf breads. Later, it took me some reading and studying to learn that there are huge differences between bakery breads and shelf breads not only in their tasting quality, but in their overall ingredients! Therefore I really appreciate it that Wegman's took the lead to have in-store bakeries.

Wegman's and business
As I've learned from Marion Nestle's book, What to Eat, in terms of business model, what distinguish groceries like Wegman's and many other groceries is, family-owned groceries such as Wegman's don't have to work for the stock market, and therefore can possibly aim at a balance between making profits and fulfilling other missions (such as providing good food?). For a lot of businesses that have stock holders, making profits is not enough, and sometimes is even a failure. Many of them have to maintain an increasing rate of profits in order to boost stock holders' confidence. This means, their profits must increase almost exponentially for several consecutive years. Such profit increase would be hard for most businesses. To make it happen, a business has to try everything to maximize its profits - for a grocery, this often means carrying products (often "bad" food) of maximum profits and dropping many others (often good food).

In this sense, although Wegman's is a grocery, it can be a role model for tea businesses too. With the expansion of American tea market, there will be a lot more large companies, and tea companies have started entering the stock market. Generally speaking, such expansion is a good thing, and indicates a new era of American tea market. On the other hand, I believe, for tea drinkers and tea businesses (small and large all included), the vitality of tea always lies on its diversity.

Blog Sale - tea shirts and others...

2011-10-01T13:02:00.006-04:00

First, my apologies - this is going to be a very long blog post, as there are quite a few items, a bunch of photos, and I am rather talkative...

These items are of limited amount and not available in the store (or not yet). Most of them are not found else where in the country. The prices are made low for blog sale and do not reflect future store prices of the items.

Please contact me through email (admin at lifeinteacup doc com) for purchase. Feel free to pick up some free samples from our web store. For North American buyers, shipping can be combined for blog sale and any web store purchase.

Shipping is $4 flat for US and Canada, $10 for Europe.

Items will be shipped in 1 week but sooner if possible.

1. Hand-painted Tea Shirt. $22

These are hand painted with eco-friendly paint. Custom design for Life in Teacup. Please ignore the size tag on the tea shirt. I normally wear S to M size T shirt, but couldn't fit myself into the female size XL from China :-p There are two sizes (both bearing XL label though):

Smaller size: 15.5" from shoulder to shoulder, and this width can be stretched to above 21". Length is 23". This is similar to female T shirt size M or slightly smaller.

Larger size: 19.5" from shoulder to shoulder, and this width can be stretched to above 28". Length is 27.5". This size is similar to male T shirt size M .

Since these are hand painted, they require more carefulness in washing. Hand washing is preferred, or at least for the first time. Ideally the shirt shouldn't be soaked in water for more than 30 minutes. When washing it for the first time, it helps to use salt water for the first rinse. If using machine washing, gentle cycle is required and the shirt should be turned inside out.

The first order of these tea shirts are mainly for family and friends. So currently there are only 2 yellow ones and several white ones available. I would love to hear what people think of the design and whether hand-painted design is preferred to ink printed design.

Front: The line says "There is a world in the teapot."

Back: lotus flower.

Yellow color (small size only)
Front:

Back:

2. ~~Hand sculpted ceramic teacup.~~ Sold.
This is one of my recent favorite :-D
Height: 1.9"; Diameter: approximately 3.3"
It can hold about 50-70ml
Since it's hand sculpted, the shape is slightly irregular and ceramic color pattern variation exists from cup to cup.

3. Pair teacups of lotus flower and lotus seed pod. Thin porcelain. Made in Jing De Zhen. Hand-painted under the glaze. Since the patterns are hand-painted, small variation exists from cup to cup. $28 per pair. There are 3 pairs available.

Each pair has a cup with lotus flower and another up with lotus seed pods. These are my recent favorite :-D

Height: 1"; Diameter: 3"; each cup holds about 50-60ml.

Chinese traditional aesthetics put great value on theme variations that reflect natural patterns, especially seasonal transforms. In the old days, it was a fashion trend to make two gowns that were almost exactly the same, but one with flower buds of plum flower or lotus flower, and the other gown with the same plum tree or lotus stems but the flowers were at their blooming peak. The first gown was meant to be used for the morning and the second gown for the afternoon. I don't think I can ever afford this kind of things (or afford the time handling this kind of things). But I like the idea very much!

I also have a pair of hand painted shoes that reflect such fashion (the shoes are not for sale :-D) Now probably you can tell I love lotus flowers very much :-D

4. ~~Porcelain gongfu teapot.~~ Sold.
Height: 2.5"; Length: 4"; Width: 2.5"; Volume: about 120ml (4oz.).
It has a 7-hole strainer.

The teapot is made for Taiwan market. Due to the design of the spout, it takes about 20 sec. to pour all the water in it (when it's tea, it will take slightly shorter time). So it's probably suitable for Taiwan greener style oolong, green tea and/or red tea. The pouring time could be too long for Yan Cha, Dan Cong or puerh.

It's not artistically made, but very well made and handy. It can pass the block-the-hole-of-lid water test, which is quite outstanding for a porcelain teapot.

5. Porcelain tea jar. Hand painted plum flowers. There are 2.
Height: 2.5". Wdith: 2.5" at the widest.

$14 each.

Although it's not up to artistic level, I've found the painting on the jar quite lovely and unique. The jar is made for Taiwan market. It seems a market trend in Taiwan that the lid has filling material and foil to make the jar better sealed. So it can be used for green tea or greener style oolong.

6. Lapsang Souchong sample set, including 5 samples, 5g each. Purchase is limited to 1 for each buyer at this time. $5 each set. (They will be labeled as 6a - 6e.)

6a. Traditional smokey style - leaves were intentionally chopped. Plum sour and slightly smoky. Although it's a smokey style, it's not as smokey as lower grade Lapsang Souchong. If interested, please let me know and I will also include a sample of Grade II Lapsang Souchong (the one from web store) for your comparison. The Grade II is smokier, yet it's not the smokiest Lapsang Souchong compared with many others in the market. If there is no particular request, Grade II will not be included as it's not at the same grade level as other samples in this set.

6b. Superior Grade Lapsang Souchong (this is the same one from the web store) - relatively heavy flavor, slightly smoked, but doesn't taste very smokey.

6c. Lapsang Souchong - relatively heavy flavor, slightly smoked, but doesn't taste very smokey. It's a little hard for me to decide if I like 6b or 6c better.

6d. Lapsang Souchong - unsmoked, relatively light flavor.

6e. Lapsang Souchong - unsmoked, relatively light flavor. 6d and 6e are more similar to each other than to the rest of samples.

7. Tea samples. $1 each. These are for tasting purpose only. I will prepare 10 samples of each. Purchase is limited to 1 sample of each tea at this time.
(1) Jing Mei Tang 2007 Bao Zhuo shu puerh. 8g sample. Here is what it looks like from Jing Mei Tang official site. But ignore the price on the webpage. They put a high price tag on this tea just because they barely have any of this tea in stock.
http://www.jingmeitang.com/productDtl.jsp?id=35

(2) Jing Mei Tang 2007 Bao Zhuo Red Iron Cake sheng puerh. Made by Chang Tai. 8g sample. This tea was made to mimic Xia Guan style. It doesn't have the highest level of leaves, but focuses on untamed flavor, smokiness and powerful aftertaste. Worth mentioning is that although it's a 2007 tea, it uses significant amount of 2002 leaf materials. Purely dry storage and is already quite drinkable now.

Here is what it looks like from Jing Mei Tang official site. But ignore the price on the webpage. They put a high price tag on this tea just because they barely have any of this tea in stock.
http://www.jingmeitang.com/productDtl.jsp?id=34

(3) Yi Ru Chang Flowing Water 8g sample
It was discussed here in the blog and here on Steepster.
I eventually got more of this tea and probably can't help getting even more soon :-D

(4) Old tree Tong Cheng Small Orchid green tea 8g sample. This is of the same cultivar but different version (from older trees) from the Tong Cheng Small Orchid in the web store.

Buyers are welcome to claim some free items:
(a) I've got some more samples of modern green style Tie Guan Yin. They are of various grades, but most range from decent to outstanding. I can't have too much modern green style oolong, so please take them away!

(b) Nan Jian Tu Lin 5g mini sheng, made in 2009, with leaf materials from 2005. If you have tried mini sheng before, probably 80% of the chance it's a bad memory. If that's the case, take this. The leaves are very choppy. But the taste is decent.

(c) Da Dian 5g mini sheng, made in 2009, with 2009 leaf materials. Decent leaves and decent taste. This tea completely changed my view on mini sheng.

(d) Wild oolong 2011. 2010 version was discussed here in the blog. 2011 version is made from the same tea but with slightly different style.

Question and comments are all welcome! Learning about what you think is my best gain!

tea countries

2011-09-23T11:50:00.000-04:00

Some interesting information about tea countries in 2010, for your enjoyment -

Which countries had the largest annual tea production in 2010?

Which countries exported the most tea?

Which countries imported the most tea?

Which countries consumed the most tea?

Which countries had the largest per capita tea consumption?

Take a guess before your read on!

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All lists are hierarchical.

Countries that produced most tea in 2010: China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Turkey, Indonesia, Argentina, Japan, Bangladesh

Countries that exported most tea in 2010: Kenya, China, Sri Lanka, India, Argentina, Vietnam, Indonesia, Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania

Countries (or Federations) that imported the most tea in 2010: Russia, USA, UK, Pakistan, Egypt, CIS (Russia excluded), Dubai, Afghanistan, Morocco, Iran

Countries that consumed the most tea in 2010: China, India, CIS (including Russia), Turkey, Japan, UK, USA, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran

Countries and regions that had the greatest per capita tea consumption in 2010: Kuwait, Ireland, UK, Qatar, Turkey, Afghanistan, Morocco, Taiwan, Syria, Hong Kong

Data are from Agriculture Department of China and published in October 2011 issue of Tea Time, Hangzhou, China.

tea (and tea ware) away from home

2011-09-15T11:29:00.003-04:00

What tea and tea ware to bring on a trip away from home? This is a question tea drinkers frequently ask themselves.

For me, here are a few considerations:
1. Whether or not to bring any - on some trips, especially backpacking trips, I don't bring any. Too lazy to put up with the chores and worries (of breaking tea ware). I've seen several online discussions about tea for camping trips. So far none of them has convinced me to bring tea to camping trips myself, partially because I am one of the clumsiest campers, and partially because I don't feel like to have any tea when there is no daily shower and the restroom has no roof.

2. On most trips that I do bring tea, I bring barely any tea ware. On most trips, I have to carry my own stuff, and I stay in very modest lodges. So again, too lazy to put up with the chores and worries. Besides, I want the amount I carry to be proportional to the time I will be able to spend with tea. On many trips there are a lot of things to see and to do, especially because I am the compulsive, running-around type of traveler. When we were traveling in Mexico, my partner could spend half a day sleeping in the hostel, and another half day drinking and singing with others on the porch. I was like, "No! I didn't spend $500 air fare and travel 1000 miles here to sleep in the hostel!" I ran around and visited places all day long, every day! So, there was not much time for tea. I knew it before the trip, and therefore would pack very little tea stuff for the trip. When I take with me minimum to none tea ware and very small amount of tea, I usually have teas that are easy to brew in cold water, as well as black and/or green teas that are sealed in home-made teabags. Although I say black and/or green, one oolong I've found very convenient is Oriental Beauty, as I tested it with mug brewing and found it wonderful brewed in this way. Oriental Beauty is my favorite aeroplane tea. It brews well even in the not so hot water provided on board. Its aroma makes people jealous! Besides, ever since more and more airline started charging people for food and beverage on board, I've enjoyed bringing with me nice snacks, fruits and teas that will make the airline offerings look totally miserable, haha!

3. If I am on a short trip and can stay in a decent place with boiling water supplies, I would usually bring my gaiwan travel set. This is partially because of the obvious convenience and versatility of gaiwan, and partially because the gaiwan travel set is usually quite cheap and easy to obtain. I would rather not take along any nice tea ware if I have to worry about them being accidentally broken.

4. If I am on a multiple-week trip and can stay in a decent place (such as the Toronto vacation I have from time to time, or the 1.5 months I spent in Boston in the past summer), I would bring a few more pieces of tea ware and quite a few different teas with a few "anchorage teas" and a bunch of sample size teas. When selecting which pieces of tea ware to bring, I will use following criteria:

a. It's relatively sturdy. I won't pack the most fragile into luggage and let them see the ups and downs of the "outside" world.

b. Each piece of tea ware should serve multiple functions for multiple teas. A lazy person always wants every moment of her labor worth it!

c. After packing in one small teapot and one large teacup for one-person session, if there is more space, I would manage to pack in a few small teacups. Most of the times I drink tea alone. But I want to be ready if some other people could join me in tea sessions. When there are more people, one teapot may do its job well, but multiple teacups are necessary.

What are your tea-on-the-road routines and tips?

2002 Jing Mai Old Tree Sheng

2011-09-10T14:29:00.000-04:00

Forecast: A bunch of Tea Shirts custom made and hand painted for Life in Teacup have arrived at my doorstep! They are not in a style that everybody would like. But I love them, and thought maybe some other people would love them too. Also arrived some cute ceramic cups manually custom made for Life in Teacup! The above and a few other small cuties will be put on the blog soon!
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To me, this tea is both interesting and strange. Wrapped in a blank piece of paper, it has beautiful leaves. According to the producer, the cake was compressed in 2009, with tea leaves harvested from 2002. I don't know why they waited for years before compressing the cakes. Maybe the tea leaves were bitter when newly made? Maybe they were experimenting on some new method? I don't know.

The liquor color is quite red for a Kunming-stored 2002 tea.

The taste is the interesting and strange part. I took a few sips of the tea. After about 20 seconds, my mouth was filled with wonderful aroma, honey and floral, wave after wave. In my mind, that's typical Jing Mai aroma. This is the positive side, and I want mention the positive thing first. On the other hand, here comes the strange part - in the first 20 seconds after I took the sips, all in my mind was, where is the flavor?? I drank this reddish liquor, and didn't feel much, if any at all, flavor. For a moment, I thought there was something wrong with my tasting sense. Then I realized probably this is what the tea is. It feels very strange.

The sweet aftertaste kicked in after a few infusions, but it didn't show up as fast as in many other aged sheng.

I tasted this tea for a few more times. Finally I decide that I do like it, and it can be a pleasant casual drink. But still I feel it very strange that either the tea doesn't have much flavor before the aromatic aftertaste comes out, or my radar cannot detect its flavor at all. If the infusions are made longer, the tea will yield some mild astringency which turns into pleasant aroma instantly. But still, I didn't detect much flavor.

So I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that the tea leaves stayed loose for 7 years before being compressed into cakes.

This tea is a lot milder than some other Kunming-stored sheng of the same age. Milder, and, to some extent, weaker too. I guess it may have something to do with the fact that the tea was kept as loose leaf tea until it was compressed in 2009.

Chinese facial massage and infraorbital foramen

2011-09-04T14:26:00.000-04:00

(This is inspired by Rich's recent writing about The Invisible Energy around Us. I always think tea drinkers are relatively more sensitive people who pay a lot of attention to the surrounding environments and how their own body systems respond to the environmental changes. I personally have rather conflicting attitudes toward chi, as well as many other traditional Chinese medicine theories, such as yin and yang, ice and fire, etc.). On the one hand, I am very reluctant to talk about it, and often suspect when different people talk about it, they aren't even talk about the same thing. On the other hand, I believe these concepts worth more exploration, and shouldn't be misjudged or belittled, which actually happens a lot, even in China.)

Forgive me for presenting a skull in front of you :-p The little holes under the eye pockets, indicated by number "7" in the picture, they are what I am talking about, infraorbital foramen (pl. foramina).

I was taught this Chinese traditional facial massage when I was little. One important step is massaging the spot that's about 1/3 inch under each of the eyes. According to Chinese medicine, it's a very important acupuncture point (or it can be understood as "energy vortex") of human body. Self-massaging on that spot makes my eyes and face feel totally relaxed. I was told to do so, and I have been doing it whenever I can remember to. I didn't really think of why this should be a good massage spot. Chinese medicine, unlike Western medicine or Modern Medicine, is not based on anatomical evidence, but based on philosophy and thousands of years of medical experience. Besides, I don't even have the knowledge about all the acupuncture points on human body, let alone why each of them is important. I just picked up small things that were taught to me and easy for me to practice.

It wasn't until I saw a real human skull that I realized my favorite facial massage spots are these two little holes under the orbitals named infraorbital foramina! Many such little holes on the bones are important passages of blood vessels (and/or nerves). Massaging them stimulate regional blood circulation. No wonder it feels good to massage infraorbital foramina! It's good to know! But must I know it to benefit from my facial massage? Not really. I had enjoyed my facial massage for many years even before I took my first human anatomy class (which, in fact, didn't cover infraorbital foramen because it is too trivial). Generations of Chinese medicine practitioners never had a chance to observe a human skeleton (anatomy was not a research method in traditional Chinese medicine). But it didn't make them less confident about the acupuncture points. Besides, above anatomical observation on infraorbital formina may not be the only explanation why that spot is an important acupuncture point.

I believe in science. I believe in evidence and scientific inference. Meantime, I think one of the greatest things about science is, it acknowledges the limitlessness of the world and never stops the exploration of unknowns. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." - it was an enlightening moment when this line hit me in a lecture given by a scientist.

While I am writing this piece, I am having a 2011 Dong Ding Beauty oolong from Taiwan. It's sweeter than usual due to the worse than usual pest attack of the past spring. If I try to give some concrete and specific explanations about my writing behavior, caffeine and adrenaline should definitely be included. But they can't really give a full explanation. If I chose to be abstract and metaphysical, I would say it's all because of the chi of the tea and the penetrating energy from the cold spring days, haha...

how to enjoy a bowl of noodle (or a cup of tea...)

2011-08-26T01:09:00.000-04:00

Let's learn how to enjoy a bowl of noodle from the 1985 Japanese movie Tampopo (or Dandelion). This is not about tea. But it's not totally impossible if you replace the noodle with tea in your imagination :-p

Tampopo is a movie about food. Although the restaurant in the movie is meant to be a "fast food" restaurant (because noodle is often seen as a simple food in Asian cuisine), in relative term, the movie is full of slow food spirit. To prepare for learning how to enjoy a bowl of noodle from this movie, I suggest you to read Alex Zorach's tea blog on Slow Food Movement first.

Here is the IMDB webpage of Tampopo.

Following are some excerpts with a study outline (lines from the movie) on how to enjoy a bowl of noodle, with my very sketchy paraphrasing and translation. Maybe after seeing this, you will be interested in seeing the movie yourself. And maybe seeing the movie will make you want to practice on noodle appreciation yourself :-D

(Images are from the movie and organized by Qing.)

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How to enjoy a bowl of noodle...

First of all, observe the entire bowl of good stuff. You can see all the side ingredients shining on top of the noodle. Be grateful about their look. Savor their aroma.

The diamond-like luster is from the soy sauce pickled veggie. Soon, you can see seaweed gracefully sinking and minced green scallions floating atop.

Next, focus your vision on the three pieces of pork. They are the key figures of the side ingredients, yet they humbly hide behind other things. Now give them a few touches...

Massage pork slices gently with the tips of your chopsticks. Let them unwind. Remember, use the tips of the chopsticks only... gently... till the pork gets relaxed...

Then, gently lift it up, and immerse it in the soup on the right side of your bowl. Here is the most important thing -- give the pork an apology: See you in a moment!

Then, start eating. Eat the noodle first.

While eating the noodle, fix your gaze on the three pieces of pork, affectionately...

Then take some pickled veggie, and then eat some noodle. While eating the noodle, you can let some more pickled veggie join the noodle in your mouth.

Next, have some soup, three gulps... Then, sit straight, breathe out, and take another deep breath.

Then, pick up a piece of pork, slowly, as if you are making a very important decision of your life. Next, gently shake it for three times. Like this... just to shake off some water.

Now, you can put the meat into your mouth...

... ...
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I know some of my friends would say, are you kidding me! Who eats noodle like this! Well, if you are a "noodle person" like me, you will understand it. To me, eating a great bowl of noodle is a sacred moment, no exaggeration! Interestingly, when I was very young, I didn't even like noodle very much and thought it was some boring food - until I no longer have chance to eat the best homemade noodle (which is from my mom) every week! Then, every time I go home and enjoy mom's noodle, all its magical features would stand up - the aroma of flour itself, the "al dante", the sensation between teeth in every bite, the heavenly taste of the soup, the moist warmth rising through the top of my head and sinking to my heels... I don't know when I became crazy about noodle. But nowadays, a good bowl of noodle can make me cry...

This is not about tea. But somehow I believe you crazy tea drinkers have your way to feel for the ecstasy of crazy noodle people. The excitement, the gratitude, the apologies, the careful planning, the affectionate gaze, the emotional bondage... I know, you've experienced them all!

Taiwan "style" oolong (1) - Zealong Aromatic

2011-08-23T10:33:00.000-04:00

Taiwan "style" oolong (0) is here.

A friend got this tea for me from Chicago Tea Garden last year, by way of Steepster's choice (which is not available now, but is seriously missed). This is my favorite Taiwan style oolong so far. I think there are a lot of reviews on Zealong out there, as it's quite a hit. It is Sir William's review on Zelong series, Mattcha's review on Zealong Pure and the interesting discussions on their blogs that directly inspired me to go over this tea. It's always fun to drink a same tea with other people and compare notes! Discussions on Zealong has been manifesto, so are discussions on Taiwan style oolong in general. That's basically why I started this review series of Taiwan style oolong.

Dry tea leaves:

1nd infusion. I didn't use a strainer. The liquor barely has any tea leaf crumbs.

5th infusion:

At the end. If seeing these leaves without any background knowledge, I wouldn't be able to tell this tea is not from Taiwan. In fact, I wouldn't be able to tell from the taste either. This tea uses Qing Xin oolong cultivar and made by experienced Taiwan tea professionals. So the only thing that could make a difference is the geographic factor. But even about that, I wouldn't be able to tell. I didn't find any information about growth altitude of this tea, but it seems the region the plantation belongs to is just about sea level. But this tea has the pure, clean and aromatic taste of Taiwan High Mountain Oolong! I had always thought flavor of high elevation cannot be produced in lower lands. But a friend of mine used to say it can be made by state of art fertilization. Maybe he is right!

Spent leaves:

The leaves must have been harvested by experienced workers. All the leaves must have been strictly inspected too, as there was almost no crumb. Obviously these people are perfectionists!

I've got all three products of Zealong series, Pure, Aromatic and Dark. I took this one out first, as I guessed this would be my favorite. It indeed is! It has a combination of floral and fruity aroma. The taste is pure and harmonious. So even after several infusions, I infused it for quite a few more times as the liquor was always smooth and sweet.

So far, my impression of reading Zealong reviews from other people is, very few, if any, people said it was not good. I think it's obviously very good. The major source of critique is its price. Although this tea is not as affordable to me as many other teas, I think its quality justifies its price. I've enjoyed reading Alex Zorach's blog, Price and Sustainability: What is Overpriced Tea? Using Alex's framework of price and value, I would rank this tea as very high value and I don't see it as overpriced. Its value is primarily carried by its taste and quality. Besides, in the market, uniqueness is a big value too. This is the only New Zealand oolong (doesn't everyone want to visit New Zealand!) and is a high end product using more than one decade's hard work. Of course I hope this tea can be produced more and more, and the price more affordable, but as the production of this tea is still at its initial stage, I think the current price is quite understandable.

Talking about price, I really appreciate Chicago Tea Garden's pricing on this tea. I love online shopping and I am a deal hunter :-D I am glad to see CTG's price is actually better than the price offered by the producer themselves, after all the tea shipped across oceans to America! I think that's what serious tea drinkers expect a specialty tea retailer/importer to do, sourcing unique teas and using their purchase power to get good deals for their buyers. This is internet age and people get information easily. In the old days, it was almost the industry mode that retailers get products from the same wholesaler and sell it for dramatically different prices. But with today's information technology, wholesalers/retailers no longer hold that much of a secret on sources or prices. Therefore, I believe more and more people will appreciate unique products and reasonable pricing.

About pricing, Yaya from New Zealand had an interesting discussion with me here. She provided some perspectives that I barely considered before. Our discussion makes me think that, (1) Pricing is not only monetary, but also about public relation. When a New Zealand tea is more expensive domestically than in the international market, as a foreigner, I am quite happy enjoying it here in US, but I kind of understand that tea drinkers in New Zealand may feel quite frustrated; (2) I guess the market size and market influence have huge impacts on tea prices. Probably that's why we can enjoy relatively good deals in the States. I personally have dealt with people from a few dozen countries buying tea from US. It's quite amazing, as tea is not produced here. But obviously, US is a relatively big market, and easier to buy from than many tea producing regions. Hence the hub effect and some better deals. (3) With increasing market size, I believe (rather optimistically but possibly wrong) the prices of many teas can get more affordable in future, in US market as well as in many other countries.

to avoid over-brewing & under-brewing Chinese green tea (1)

2011-08-14T13:19:00.001-04:00

Most tea drinkers have very good ideas about what can cause over-brewing of a green tea. What I want to discuss here is a series of factors that may cause over-brewing, in a sequence of their significance as far as I can see.

1. Steaming
2. Volume of water
3. Temperature
4. Infusion time
5. Leaf/water ratio

This discussion is out of the thought that some factors are more likely to cause over-brewing, but are often neglected (for example, steaming factor). On the other hands, some other factors are not as likely to cause over-brewing, but are sometimes over-emphasized (for example, temperature factor).

Before I start, I would like to stress that tea brewing is a very personal matter, and there can always be a lot of variations in methods and brewing parameters. Eventually what works is the best, and different ways may work for different people. Sometimes we break some rules, not to prove these rules are wrong, but to demonstrate it's wrong to rule out other possibilities.

Brewing tea is a process of extracting good flavors out of tea leaves into the tea liquor. Here I will define "over brewing" as brewing that causes unpleasant flavors to be extracted or generated - this is what people say a tea is "cooked". "Under brewing", in my understanding, is brewing that fails to extract most good flavors from tea leaves.

1. Steaming
I usually suggest people to use un-lidded vessels for green tea. Traditionally, gaiwan was a very popular vessel for green tea. But when gaiwan was used to brew green tea with young and tender leaves, the lid was either not placed or only used to cover the cup half way.

People with cooking experience may have noticed this. When you saute some green vegetables in a pan on the stove top, as long as you carefully control the process, you can make the sauteed veggies juicy, tender and crisp, with their nice green color. But if you leave the freshly sauteed vegetable in a sealed container or covered dish for several minutes, it can get pale and soft, losing half of the flavors. What "kills" the veggie dish is also what sometimes "kills" the green tea - steaming, not high temperature.

Why were teapots used in the traditional society for green tea then? I guess, it's because teapots (especially yixing) are good at retaining temperature. This could be important in the traditional society when the rooms were not well-heated in winter. When using teapots in the traditional society, people were struggling with cold environment, and were not worried about over-brewing due to hot environment. This is also why gaiwan is a versatile tea ware. By placing the lid, placing it half way or removing it, you can adjust the brewing environment in the cup.

It's not that a lidded vessel is less good for Chinese green tea. And I personally have a favorite yixing reserved for green tea. A tea drinker can adjust the temperature, leaf/water ratio and infusion time to make a lidded vessel serve very well. Naturally, when a lidded vessel is used, water temperature should be lower, in order to avoid the "steaming" effect. But then the "catch" is, when lower water temperature is used, there is the risk of "under brewing", which will be elaborated in the third section about Temperature.

2. Volume of water
When you use a small gaiwan (4 oz. of less) for Chinese green tea, as long as it's not fully lidded and steamed, feel free to use the hottest water, and the leaves will not be over-brewed. Of course, by adjusting the temperature a little bit, we can get better result. But when the volume is small, the danger of significant over-brewing is tiny or none. The wide opening of the gaiwan cup will allow steam to escape fast and temperature drop fast. This is just an experiment. I am not suggesting everybody to use a vessel as small as 4 oz. for green tea. (Besides, it could be hard for people with big hands!) A "small vessel" is probably something smaller than 180 ml (6oz.). But with a vessel up to 300ml (10 oz.) and with care, the vessel can release steam and lose heat fast, so that the tea will not be over-brewed.

Temperature and Heat are two different concepts. Think of the flame of match stick (temperature around 400 F) and a liter of hot water (temperature: 200 F). The flame has higher temperature, but with its small mass, it has by far less heat than the big pot of hot water. In tea brewing, it is the extra heat, not temperature, that over-brews a tea.

Some people may say, how inconvenient it is to use a tiny small vessel for tea! What if I want more! Well, first of all, I think we should be aware that in modern days, all our vessels, whether for tea, coffee, or many other things, have grown amazingly big. Many of them are so much bigger than what they used to be just a few decades ago. What's small to many of us today, was just normal size in the past. Believe it or not, when you have your tea, snack or other things in a small portion, it tastes better :-D Besides, you can always have multiple cups, with each cup carefully prepared and delicious. When large volume is used, then there should be caution about over-brewing, and other brewing parameters may need to be adjusted accordingly.

a red tea infuser turned into a Tai Ping Hou Kui glass

2011-08-06T14:19:00.000-04:00

It's quite hard to find good Tai Ping Hou Kui, in 　　my impression, much harder than finding good Long Jing. That makes me a little stingy in drinking it.

Authentic TPHK has its leaves manually shaped one by one. Such kind of tedious labor often makes me feel guilty drinking the tea. Is it really worth it to make a tea in such a time-consuming and painstaking way? I don't dare to say it's not worth it. But I neither want to be the one processing the leaves nor the one paying big money to buy it :-p And if the tea is too expensive, I turn to other teas.

The TPHK I've got this year is pretty good, thanks to the cold spring weather. The leaves, in my eyes, are quite nice. But these are not the most beautiful leaves of Hou Kui. The top grade Hou Kui has all the leaves almost of the same length which would make me feel terribly guilty both for the labor it costs and for my own money :-p Again there is the question "is it worth it?" as there is no evidence that TPHK with even-length leaves taste better than that with shorter and longer leaves. But some people may think it's worth it, because the leaves can be so handsome and is one of the most beautiful tea scenes. As for me, I chose this one with modest leaves, which is still manually pressed one leaf after another one and, to me, is still quite expensive. So I was looking for a very small glass for Hou Kui.

Before I found a real glass that's small, I got a gift of red tea infuser. It's pretty much like a stout graduated cylinder with a cover and an infuser inlet. The infuser arrived broken but the cylinder and cap are fine. I didn't plan to use it for red tea anyway, but was glad to find it a nice vessel for Hou Kui.

Now this is my official Hou Kui glass (although I use it and its cap for white tea too). I use a small yixing of about 130ml as the water decanter. Hou Kui is a high mountain tea from Anhui and steeps well in very hot water. Unlike Zhejiang tea drinker, many Anhui tea drinkers never have the habit of cooling water before tea brewing. Very few Anhui green teas can be hurt by the hottest boiling water (when brewed in a small vessel, no cap, no steaming...). But I prefer to let the boiling water take a side step through the yixing before pouring it to the glass a short while later.

Hou Kui is a very volume-y tea. What's in the glass is very little by weight. This "red tea infuser" is small and tall, exactly what I had wanted for Hou Kui!

Tea is not a luxury of money. That's what I believe. If there weren't some strange-minded person ever inventing such a strange-looking tea this hard to make, then even the richest person wouldn't have a chance of this drinking experience. As far as I know, none of the emperors in Chinese history had the opportunity to enjoy the luxury of Hou Kui.

Ba Ba Cha (bundled tea, 把把茶)

2011-08-01T00:40:00.000-04:00

It was something interesting that I would like to try. I don't know if I should call it puerh or green tea, as this traditional tea of multiple ethnic groups in Yunnan and Guizhou was not meant to be aged. But the processing of this tea is quite similar to Sheng puerh (which, some people argue, is basically a type of green tea), and many people just take it as puerh.

Historical records show that Ba Ba Cha was a tribute tea in Ming and Qing dynasties. But I guess this doesn't mean every Ba Ba Cha is at the tribute tea level. On the other hand, it doesn't mean the tea is good only when it's at the tribute tea level. After all, traditionally, most puerh was simple and cheap product that was good and enjoyable.

In recent years, I've heard of people making Ba Ba Cha with ancient arbor, even Ban Zhang tea leaves. I've never tried these products, but think such idea sounds a little unbelievable.

Traditionally, the most famous Ba Ba Cha was made with leaves of Jing Gu Big White Tea cultivar. Although called "white tea", this cultivar is quite different from the white tea cultivar from Fujian, and this tea was famous for making green tea. Nowadays, Jing Gu Big White Tea cultivar is also used to make puerh (sometimes sold for quite a high price), while some people argue this cultivar is not suitable for making puerh that is to be aged. But, the border between puerh and green tea is sometimes blurred. So it's hard to say which saying is more right than the other.

The one I tried here is a typical simple and cheap Ba Ba Cha. It's made from Nannuo autumn arbor leaves, the same leaves people use to make puerh. In my understanding, this tea was made into Ba Ba Cha mainly because it's an easy (and therefore less expensive) way of making tea.

Dry tea leaves:

Since it's a cheap tea mainly enjoyed by local blue-collar workers or peasants, I thought I would brew it the Yunnan way, instead of the gongfu style. I brewed it in a glass, and I guess I put too much tea in the glass.

It was not as harsh as I had thought, but indeed somewhat harsh. To me, the harshness is onto the stomach, but the flavor is not very bitter. It was actually a lot less bitter and astringent than I had thought, for such a crude-looking tea. I guess it's partially because the simple processing kept most leaves free of being crushed.

It's not something that blows me away. But I was glad to have tried this somewhat "exotic" tea. Besides, this simple and cheap tea indeed outperformed my expectation.

Discussion on Long Jing (6) - QingMing vs. GuYu

2011-07-23T15:29:00.001-04:00

Discussion on Long Jing (5b) is here.

Qing Ming (around April 4) and Gu Yu (around April 19) are two important landmark days of solar terms in the traditional calendar system of some eastern Asian and southeastern Asian cultures. Solar terms document movement of the sun throughout the year, and is very important in directing agricultural activities of east Asia. Many of the solar terms can also apply to other parts of the world, especially regions in temporal zone of the northern hemisphere. Therefore I can constantly observe solar terms such as Qing Ming (marking the start of spring), Small Snow (marking approximate start point of winter snow) and Jing Zhe (marking the "awakening" of mosquitoes and bugs) in New England. Equinox days and Solstice days are also included in the solar term system.

Here is a tea harvest calendar based on the solar terms. By the way, the Major Heat (a landmark point of solar terms whose meaning is reflected by the name) of this year happens between yesterday and today (July 23, 2011). If you are in the Northeast of America, probably you already experienced it in a very deep sense.

I used the same brewing method as in discussion 5b to brew a pre-Qingming and a pre-Guyu Shi Feng Long Jing. Both are made from Jiu Keng Group cultivar, by the same family in Long Jing Village. Within a small clique of fans, people often call product series of this family by the family address, 2xx Long Jing Village.

The pre-Qingming one was produced on April 3, and the pre-Guyu one was produced 5 days later, on April 8. In warm spring weather, 5 days makes a big difference on the tea harvest. On the other hand, the difference between this two teas is not as prominent as, for example, a pre-Qingming from April 1 and a pre-Guyu from April 18. So, after all, pre-Qingming and pre-Guyu are only approximate concepts. Sometimes, the harvest date is more informative than labels of Qingming or Guyu.

The two teas are made by the same family. However, they were not processed in exactly the same way. The pre-Qingming one was completely manually processed, as pre-Qingming Long Jing production is very small and deserves the best attention. Most families in traditional Xi Hu Long Jing regions process their pre-Qingming tea manually. The pre-Guyu one used semi-manual processing, as it's usually of much larger production and there can't be enough tea workers to do the complete manual processing.

In all the pairing photos here, pre-Qingming is on the left and pre-Guyu is on the right.

Dry tea leaves

Dry tea leaves of pre-Qingming

Dry tea leaves of pre-Guyu

2nd infusion:

Pre-Qingming:

Pre-Guyu:

As seen in the cups, pre-Qingming Long Jing has a lot more buds than leaves. Pre-Guyu Long Jing has fewer buds and larger leaves.

Spent leaves:

Pre-Qingming:

Pre-Guyu:

Overall, the taste differences between these two teas is obvious when you taste them side by side, but the difference is rather small when you are not tasting them side by side. Their harvests are only 5 days apart, but there was surely a lot of growth going on in these 5 days. That's why Long Jing, as many other prestigious green teas, has its harvest time documented not by season or month, but by date. When tasted side by side, the pre-Qingming displays more prominent "aroma of spring" - green, floral and uprising. The pre-Guyu has less of this green, floral aroma and its aroma doesn't last as long as that in pre-Qingming. On the other hand, the pre-Guyu has slightly heavier taste and stronger "throat feeling" (I mean, more prominent flavor sensed near the throat region). But again, the difference is small. The price difference, however, is big. The price difference, I think, is not just based on their taste difference, but largely because of the time-line labels they bear.

The difference between pre-Qingming and pre-Guyu is probably even smaller this year, as the harvest of the traditional cultivar (Jiu Keng Group) was quite late in this past cold spring. In a few pieces of field in Mei Jia Wu, there was no pre-Qingming harvest at all. In some other years, when the harvest is overall earlier, pre-Guyu may taste significantly "older" than pre-Qingming.

When I was a child, as I remember, most pre-Qingming served as precious gift (in the gifting culture in China, it's important to use the best as gift and keep the modest grade products for oneself), treat for important guests and for grandparents. For daily drink, most of us Northerners were happy enough to have pre-Guyu. In some years there was no pre-Qingming harvest (this didn't happen often, but was not super rare either), then people would think pre-Guyu was as good as pre-Qingming, as it was harvested in similar climate as pre-Qingming of other years. That was a time before market-economics and modernization.

In the past decade, I don't remember ever hearing there wasn't a pre-Qingming harvest in a year. I suspect most people would harvest the tea as early as possible (and it must be pre-Qingming to be early enough), instead of let the nature determine when start harvesting. Sometimes people value the pre-Qingming label so much and neglect other important parameters such as cultivar, producing region and, sometimes, even the taste itself. Therefore in recent years, very oddly, even in Hangzhou, the capital of Long Jing, some lower quality tea of earlier harvest date is sold for much higher price than higher quality tea harvested only several days later.

Well, I am not trying to bring us back to the days of government planned economics. Nowadays we do enjoy a lot more convenience in tea drinking. Today, getting pre-Qingming Long Jing shipped to North America is so much easier than getting it shipped to Northern China in the 1980s.

As precious as pre-Qingming is, it's not necessarily the best tea for everybody. In China, some old-fashioned tea sellers would often remind their customers that many old-fashioned tea drinkers would even prefer the pre-Guyu to pre-Qingming, because they would think pre-Guyu is more flavorful and has more "kick". I call them "old-fashioned" because the "new fashion" seems to be "the more expensive, the better" :-p In my own shopping experience, for tea or other things, I like it when sellers give reasonable recommendations on less expensive options. Sometimes I like the most expensive item the best and love to splurge on it. Sometimes I like a less expensive item the best. When I don't have to pay the highest price to get my favorite stuff, I think, the happiness doubles :-D

my personal history of coffee drinking

2011-07-17T20:41:00.001-04:00

What?! Coffee?!

Well, first of all, maybe coffee counts as some sort of "herbal" "tea"? :-D

Secondly, I do like coffee. And it's something quite unique that I've adopted in my adult life. I can't recall my early history of tea drinking, since it was too much of daily life and all memories were blurred. I can't recall my early history of alcohol drinking either, because, as you may know, Chinese kids can start drinking alcohol from whatever age. Up till today, I've never been a frequent alcohol drinker. But my first glass of wine was too early to remember :-p So for me to review some personal history of beverage, what's left is coffee.

My earliest coffee experience was at the age of 10 or so. Back then, coffee was not commonly seen in China. One day, we got an "expensive and fancy gift" - instant coffee by Nestle Cafe :-D On a Sunday afternoon, during our usual tea time, we made some instant coffee. Nobody managed to finish the third sip and everybody was deeply puzzled how come this dark brown, bitter and sour thing was said to be a very popular drink in the Western Hemisphere :-p So we put away the coffee and barely had it again. Later, probably in another gift set that we received, we "discovered" coffee mate, and found coffee more "bearable" with coffee mate added. For a few times, we received ground coffee as gifts. We thought of it as more complicated to handle and less "bearable" than instant coffee.

In the old days in China, milk usually arrived (or was purchased) every morning, and was immediately boiled and taken as part of the breakfast. There was almost never cold milk stored in the fridge. So it was only years later that I "discovered" milk for coffee.

By the time we made coffee more "bearable" with coffee mate, all of us basically lost interest for coffee and thought it could only be enjoyed by some people for mysterious reasons. So we seldom had coffee again, and re-gifted all our coffee to other people. Back then, coffee was a trendy gift. But I suspect some friends who received our re-gifted coffee didn't enjoy it more than we did :-p

In 2000, the second year I got my driver's license, I took a road trip to the southwest and drove for more than 3000 miles in 10 days, all by myself. That was when I felt a need for caffeine and found some coffee didn't taste bad at all (I mean those cups of coffee I had in rural restaurants...) So when I came back home, I started drinking coffee in the morning, Nestle or Maxwell instant coffee...

All those years I had been in the States, I didn't pay much attention to Starbucks, not even curious about it, as I was not yet a coffee drinker. Then, in the summer of 2001, I "discovered" Starbucks, in Beijing - because, back then, all cool kids in Beijing were supposed to have Starbucks experience. So I found out Starbucks ice Mocha was my favorite, huh, desert beverage! Back in the States, I did notice ice Mocha here is a lot sweeter, too sweet for me to handle. But I enjoyed my Starbucks experience and stopped by from time to time.

At about the same time, I lived with a nice couple who shared with me their coffee made from a filter drip coffee maker. They had very high quality coffee and rotated flavors from time to time. Soon I happily found that I lost tolerance of instant coffee. Meantime, I started to realize Starbucks seemed quite expensive, considering the cost and quality of home brewed coffee.

In 2003, I had another roommate who kindly shared with me her coffee made from a stove-up Moka pot. That just blew me away! From then one, I became a loyal fan of Moka pot. Then I got a coffee grinder and started buying coffee beans. In 2006, after I moved to an area within the territory of Trader Joe's, I started buying organic, fair trade beans from them. I appreciate it very much that they offer such a broad range of coffee. In recent years, I buy most of my coffee beans from a Guatemala plantation. It's not certified organic. My husband once spotted the plantation on his bicycle and decided to take a tour in it. According to him, the environment and operation of the plantation are quite convincing, so whether or not it's certified organic doesn't make a big difference. Also it's not Fair Trade certified, but for us, it's direct trade anyway.

This is my personal history of coffee drinking. I am glad I "discovered" coffee and fell in love with it. I am also very glad that I wasn't eternally cast away from coffee after my first few painful tastings. Finally I am glad I didn't stop at instant coffee. Overall I am just an ordinary coffee drinker, not an "aficionada". I don't actively look for new types of coffee, and feel satisfied with my simple coffee ware. Till now I still feel lucky that I formed a bond with Moka pots, as none of my Moka pots ever costs more than $20. Even the one on my wishlist is under $50. So to me, coffee drinking is a lot less expensive than tea drinking :-D

What beverage do you like other than tea? Any other coffee+tea lovers out there?

gossip... gossip...

2011-07-12T20:41:00.002-04:00

This is old news. But I've just found out about it, and think this is seriously juicy... :-p

Zhang Tianfu is like the Godfather of Fujian tea. He is one of the first generation biology professors of China, and has conducted tea research for more than 70 years.

Guess what! Zhang Tianfu got (re)married, last year, at the age of 100! In the wedding photo showed here, the bridegroom, Zhang Tianfu, was then 100 years old and now is 101 years old (actually 102 years old by Chinese way of counting). The bride was 58 years old by the time of the wedding.

I have to say, Zhang Tianfu looks very young for his age (his wife too!). I guess he has no problem to live above the age of "tea longevity" (108 years old). Those tea companies eager to sell tea by its health benefits, should just get him for their TV commercials :-D

By now, Zhang Tianfu has broken the record of Chinese celebrity wedding age set by C. N. Yang, the Chinese American Nobel-prize winner physicist who got (re) married at the age of 82 to a 28-year-old woman! When C. N. Yang got married, I was thinking, working on science and keeping the brain active must help a lot to retain one's youth and vitality! Now Zhang Tianfu must be a very convincing example how one can stay young with tea! Well, in fact, C. N. Yang is an enthusiastic tea drinker too. He spent a big chunk of his youth in Kunming during the war time, drinking tea and studying physics. (His story was mentioned in my earlier blog here.)

As gossipy as I am, I dig up a bit more... Zhang Tianfu's wife was an acrobat when she was younger. She was widow of a tea scholar who was son of Wu Juenong. And Wu Juenong (1897-1989, quite long-lived too!) was like the Godfather of Chinese tea. He was second to none in in the Chinese tea history of 20th Century, and was respected as the Contemporary Tea Saint by Chinese tea professionals of a few generations.

So much to gossip about tea romance and tea karma :-D

some suggestions for new puerh drinkers - shu

2011-07-10T11:27:00.000-04:00

(I post this on Steepster a few months ago. This is pretty much the same as the steepster post, with a few points added at the end.)

First, I have to admit that I have very limited knowledge about puerh, and I am not learning fast. I think what makes me qualified to give new puerh drinkers advice is, I am not crazy about puerh - This may sound a little illogical. But what I mean is, just because I don't have a broad love of puerh (I don't like most shu and I don't like a lot of sheng), my advice might be useful to those who don't have a broad love of puerh either. Sometimes when I recommend a puerh to someone, I would say, even I love it - if I can enjoy it, probably you can too :D

I will start with shu, because most shu tastes stinky to me. Therefore, if a shu tastes good to me, chances are most people would like it.

1. Select a shu - most of the suggestions here only make sense when the products considered have clear information about production year and manufacturer. Such information is almost essential, but more than a few products in the market don't have such information. If a product is just named "puerh" without additional production information, then there is no way to give any general advice on it.

I select shu with very conservative criteria. I look forward to expanding my horizon (mostly by getting free or cheap samples instead of making bold purchases). But I suggest beginners to use very conservative criteria in choosing puerh. Here are some criteria:

1a. I would look for shu products of about 3-years in age, or older. It's not that all younger shu products are stinky. I've had one or two new shu that are not stinky at all (which left me happily puzzled). But we are talking about being conservative here. Many products need a year or two to shed off the stinky flavor from deep fermentation.

1b. Many people believe, when you look for a shu, don't even bother with small factories, go for the large factory products. I do believe there are some very good shu products from small factories. But I agree it's a safe way to go for the large factory products first. A most conservative list of large factories would include (and their products are widely available in western market):
            * Da Yi - probably the most popular factory for shu
            * Xia Guan
            * CNNP - It's the factory for some classic products. Unlike Da Yi and Xia Gua, CNNP does contract out a lot of their products (but not for some classics such as 7581), which is bad. But there is still the quality control, and usually when a product is bad, it's bland tasting, not of worse problems.
            * This list can expand with a few more factories, but that's where debates may start. For people who have just started exploring shu, I think Da Yi products can already keep them busy for quite a while.

1c. It's probably common sense now - you don't have to buy a whole cake or tuo to experience a product. Sampling is almost essential.

2. Brewing a shu - whether gongfu style or a big teapot is used, I think following tips may help:

2a. Rinse the tea generously. Rinse the tea with boiling water for 10-15 seconds, and discard the water. If rinsing once is not enough, then twice. Some shu doesn't require rigorous rinse, but even in that case, a thorough rinse will not exhaust its flavor. When you know a specific puerh better, you will have more precise sense how much to rinse it. But at the beginning, rinsing the tea generously can reduce the off flavor of fermentation as much as possible, and therefore you can have a more pleasant first encounter with the tea. :D

2b. Start with low leaf:water ratio and increase it in future sessions if necessary. When using gongfu style, I would start with 3-4g tea in a 120ml vessel, and 5 seconds for each of the initial infusions. When using a large teapot, I would start with less amount of tea than what I would normally use for red tea, and add more boiling water whenever the teapot is less than 1/3 full. If the tea liquor looks like dark soy sauce, then probably less tea leaves or shorter infusions should have been used.

As much as I have said that I am not crazy about shu, there are indeed a few shu's that I love very much. To name just a few, there is the good old (and cheap, if home-aged) 7581. Also there is the good and popular 7262. Not only it's tasty, it also has intriguing characters in aging. According to Taiwan puerh professional Shi Kunmu, some 7262 aged in Malaysian dry storage developed into a stage resembling old sheng - I haven't experienced a shu of such characters yet, but think what he said about 7262 is quite plausible. A favorite of mine is the one in the photo of this blog, shu brick compressed with Y421, a high end loose shu produced by Kunming Factory. Y421 is a routine loose tea product, but for some reason I don't see a lot of bricks made of it in the market.

Obviously I haven't found all good shu, due to my lacking of enthusiasm in shu overall. If one is very interested in shu, I am sure there are numerous good choices. That's why I emphasize conservatism for people who newly explore shu. It's important not to be freaked out from the very beginning, and in fact there are lots of awfully freaky shu products out there.

If you by all means just dislike shu, I think that's fine. There are many other teas to enjoy anyway. One saying I somewhat disagree with (although I can understand where it's from) is, "Shu is an acquired taste." My thought is, don't bother to acquire the taste, but we can always keep ourselves open to it. If it's your cup of tea, eventually it will find its way to you. If it's not your cup of tea, then there is no obligation for you to like it, and it's ok to give it up.

my father's first encounter with Lipton

2011-07-05T11:48:00.000-04:00

My father's experience is shared by quite a few, though not a lot of, people of his age. At the time, my father was more confused than anything else. But looking back now, we all think it's quite funny.

In 1980s, China's economy was just starting to open to the world, development was fast, and new things came out every day. My father was working in the first American-invested hotel in Beijing as the manager of restaurant department. It was a vacuum period for restaurants in many cities of China. Most of the best restaurants were in high end hotels. A typical high end hotel, such as the one my father worked in, could have up to seven, eight or more Chinese restaurants in it, plus one or two western style ones. So my father was in charge of restaurants in their hotel, and part of his job, is checking out good food in various places of China.

Once my father attended a banquet in Shanghai, exclusively for professional epicures like him. They had course after course of exquisite dishes. At the end, waiters brought green tea in large cups, for mouth washing. The tea was fresh Long Jing. Using tea for mouth washing was never a big trend in China. But my father and his colleagues swiftly followed the procedure, as every Chinese intellectual must have read the most influential book in Chinese literature, The Story of a Stone (also named A Dream of Red Buildings/Chambers, which, I think, is a bad English name for the book), in which the mandarin family uses tea for mouth washing after each meal. My father thought the mouth washing ritual was fine, but it was annoying to him that fresh Long Jing was abused in such a way. Any cheap, fresh green tea would have served the same function well. In his traditional value system, there is nothing bad about luxury, but purposeless wasting is a totally different story.

After the Long Jing mouth washing, they were served tea, this time, for drinking. The waiters brought beautiful and elegant bone china cups with matching saucers. In each artistically made cup, there was the (said to be) highest grade Lipton black teabag, the supposedly great tea to end their grand meal. My father is a green tea drinker in his entire life. So he took the Lipton tea as a "foreigner's tea"experience. That was his first encounter with Lipton, so was most of his colleagues. However strange it may sound today, back then, none of them was shocked by the Lipton teabag after a fine meal and Longjing mouth washing. They were only a bit confused.

That was in 1980s, when hotels and restaurants aimed at serving uprising elite class of China and foreign tourists. A lot of strange things came out with big price tags, simply because there were people willing to pay for them. It was also the time when the finest imported French white wine was mixed with Sprite (yeah, the Coca Cola company product) to serve in expensive restaurants.

Many of those strange things gradually disappeared when Chinese people saw more of the outside world, and when a lot of rich people were enlightened on better ways to spend their money. In recently years, my father's Lipton story comes up to my mind from time to time, because only in recent years, I've realized Lipton has always been such a big deal in China. Today, few Chinese would see teabags as high-ranking or fancy, but simply convenient way of tea drinking. But it shocked me, again and again, to hear some Chinese tea professionals talking about the admirable business achievements of Lipton. They say, With so much tea produced annually, why hasn't China ever had a company like Lipton? China needs its own Lipton! In addition, I've seen lengthy articles (written by tea professionals) about how Chinese tea industry needs to strengthen itself to realize its "Lipton dream"...

Really?!

Maybe I am not the only dumbfounded?

(The photo on the top is a scene from 1987 TV series version of The Story of a Stone, the ladies rinse their mouths with tea after a meal :-)

Taiwan "style" Oolongs (0) - why they caught my attention

2011-06-29T13:08:00.001-04:00

Taiwan "style" Oolong, with the stress on "style", meaning these teas are not from Taiwan, but use the same cultivars and techniques as for Taiwan Oolong.

I have been interested in these Taiwan "style" oolongs for a few years, due to a series of facts that I've observed:

1. Taiwan style oolong is raised extensively in Asia - including Zhejiang, Fujian, Sichuan, Yunnan, and more provinces in China, also including Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and probably more Asian countries. And now the oolong raised in New Zealand is a rising star!

2. Taiwan oolong is often more expensive in mainland China than in US - considering the transportation distances, this is quite odd. When I go back to China visiting family and friends, I often gift them with Taiwan oolong. The tea was purchased from Taiwan, shipped to US, and then carried by me to Beijing. Probably in future, Zealong will also travel across oceans like this. My friends in northern China often resent about how hard it is to get good, authentic Taiwan oolong, not because there is none in the market, but because the market is flooded with a lot more fakes. When they get some good, authentic ones, often the prices are shockingly high.

3. There is a lot of Taiwan style oolong produced in China. Oddly, this doesn't help bring down Taiwan oolong price in China, but cause authentic Taiwan oolong to be more expensive, as there is much less authentic than inauthentic. Quite a few of my Chinese friends say, you can't get authentic Taiwan oolong for a price lower than $$$ - but this doesn't make much sense to me, because buying a tea for a price three times higher than its price in Taiwan local market doesn't make it more likely an authentic Taiwan oolong. Some fake oolong products are packaged beautifully and have rather high prices, because there are people buying them.

4. In Fujian, including Anxi, home of Tie Guan Yin, there are quite a few plantations managed by Taiwan tea professionals. The cultivars, core staff and equipment are all from Taiwan. I heard such kind of plantations exist in Vietnam and Thailand too, and imagine they can produce very high quality tea. However it's hard to get their quality confirmed, as rarely one can find products plainly labeled as Taiwan style oolong made in Vietnam or Fujian. But with time being, I did find a few Taiwan style oolongs made in Sichuan and Yunnan and honestly labeled so.

5. So far in China, many people are crazy about Taiwan oolong, but probably more people buy fake products than authentic ones. In spite of all the efforts of some producers in making high quality Taiwan style oolong, no such product has yet become very popular in the market. Ironically, low quality Taiwan style oolong with fake labels often sells better than high quality Taiwan style oolong with honest labels.

6. Supposedly there is some high quality Taiwan style oolong produced in Fujian. But so far I haven't seen one that catches my attention. A friend of mine, a Tie Guan Yin seller, once tried to source some "famous" (or "infamous") high quality Fujian "Taiwan style oolong" for his store. He failed to do so, because, as he told me, he couldn't afford buying Fujian produced Taiwan style oolong for almost the same price as authentic Taiwan oolong. According to him, the tea was almost as good as, and as expensive as, authentic Taiwan oolong. The price was not entirely based on production costs, but rather because the producer could easily sell it to other vendors as "authentic Taiwan oolong". My friend figured he wouldn't be able to sell it for a high price as Fujian oolong, since consumers wouldn't like to pay such a price for a Taiwan style oolong that's not made in Taiwan. He wouldn't want to label it as authentic Taiwan oolong either, because no matter how good it is, such kind of labeling is deceiving behavior.

7. There are a lot of fake Taiwan oolong in Taiwan market too. A Taiwan tea farmer I know once told me how disappointed he was to learn that a wholesaler he had known for a long time started to shift most business to "imported" oolong. I don't know how common this phenomenon is. But there is a tea I bought directly from a Taiwan wholesaler that I highly suspect is "imported".

8. So far I haven't learned of any reasonable way to distinguish an authentic Taiwan oolong from Taiwan style oolong made in other places. In reality, there are many ways to detect the physical appearance, processing style and flavors of the tea that are "typical of authentic Taiwan oolong" or "typical of fake products". But all these criteria evaluate the quality, but not source of the tea. Surely there is a much higher proportion of top quality tea among authentic Taiwan oolong, and Taiwan style oolong is more likely to be of lower quality, because Taiwan has the best natural and technical conditions for its oolong. But there is also low quality authentic Taiwan oolong and high quality Taiwan style oolong, and there are products of equally high quality and from very different sources. If a tea is from a Taiwan oolong cultivar, the plantation is managed by experienced Taiwan tea professionals, and the leaves are harvested and processed by skillful Taiwan tea workers (such tea is not rare out of Taiwan), then how can one tell if it's from Taiwan or elsewhere? I can't think of a way to tell. In recent years there are authentic Ali Shan Oolong with DNA certification. But as I've spent more than few years studying biology, I've found this DNA certification thing doesn't make biological sense. It sounds more like a mental comfort for people who see DNA as mysterious and ensuring. In another aspect, this DNA certification thing also reflects how much fake products have interfered with the market of authentic products, so much that people have to try every way possible to certify the authentic ones.

9. Considering all the energy and brain work it costs to make fake labeling, to market a fake tea as authentic and to produce the tea to begin with, I wonder why such energy and intelligence can't be used on making some tea of solid quality. Can't people make good money at all with honest labeling and price consistent to quality? I guess I am not the only one wondering so. On the other hand, I also wonder why fake tea sometimes sells better than honestly labeled Taiwan style oolong of higher quality. Is it because the label is even more important than the quality in eyes of many buyers?

10. I have been thinking of above issues for a long time but hadn't tried to sort out my thoughts. This writing is largely inspired by Zealong, the New Zealand Taiwan style oolong. I obtained the three products of Zealong last year but had been flooded by a lot of other tea samples since then and didn't get time to try these Zealongs. Then the recent interesting reviews and discussions on Zealong by Mattcha and Sir William reminded me of this tea and inspired me on thinking and writing a little more about Taiwan style oolong.

A tea professional I highly respect once said, There is no best tea. But authenticity is the basic and ultimate standard for tea. I appreciate the effort of some tea professionals in making high quality Taiwan style oolong and labeling it as what it truly is. I believe most of them have genuine interest in making tea, not just making money. So far, no such product has achieved huge market success yet, and the market sometimes even encourages fake labeling. But I guess people involved in fake labeling have limited professional future in tea making, and people who are truly interested in making good tea always have a chance to succeed in the market. Currently Zealong seems to have a bright future. I am curious to see if some other Taiwan style oolong will catch up with it.

So this is basically why Taiwan "style" oolong has caught my attention. I will go over a series of such products and here is the plan:

1a. Zealong Aroma - I've got to put it in the front because it's probably my favorite Taiwan style oolong so far.

1b. Zealong Dark & Zealong Pure.

2. Yunnan Ji Bian oolong - Qing Xin (Green Heart) Oolong cultivar from Taiwan, 2300m plantation, certified organic, I have to try it no matter what!

3. Sichuan High Mountain Oolong

I will add more if I think of more :-D

3 aged Dan Cong (1&2)

2011-06-25T11:00:00.093-04:00

To me, comparing these 3 Dan Cong's with different ages is an interesting experience.

The first one is a 1994 Dan Cong, cultivar unknown.

The dry tea leaves look dark and heavy. In my eyes, the appearance is not much different from a Dan Cong of a recent year. The smell is very pleasant. When I get an aged oolong, what I care the most is, I don't want it to smell either damp or burnt.

Considering the tea looks heavy and the leaves may expand dramatically, I used only less than 1/2 gaiwan-ful of dry leaves. It turned out to be a fair amount. The dominant impression I got from the first a few infusions was sweetness. The tea is very, very sweet. I don't remember having any other non-puerh tea that's so sweet. The tea also has some herbal aroma. Like some other aged oolong that I appreciate, the tea has rich flavor, but feels easy and soothing on stomach. The tea has some typical "flavor of age", which is enjoyable to me as it doesn't taste damp.

The less than 1/2 gaiwan-ful of dry leaves, after being spent, became about 4/5 gaiwan-ful. Usually I would like to see spent leaves loosely filling the gaiwan, without being tightly packed. In a later tasting, I used a little more than 1/2 gaiwan-ful of leaves, and decided that for this tea, I would prefer using smaller amount of tea leaves.

This tea seemed to last forever. But later infusions were much lighter. So I ended it at certain point. Overall, the sweetness in the first several infusions was very prominent, surprisingly prominent. In later infusions, the sweetness was still there, but felt more "regular". When the sweetness faded, the herbal and woody flavors stood out more. The tea leaves expand little by little over infusions. From the spent leaves, it looks like I should have gone for some more infusion to fully use these leaves.

The second one is a 2002 Dan Cong, cultivar unknown, but flavor is within the range of Milan (honey orchid) Dan Cong.

The dry tea leaves and liquor color are not that much different from un-aged dark roast honey orchid Dan Cong - however, most of the dark roast Dan Cong's are made into dark roast at the end of its harvest year, so sometimes the age of an un-aged dark roast Dan Cong is not obvious to me.

The flavor of this tea bears only a hint of "flavor of age". It has a lot more uprising aroma than the first one. Actually I was quite surprised a 9-year old tea could retain so much aroma. In my impression, the uprising aroma of a tea would disappear gradually as the tea ages. One thing that has made me feel unsure of aged oolong is, I often love the uprising aroma of many oolongs and don't want to let it disappear in aging.

Overall I like this tea very much, but if I were not told the age of the tea, I don't think I could have guessed even a rough figure of its age. It tastes warmer than newer oolong, and the light "flavor of age" may serve as a hint. But I don't have enough experience to tell if it's 5 years old, or a little more, or much more. Besides, from its well-maintained aroma, I guess this tea has been stored in a relatively dry and well-sealed environment. Would I like it as well if it were at its third year? Very possibly! In this sense, I am not sure if I like this tea because it's aged, or because it's well-made from the beginning and well-preserved afterward. I think that's a constant question I have with quite a few aged oolongs and that's one of the major reasons I have been unsure about aging oolongs.

I started out to write a blog about the first tea, the 1994 Dan Cong. Then I got the 2002 Dan Cong and thought the two aged Dan Cong would be an interesting comparison. Then, one day I heard of this Dan Cong of 40-50 years in age. It's not something one can bump into frequently, and it's from a farmer I personally know. So even though I wasn't in a mood of collecting aged Dan Cong, I decided to get some just for the sake of experiencing it. So I will review it and continue the comparison in a short while!

Mango milk "tea"

2011-06-15T23:55:00.002-04:00

There is no tea in it, not even "herb", yet it's called "milk tea". Some people would add some red tea into it. But I don't, thinking tea doesn't yield significant flavor in such a blend.

Fruit milk tea is a seriously important thing in Taiwan. Once I had a Taiwan roommate and we made fruit milk tea every summer afternoon. We always skip the "boba" or "pearls" (little starch balls commonly added to milk tea) and only use fruit and milk. I love all kinds of fruit milk tea, even apple has a different taste when made into milk tea. But mango is one of my favorites. Papaya is another of my favorite. Strawberry is good too, but I always find the strawberry seeds annoying. Kiwi is nice and interesting. When blended, it (probably its seeds) has a hint of peppery flavor along with the normal kiwi taste. We also used cantaloupe and honeydew melons sometimes. Sometimes we blended in banana to sweeten the beverage. But these days I seldom use banana. For some reason, banana blended in milk tastes very sweet to me, almost too sweet for me to handle.

Making mango milk tea is very easy. Usually I use one of this kind of yellow mango (or two, if they are really small), two glasses, and 1.5 glasses of milk.

The Mango is sliced into small pieces, and completely homogenized with milk in a blender.

There are a lot of milk tea shops in China. I've seen some milk tea shops in the States too. The best shops always use real milk and real fruits. And when they do so, usually they have their blender and fruits displayed on the front counter. In China, milk is more expensive than a lot other things. So some shops use milk powder, condensed milk or condensed cream as the base of the beverage. Of course it can never be as good as real milk. In the States, fruits are relatively expensive. I've seen some shops using flavoring powders or flavoring liquors to yield fruit flavors. Most of them don't taste awfully bad, but can never be compared to real fruits. If a fruit milk tea doesn't use real milk or real fruit, I would rather skip it. So when I walk into a milk tea shop, I always look for their blender and fruits displayed somewhere up to the front. If they are there, then very likely the fruit milk tea is the real thing.

There can be things added to fruit milk tea with a lot of options such as honey, sugar, ice, "starchy pearls", tea, whipped cream, vodka... But basically, the secret to a good glass of fruit milk tea is simple - real, fresh milk and real, fresh fruit.

CNNP colorful stamp sisters and brothers

2011-06-05T15:19:00.000-04:00

These two CNNP green stamp brothers are not the same tea, and very likely not from the same factory.

A friend of mine once said, you never know how many products share this same green stamp jacket! Indeed! Meantime, many other CNNP products share the same jackets of yellow or red or other colored stamps.

CNNP (or Zhong Cha, 中茶) is notorious for contracting out a lot of its products. To be more accurate, it's not even contracting out. Here is my simplified interpretation, with many of the not-so-juicy details omitted, and with possible misuse of some political terms :-p

(The name of CNNP has changed long time ago, but it's just easier referring to it as CNNP.)

In the "state-owned" era (when all businesses were owned by the Chinese government), all tea companies were literally affiliated to CNNP. Then, in late 1980s when "capitalism" started, control of tea businesses was more and more transmitted to local companies. Up till today, many tea companies are still state-owned in name but are no longer under centralized administration of CNNP - as reflected by profit distribution. No longer collecting profits from local companies as before, CNNP said, Ok, now let's follow Free Market Rules. All local companies should pay for using CNNP trademark! This last for a short while. Then bigger local companies, such as Meng Hai Factory and Xia Guan Factory, said, Wait a minute! Why should we pay for using CNNP trademark while we could have our own trademarks? Hence came the trademarks such as Da Yi and Xia Guan (including the "crane" and a few other trademarks). Soon, more and more companies did the same. CNNP's policy of collecting fee for using its trademark was issued in 1988. Da Yi's trademark was registered in 1989. Xia Guan's "treasure flame" trademark (used for mushroom tuo and relevant products) was registered in 1990 and "crane" trademark was registered in 1991. In 1990s, Da Yi and Xia Guan had products with their own trademarks and with CNNP trademarks. But eventually they managed to get rid of CNNP trademark gradually.

Current CNNP brand products are still from various factories, including Kunming Factory, which is highly respectable. Some popular CNNP products (such as 7581) are only made in Kunming Factory and are more reputable than some other CNNP products. Meantime, a lot of CNNP products are made by numerous unknown factories. These factories are willing to pay for using CNNP trademark because their own trademarks wouldn't have the same level of market influence. Some of these factories are good, but there are so many of them, and some are quite bad. In recent years, with rapid growth of CNNP, more and more tea merchants and consumers are questioning on CNNP's loose control of its trademark authorization.

The trademark control problem of CNNP is much more severe today than 10 years ago, partially because 10 years ago, factories, even mediocre small factories, didn't have much incentive to make bad tea. Some people say, vast majority of pre-2005 Yunnan puerh is good tea. To make it a stronger statement, some people would narrow the range to pre-2002 or even pre-2000 tea. But anyway, what this means is, before puerh had the market hype and before puerh brought in mad cash, puerh production was normal, and usually a normal puerh is a good tea. If we exclude fake products from the discussion, authentic pre-2000 products are rarely bad. On the other hand, this doesn't mean all pre-2000 products of CNNP are super great. Some of them are from reputable large factories, and some of them are from less known factories. Some are amazingly good, and some are of quite average quality. The large quantity and uneven quality are partially why many pre-2000 CNNP products without clear manufacturing information are less expensive than some early-2000s routine products with Da Yi or Xia Guan trademarks. For the same reason, some good pre-2000 CNNP products can be of great value because the price is based pretty much on the tea itself but not on trademarks or other fringing information.

In reality, a challenge of choosing these pre-2000 CNNP products is, there is no information of production year, tea factory or tea leaf source. Only when the tea comes in whole boxes (a box, or Jian, typically contains 42 cakes for the 357g standard cake), production information may be (but is not always) presented on a piece of paper in the box. But in another sense, this challenge of missing information is not much bigger than the universal challenge of buying puerh - we just need to keep it in mind that the wrapper doesn't tell much about the tea, and sampling before buying bulk is always a good idea.

At the end, I just want to show a pre-2000 product from a small factory using CNNP inner label. I think the wrapper, along with the factory name in English, is silly in a cute way :-D

ATB Blog Carnival - Milk Tea... Tea Milk...

2011-06-01T00:50:00.001-04:00

This blog entry is part of ATB Blog Carnival hosted by Gongfu Girl. A full index of blog arnival entries can be found here.

The topic of this blog carnival is: about how to brew a specific type of tea.

This blog post was written a year ago. I pulled it out since it fits the topic. I also added a few notes on it.

Before I ever tried adding tea to my milk (I haven't tried adding milk to tea yet), I had Milk Tea (it should be more precisely called Tea Milk, in fact) with my Tibetan buddy, Laja.

The milk tea Laja makes is easy. He just throws tea leaves into boiling milk. I read it somewhere that tea made in this way is called "Sweet Tea" or "Lasah Sweet Tea". But Laja just calls it Milk Tea. I asked what tea he used, and he had no idea. He only knew it was The Tea. Based on what I heard, what I read, and what I saw from tea products, Tibetan tea is a Hei Cha (what Asian would call Black Tea, which is different from the Black Tea in western sense), which is somewhat similar to Shu Puerh. However, this guy has no idea whether his tea is a Hei Cha or not. I guess if you drink it every day (scientifically speaking the milk tea is physiologically essential in traditional Tibetan diet), it's part of your life, it's The Tea, and the genre and category don't matter at all. These days I see Laja about once a year, and every time I had his tea but forgot to ask him to show me the package of dry tea leaves. So I haven't yet figured out what he uses for his milk tea. He told me that any black tea can be used. From time to time, he has tea sent from his hometown in Qinghai. But when he first came to America and didn't have any tea in hands, he even used the regular type of Lipton teabag. Now I think, if Lipton teabag can be used, then pretty much any tea can be used for it.

(Later, after a few phone conversations, Laja and I guessed that very likely his hometown "black tea" is some sort of Hei Cha from Hunnan, possibly Black Brick Tea. But I also have the impression that the tea leaves somehow looked like some Sichuan Hei Cha. Anyway, Laja's tea seems a Hei Cha. Puerh is also commonly consumed in certain regions of Tibet. - May 2011)

I don't often feel a need for milk tea. But out of curiosity, I tried making it for a few times, mimicking what Laja did, with some modifications. A modification I've had is packing tea in a bag. Laja would throw tea leaves in the milk and eat the tea leaves eventually. I would rather not eat the leaves. To save a filtration step, I seal the leaves in a small teabag.

At the first, I tried using the last bit debris of a 2004 Xia Guan Tuo.

I planned to make only a small bowl of milk tea, so I packed up only small amount of the tea debris. In my impression, Xia Guan Tuo is very strong and that much in a small bowl would be enough.

However, the milk tea turned out rather weak. I boil the milk in a small pot. When steam started to rise, I threw in the tea pack. Then after the milk was fully boiled, I let the electronic stove adjustment lever stay at about "11 o'clock" position with very weak heat for about 5 minutes. Then I squeezed the teabag and threw it away. To my surprise, the strength of Xia Guan Tuo seemed to be entirely shaded by the milk. Besides, since this is a sheng puerh, it doesn't change much of the milk color, which was very unexciting to me. So the second time, I used a 2009 Bulang Stamp Tea, Shu.

This is the Bulang Stamp Tea by itself:

This is probably one of my favorite Shu so far. But I've never really got super excited about Shu, most of which tastes hollow to me. What I like about this tea is, it's relatively lightly fermented, compared with most Shu. After each sip, there is actually some "kick", a little bit similar to the aftertaste of Sheng. But after all, I don't treasure Shu that much and wouldn't hesitate to throw it into some experiment. So I made a teabag with this tea. And this time, I used a lot more tea, probably twice as much as last time.

Boiled in milk, the tea changed the milk to a pink color.

This time, the tea taste was much more explicit. And I think it tasted more like Laja's tea. But still, I feel I could have used even more tea. With either Sheng or Shu boiled in the tea, the tea elicits some special "fat" flavor from the milk. The flavor is unique to lamb or beef. I used to dislike such flavor. But in recent years, frequently fed lamb by Robert (I sometimes joke that he must have been a Muslin in his last life), I've started to like such "nomad" flavor more and more, especially when it's not too strong.

It seems to me that the milk tea can make me go a long way. When I had a bowl of milk tea after a meal, by the time of the next meal, I didn't feel very hungry at all. Does this mean the milk tea can possibly be developed into some slimming tea? :-p

I would also like to try red tea, especially Darjeeling and Kenya black tea, in milk too. Darjeeling boiled in milk makes Nepal milk tea. Actually, in most milk tea recipes, concentrated tea is made first, and then it's mixed with a lot of milk and some sugar. But our milk, even whole milk, is not as rich as the "original milk", and I usually only have 2% fat milk at home. So boiling tea directly in milk is the easiest and produces rich milk tea.

(As I started drinking more and more milk tea, eventually I found it more convenient for me to make darker tea first and mix it with whole milk. - May 2011)

Some people believe British custom of adding milk to tea originated from Tibet. According to that theory, Tibetans influenced Nepali in making milk tea; then this drinking custom was brought to India, including Assam Province; and British people learned of adding milk to tea from Assam tribes. I don't know where this story is from, but it sounds very possible.

May 2011 -

In the past year, especially during the winter time, I made milk tea frequently with Fu Zhuan, a favorite Hei Cha of mine. The tea and milk are perfect match! I also "milked" some Black Brick Tea, Tibetan Ya Xi Hei Cha, Thousand Liang Tea/Qian Liang Cha, and a few other Hunnan Hei Cha and Sichuan Hei Cha. They are all pretty good! So, if you are a hard-core tea lover and not fond of the idea of adding milk to tea, I urge you to consider the option of adding tea to milk, haha :-D

To me, a constant problem is, even when whole milk is used to make milk tea, the milk is somewhat diluted eventually. One solution I've learned from a Uyghur friend is adding "milk skin" to the milk tea. "Milk skin" is the top layer of boiled milk. The fresh version of it (if you scratch the bottom of the saucer that has just been used for boiling milk, you will know it!) is heavenly delicious. But I only got some dried milk skin, which is perfect for milk tea. It looks somewhat like this:

Some Mongolians and Uyghurs like putting broken pieces of it in milk tea. It add milk flavor to the tea, and the soaked pieces are quite tasty too.

My Uyghur friend said, at home, they sometimes also add rose petals to the milk tea. This sounds terribly luxurious to me! But it's a great idea if you have lots of roses growing out of your window. I don't have fresh roses to eat. But ever since I heard of the rose milk tea, I've been dreaming of getting some rose jam for my milk tea!

Discussion on Long Jing (5b) - Long Jing and non-Longjing cultivars

2011-05-29T15:31:00.000-04:00

Discussion on Long Jing (5a) is here.

The brewing method used here is the same as used in discussion 4b. But only 1.3g tea leaves are used for each cup. In all the photos, Wu Niu Zao cultivar is on the left, and Jiu Keng group cultivar is on the right.

Dry leaves:

From wuniuzao

Wu Niu Zao:

From wuniuzao

Jiu Keng group cultivar:

From wuniuzao

One relatively distinguishable difference between the two cultivar is, most shoots of Wu Niu Zao are plucked from the very bottom of the shoot, and therefore they bear the leaf stalk sheath, usually in dark color. So some people would say Wu Niu Zao leaves have "black butts". This is generally because the leaf stalk of Wu Niu Zao is very short and it's hard to pluck the shoots without pulling off the leaf stalk sheath. But as seen from the pictures, leaf stalks of Long Jing shoots are quite short too, espeicallyin early spring. So it's inevitable that some Long Jing dry leaves also have "black butts". Usually if we already know a sample is Wu Niu Zao, it's easy for us to recognize the "black butts" feature to confirm the recognition. But this feature is not as useful in distinguishing unknown samples.

Brewed in cups:

From wuniuzao

Spent leaves:

From wuniuzao

Wu Niu Zao:

From wuniuzao

Jiu Keng Group cultivar:

From wuniuzao

Again, on spent leaves, the "black butts" feature of Wu Niu Zao is quite obvious. But meantime, as we can see, some Jiu Keng leaves have "black butts" too.

I guess a conclusion we can get from above pictures is, Wu Niu Zao and Long Jing cultivars can look quite similar from pictures. However, the "real" difference is at their tastes. Wu Niu Zao doesn't have the typical Long Jing flavor. Instead, to me, the tea tastes like sweet straw. Besides, the flavor becomes significantly weak from the 2nd infusion, and very weak at the 3rd infusion. In traditional style Long Jing brewing, usually people don't expect the tea to last more than three or four infusions (unless a lot of tea leaves are used and brewing style is modified). But those are three or four flavorful infusions. Generally speaking, the inner quality of Long Jing cultivars is much richer than that of Wu Niu Zao.

In recent years, what makes many people have negative feelings about Wu Niu Zao is, sometimes it's sold with a Long Jing label and this makes people feel deceived. Although it's not as flavorful as Long Jing, Wu Niu Zao is not a "bad" cultivar. As an early harvest tea, it can serve as a great treat in early spring. In Zhejiang, some green tea lovers would love to buy Wu Niu Zao to quench their thirst for new green tea in late February to mid-March. What's important to buyers is, they should be given correct information about what they get.

Jin Jun Mei (金骏眉) 1:6

2011-05-23T10:51:00.001-04:00

I sampled quite a few Jin Jun Mei products in the past year. Most of them are very enjoyable. Here are two of them. I single out these two because I think it's interesting to find out how they are so similar in certain ways and different in some other ways. 1:6 is about their prices, the second's price is six times as much as the first one - not that the first is inexpensive :-p I have to say I love to sample Jin Jun Mei but always hesitate to buy it.

Jin Jun Mei is a fancy type of Lapsang Souchong. It was created in 2005 by Jiang Yuanxun (heir of a historical Lapsang Souchong family business) and his colleagues. I am sure they have some "secret formula" for the processing of this tea. But my simplified understanding is, Jin Jun Mei uses fine leaf buds of Souchong tea trees, whereas most traditional style red teas use bigger leaves as raw materials. The name of Jin Jun Mei can be interpreted as Golden Handsome Brow, indicating the rich golden tips of this tea. Besides, the character Jun in its name comes from the name of one of the creators of this tea.

Of the two teas I have here, the first one is a Wuyi Jin Jun Mei, produced in Wuyi but out of Tongmuguan, the original producing region of Lapsang Souchong. The second one is Tongmuguan Jin Jun Mei.

The two teas look quite similar.

Wuyi Jin Jun Mei

Tongmuguan Jin Jun Mei

I always think, it's often impossible to judge similar but different teas based on physical appearance. These two, I think, are another set of examples. If taking a closer look of the dry leaves and judging by the amount of "golden tips", I think the first one looks prettier than the second one, yet the second one is the expensive one.

Wuyi Jin Jun Mei

Tongmuguan Jin Jun Mei

The color differences of above two photos are mostly likely due to light intensity. The dry leaf colors of the two teas are almost the same.

Only after tasting them, I kind of understood why the second one is more expensive than the first one. I "kind of" understand it, in market sense. But I have to say, personally I like the first one much better. The first one tastes very creamy and chocolaty. I enjoyed it very much and even kept its empty bag for a longer while to inhale its chocolaty aroma. The second one is enjoyable, but of brighter aroma and quite floral. I think the dark toned, chocolaty aroma is more common in traditional higher end lapsang souchong, while the floral aroma is not something commonly seen in Fujian red tea. So my understanding is, because it's generally harder to achieve floral aroma in a lapsang souchong, and because the floral aroma is more in line with the "mainstream" preference, the second Jin Jun Mei is a lot more expensive than the first one.

This floral Jin Jun Mei still tastes quite pleasant to me. But I once had another floral Jin Jun Mei earlier that I couldn't bear with. I guess sometimes the overwhelming floral flavor in red tea can drive me crazy, as I described in this post about another red tea and its floral flavor. But this is just my taste preference. I always feel glad when finding out I prefer a less expensive tea to a more expensive one. It feels like finding a deal :-D

Overall I like Jin Jun Mei, but it's not a tea that blows me away. I thought of including Jin Jun Mei in Concept Tea, but hesitated to do so. The tea is wonderful and it does involve some innovative techniques. But the concept behind Jin Jun Mei phenomenon, in my opinion, is more of a marketing concept than a technical concept. I am not saying Jin Jun Mei's fame is entirely based on marketing strategies. What I mean is, it created a new niche in the market.

Just several years ago, in China, very few people were willing to pay a lot of money for a red tea. Therefore there was little incentive for producers to make red tea with the fine leaf buds, using meticulous protocol. But in the past several years, Jin Jun Mei has dramatically changed Chinese red tea market. In fact, Jin Jun Mei is a market miracle. In few years after it was created, the tea has become the most wanted red tea in Chinese market (or, at least "most wanted" among rich people), and is sold for up to thousands of dollars a pound, or even more. I am still wondering how they did it - how the producers of Jin Jun Mei managed to sell it for so much money. Besides, Jin Jun Mei indirectly caused price rise of other red teas in China. I think, even the dramatic price rise of Yunnan red tea is somewhat related to the Jin Jun Mei phenomenon. In addition, Jin Jun Mei has inspired a new wave of red tea products. There has been "Jin Jun Mei style" red tea developed in Sichuan, Anhui and other tea producing provinces. Many of them don't aim at simply copying Jin Jun Mei, but making red tea at a new level, a level of very fine processing and very high price.

Blog sale: some rare teas and new green tea

2011-05-20T12:42:00.006-04:00

(Item 5, 6 and some free samples are still available. )

The teas for this blog sale are not sold at lifeinteacup.com (most of them are not sold else where either). Some of them I've obtained small amounts for personal tasting. With all of them piling up, the small amount of each tea is probably still too much for me to drink myself :-p Some of them came to me for various reasons, as explained in this post.

If interested, please contact me at gingkoheight @ g m ail . com before June 5, 2011.

Shipping is $4 flat for US and Canada, $8 flat for Europe.

~~1. A bunch of 2011 spring green tea.~~ Sold.

~~I have small amount for each tea, and~~ ~~can make 3 sample sets for sale, with 8g of each tea in each set. Totally 40g per set, $8.~~

I've got them from a group purchase at a Chinese tea forum. The group purchase selects top notch tea and most unique teas each year. Last year I attended the group purchase, enjoyed most of the teas, but felt terribly guilty for not drinking up all the teas before the end of the year. I almost feel it's a sin to leave a great green tea unconsumed before the end of its peak time! So this year I'm determined to get rid of all of them with help of others.

The group purchase prices are very good. Many products are provided to the group purchase for advertising purpose. So some prices are significantly lower than market prices. The main purpose of this blog sale is to share these teas with green tea lovers. The sale prices aim at not losing money, but all the prices are surely better than what one can usually get from Chinese domestic market. But still, the teas are costly. So I would only recommend them to people who love green tea and want to experience more varieties.

A - Huo Shan Huang Ya, a green tea from Anhui. I don't remember if it's from the same producer of this Huo Shan Huang Ya I got last year. But anyway that's the style.

B - Meng Ding Gan Lu (蒙顶甘露), a green tea from Sichuan. The outlook is somewhat similar to Bi Luo Chun, but the taste is more vegetal.

C - Jing Xian Ti Kui (泾县提魁), a green tea from Anhui. The style is somewhat in between Huang Shan Mao Feng and Tai Ping Hou Kui.

D - Tong Cheng Small Orchid. This tea is similar to the one I blogged last year (which is available for sale at lifeinteacup.com this year). But this tea is from older tea trees. This tea is not from above-mentioned group purchase but I think it's quite unique to share.

E - Jing Shan Tea (径山茶), a historical green tea from Zhejiang.

There are a few free samples of other 2011 green teas coming with this set, including Orchid Fair Twig (similar to this one), Yong Xi Huo Qing (similar to this one) and/or your choices.

2. ~~A cute tiny little tin of 2011 Pre-Guyu Xi Hu Long Jing from Mei Jia Wu, Jiu Keng group cultivar, around 15-20g. $4. This is not sold alone and is only available to buyer of other tea.~~ Sold.

I'm not exactly sure of the total weight and it's just a guess. It comes in a cute little tin about the same size as the sample tins Adagio used to have. The tea is Pre-Guyu Grade II, meaning it was made around April 12th. I tried this producer's tea last year and it was pretty good.

~~3. 2011 Pre-Qingming Xi Hu Long Jing from Mei Jia Wu, Long Jing #43 cultivar, made on March 31, 2011. 50g. $28. Buyer can opt to buy half of the amount.~~ Sold.

This tea is also from above-mentioned group purchase. I haven't tried this producer's tea, but trust the selection standards of the group purchase and believe it's a good tea. The reason I give it up is that I've already got a lot of Xi Hu Long Jing from various sources. It's ok if someone would like to buy any amount between 25g and 50g. If bought at 50, the tea will stay intact in a sealed pack and a tin (the tin is already slightly dented as what often happens in international shipments).

This price is not typical for Xi Hu Long Jing, and shouldn't be used to compare with other Xi Hu Long Jing prices.

Buyer of this tea will get free samples of Xi Hu Long Jing from lifeinteacup.com for comparison purpose.

4. ~~Huang Shan Mao Feng from central producing region, 50g. $12~~. Sold.

This tea is also from above-mentioned group purchase. Price is not typical for Huang Shan Mao Feng.

I had this producer's tea last year, and thought I liked my other two Huang Shan Mao Feng better (although this tea is still very good). However, this tea has been highly praised by a lot of participants of the group purchase both last year and this year. So I guess the taste preference is very personal. Buyer of this tea will get free samples of three different Huang Shan Mao Feng from lifeinteacup.com for comparison purpose.

5. 1990 Wuyi Yan Cha, variety unspecified, pack of 7g, $2 each. Purchase is limited to 1-3 packs for each buyer at this time. This is a friend's tea of private collection. If you taste this tea and would like more, I can connect you to my friend in China to buy more directly from him.

A free sample of 1994 Phoenix Dan Cong comes with this purchase.

6. 2010 Bulang Zhang San (Zhang Jia San Dui, 章家三队) arbor puerh Sheng. $1 per 10g. The purpose of this sale is to share this tea with people and learn what people think of it. Purchase is limited to 10g -20g for each buyer.

This tea has very low bitterness/astringency and relatively high aroma and sweetness to drink now. It can be a good example of drinkable new sheng (for those with strong stomach). But I personally think it can wait for a few more years to get more enjoyable. It doesn't taste harsh, but definitely has something strong in it that kind of stirs me up (not sure physically or mentally). That being said, whole cakes are available if some people really want it.

The reason why this sample is available now is a tragedy... I once got a mailing agent who packed carelessly. As these cakes are made with traditional stone mills and are not so densely compressed, some cakes were badly crushed during the shipment. I had planned to open this tea in a few years, but now have a few broken cakes to play with.

Buyers please feel free to claim some free stuff here:

1. Some 7g packs of modern green style Tie Guan Yin from various producers and of various grades. I usually don't ask for modern green TGY samples as my stomach doesn't handle them well. But I've accumulated some small packs and hope to send them to some green TGY lover.

2. Some tea flowers (similar to flowers seen in this tea), not much but I can send it in a few 7g small packs to people.

3. "mysterious puerh". There is a 2005 sheng puerh that I think is surprisingly bad (in terms of taste but not in terms of storage or food safety) :-p I won't tell the name of the producer and won't show the wrapper. But I would like some people to either concur with me or disagree with me on how bad it is. If this can promote your interest - it is the worse sheng I've ever had! (Well it's not really stomach-wrenchingly bad. But obviously I haven't tried hard to look for bad sheng to begin with...)

Normally I hate to give things I dislike to people. So anyone who is brave to claim this sample will also get another sample of my favorite tea or a puerh sample of their choice :-D

4. ~~Some samples of Liu Bao tea with CNNP mark numbers. Around 20-30g.~~ I hope someone who likes Liu Bao can take it and also enlighten me why they like Liu Bao. I can drink it, but have never got it why it's supposed to be good...

And of course, buyers please feel free to ask for free samples from lifeinteacup.com

Shipping can be combined with lifeinteacup.com purchase for North American addressees.

Discussion on Long Jing (5a) - Long Jing and non-Longjing cultivars

2011-05-16T10:54:00.001-04:00

Discussion on Long Jing (4b) is here.

In discussion 4b, I compared two Long Jing cultivars. In a later post, I will use the same method to compare a Long Jing cultivar (Jiu Keng group cultivar) and a non-Longjing cultivar (Wu Niu Zao).

In spite of all the comparison photos, I have to clarify that photos of dry tea leaves are usually NOT effective ways to distinguish cultivars, even between a Long Jing cultivar and non-Longjing cultivar. Then, what's the point of comparison? I believe, the point is the awareness of various cultivars. Today, more and more tea lovers demand high quality green tea, including Long Jing. More and more people are aware of the importance of information such as harvest date and producing region. However, in the international market, as well as in Chinese market, many retailers don't have the habit of specifying the cultivar of their Long Jing product and many people assume all Long Jing tea is from the same type of tea bush.

As discussed before, there are various Long Jing cultivars. Besides, non-Longjing cultivar is not uncommon nowadays. Theoretically, products made from non-Longjing cultivars shouldn't be called Long Jing. But in reality, they are sometimes sold even in traditional Long Jing regions, labeled as "Long Jing". As I discussed in a previous discussion, cultivar is not an issue for a lot of other teas, but is a big issue for Long Jing. There is no way to get Long Jing flavor from a non-Longjing cultivar - one doesn't need to be a tea expert to realize this. It would be sad if some consumers are picky and careful about harvest date, producing region and everything else, but end up getting a higher end "Long Jing" product made of a non-Longjing cultivar. This kind of things happen, both in China and in the international market. Therefore, more and more tea lovers in China have started to inquire about the cultivar when buying a Long Jing product, and some retailers of Long Jing have started to include cultivar information in their product descriptions.

Wu Niu Zao cultivar is one of the commonly seen non-Longjing cultivar used in Long Jing style products. It lacks most flavor characteristics of Long Jing. Many people find Wu Niu Zao not as tasty as Long Jing. However, Wu Niu Zao is not a "bad" cultivar. It's one of the earliest harvested teas in Zhejiang province, and being early is an important advantage of this cultivar. Harvest of Wu Niu Zao starts as early as February, about a month earlier than Long Jing #43 cultivar, and 5-6 weeks earlier than Long Jing Jiu Keng group cultivar. (I include harvest dates of all three cultivars in this tea harvest calendar.) In late February to early March, Wu Niu Zao can be as expensive as authentic Long Jing, because by that time, Long Jing and most other green teas are not in the market yet. Once authentic Long Jing is available, many tea drinkers will stop buying Wu Niu Zao. So the market niche of Wu Niu Zao is pretty much in February to mid-March.

Wu Niu Zao is often made in Long Jing style. With its advantages and shortcomings, Wu Niu Zao is not an inferior cultivar, in my opinion. But it's important for tea drinkers to know what cultivar they get at each purchase, because Wu Niu Zao can look very similar to Long Jing cultivar, while the flavors of the two are very different.

The photo on top of this post is a "specimen" of Wu Niu Zao that I collected. It's a Wu Niu Zao made in Long Jing style. But it's a very well made Wu Niu Zao, and there can be great variation among Wu Niu Zao products in physical appearance as well as flavor quality. I can't always tell the cultivar based on photo - the failure rate is probably larger than 50% :-p

Recently I showed this Wu Niu Zao photo to a Long Jing farmer. Interestingly, he said, just from the photo, he wouldn't be sure if it's a Long Jing cultivar or Wu Niu Zao. Well, he knows Long Jing thoroughly. If he can't tell, I guess we don't need to beat up ourselves for not being able to distinguish cultivars based on dry tea leaves. It's just easier for everybody if the cultivar information is carried along with the product all the way from producers to retailers.

Concept Tea (9) - sheng with blended leaves of ancient arbors

2011-05-09T10:51:00.003-04:00

This is The puerh sheng that I fell in love with last year. Well, love should be examined through time. So I don't know yet if it's impulsive love. But this is the tea that got me excited, made me cry and brought poems to my mind :D

I logged about this tea on Steepster last year. And yeah I sounded very excited :D

To me, this is a Concept Tea, not just because I love it, but also because it's a good representative of a recent year trend - reputable small producers making blended tea with ancient arbor leaves from different regions.

For a period of time, big factories have their expertise in making blended tea out of plantation tea leaves (and, about some big factory products, don't believe they are made entirely of ancient arbor leaves even when they are labeled so... See the product titles just as "names", not "ingredients"...) and many small producers focus on unblended ancient arbor puerh. Many people would even thought making blended tea with ancient arbor leaves is a waste of resources, and they believed the precious ancient arbor leaves should be made into unblended products, with one tea product consisting of leaves from one region (or estate), so as to reflect the feature flavors of that region.

But eventually, there have been more and more small producers (or medium-sized producers, if compared with the tiny small ones) making blended ancient arbor puerh as their flagship products. The rationales, as I guess, are:
1. The product is more unique due to its blending formula
2. There is more fun of creation in the process of exploring what leaf materials best compromise and complement each other. And hopefully, this will benefit the long-term aging of the tea - which is not examined through time yet.
3. Such products are less impacted by regional price fluctuation of puerh raw leaf materials - such price fluctuation is sometimes manipulated or directly caused by large factories, and has been a big headache in recent years to almost all small producers.

The name of this 2010 product is Flowing Water (I love even its name!). It's not meant to reflect the tea itself, but a name to couple a shu product made in 2010 by the same producer (Yi Ru Chang) , which is named Beautiful Years. Chinese people often say, beautiful years flow away like water. It's like a particular Chinese view of life. And of course it fits the style of puerh very well!

What I think most striking about this tea is its unique aroma. The aroma has factors of floral, grass, honey, sugary... but is not like anything I had before. Besides, as a new sheng, it has surprisingly low bitterness and astringency. But I have high tolerant of bitterness and astringency. So probably the tea has both of the two flavors but they disappear so fast that I don't feel much of them. Its aroma is also very long lasting, both in terms of aftertaste and in terms of how many infusions it lasts.

So, this is my love! I didn't get a lot of this tea though. There are a few reasons, one being that I have no idea about how it will develop in future years. The aroma in the front taste is what I love the most about this tea. But in my limited experience, I have the impression that front taste aroma tends to disappear the fastest in aging. The aged sheng that I love has nice aftertaste aroma well maintained (or appearing through aging). But I don't recall having any older aged sheng (or oolong, or white tea) with prominent front taste uprising aroma. Chemically, the fragrant molecules are small ones that will escape over time. As you know, sometimes passionate love is ephemeral!

Besides, I feel I haven't tasted this tea enough to fully understand it. Ever since I got it, I drink it once or twice a month. It feels quite smooth and not harsh at all. But after all it's a new sheng. I never got ill effects from drinking a lot of new sheng (partially because I don't drink a lot of new sheng to begin with), but as I don't have the strongest stomach, I believe I should be careful. It's probably largely psychological. Now with 2011 tea season starting, I somewhat feel more comfortable to have this 2010 tea more often. But before 2011, I held myself from having too much of it. However much I love this tea, I've reached an age to love my health more than anything else :-p

purple beauty (Zi Juan, 紫娟) and anthocyanin

2011-05-05T10:16:00.000-04:00

This tea is quite novel to me. I would otherwise put it into the category of Concept Tea. But I didn't, because I don't like its taste. But it's just me. I know some other people like it very much, and this tea is quite expensive as a red tea from Yunnan. Ha! Doesn't it feel good once you are sure you don't like an expensive tea and don't have to buy it in the future! :D

The tea is made from a newly discovered mutant varietal whose young leaves and buds are of purplish color. Here is a photo from a producer of this tea, comparing tea leaves of this mutant varietal and normal tea leaves. Instead of having a lot of chlorophyll as most plant leaves do, these leaves have large amount of anthocyanin, a pigment often found in colorful flowers of plants as well as some fruits. Anthocyanin in oolong leaves contributes to the floral and fruity flavors of oolong.

Dry leaves: beautiful...

Liquor color: beautiful...

Taste: floral... too floral, all floral... Normally I even like floral taste, but this is too much for me, too much floral flavor and not enough other tea flavors. After a few infusions, I decided I couldn't bear with this tea. Later, a friend visited. After treating him with a few other teas, I steeped the left over leaves from my pot and ask him to taste it. He loves it!

Probably this tea can work well when blended with some other tea to give its floral flavor. But I won't have enough tea leaves to try.

I also got a puerh sample made of this kind of purple leaves. Will try it later!

A little more thought about anthocyanin - a few weeks ago, a tea friend and I discussed a little on the cultivars of Sun Moon Lake red tea. I've got two versions of this tea, one is made from small leaf cultivar, and one is made from red jade cultivar (#18 cultivar). The latter one has become a hotshot in recent years and is a lot more expensive than the small-leaf cultivar. But for some reason, I like small leaf cultivar much better. I don't dislike red jade. But the floral taste of red jade doesn't blow me away. In fact, I don't quite understand myself. I usually love floral taste, such as what's found in Tie Guan Yin and some Taiwan High Mountain Oolong. But for some reason, I dislike Purple Beauty and am not too crazy about red jade. So I wonder if my taste preferences are largely due to the amount and forms of anthocyanins found in these teas.

a few guesses about 2011-2012 prices of tea

2011-04-29T11:13:00.002-04:00

Recently I've had discussions with a few friends about prices of tea. There are concerns about market hype, investment speculation and increasing labor costs. Will these factors affect tea prices? Here are some of my thoughts.

My guesses are about the source prices of high quality tea in China. International market prices are only remotely, if at all, correlated to source prices. But eventually, I believe modern information technology will make prices more transparent at every level of the trade chain, as discussed in a previous blog post about the newly developed price index of tea.

The following discussion doesn't include those $10k per pound auction teas, as you and I are not likely to ever put our hands on them :-p

Will Long Jing price soar?

I don't think so. How much higher can it go? There is not much space for price to further rise, as the current price is already high. Long Jing is a tea that has been having the market hype - and therefore inflated price - in the past a few hundred years. The consumers can just take that much. In small, elite auctions, the price could increase like there is no tomorrow. But that doesn't reflect market price. If the market price were to further increase, who would take it? Even the expensive, vanity brands of Long Jing need to find a balance between their prices and market sizes.

(However, inflated price is not the worst thing. There are teas that can't be easily bought with money. Although I have managed to get a little bit of both, I have to admit it was by far easier to get authentic Long Jing than authentic Tai Ping Hou Kui made with traditional processing method.)

Will puerh price be bid up?

Not much, I guess. It has been investigated and reported by mainstream media in China that hot money has entered puerh market. It's true that tea of some famous puerh villages has been bid up even more crazily than in 2007. Prices of some big factory products have increased a lot too. But luckily Yunnan is a big province. Besides, after years of development of puerh industry, the few big factories and expensive companies are no longer the only sources of good puerh. People who are after specific village products or specific brands may have to pay higher prices. But I don't think the average market prices will change dramatically.

I am also optimistic about prices of aged sheng. I personally find some dry-aged sheng over 10 years very enjoyable. (I've seen people talking about dry-aged sheng must be older than a few decades to be drinkable, and maybe their taste preference is different from mine.) In future years, I expect to see more aged sheng coming out of Yunnan, where storage costs are much lower than Taiwan, Hong Kong or Guangzhou.

Besides, according to export reports, Malaysia has imported puerh at the scale of thousands of tons annually since 2005. Most of these products have been stored away in modernly equipped mega-warehouses with strictly monitored humidity. Maybe in several years, there will be abundant supply of Malaysia-aged puerh. Abundance will lead to reasonable price - I think so, optimistically.

Will price of Yan Cha be bid up?
It will, to some degree, I believe. It has been investigated and reported by mainstream media in China that hot money has entered Yan Cha market too. Wuyi is a relatively small region, and therefore tea prices are more likely to be impacted by the speculation.

I think it's very unfortunate that puerh, Da Hong Pao and some other teas have become targets of investment speculation. This can potentially harm the entire tea industry. But possibly, when things cool down, inferior producers will be weeded out (possibly with some good producers being sacrificed too), and some good producers will be left more development space.

Labor cost is another factor that contributes to price raise. In Fujian and a few other relatively developed provinces of China, increasing labor costs have been, and will be, affecting tea prices to certain degree. But then, I am trying to be optimistic again - increased production costs and leaf material costs will eventually let producers with high quality and reasonable price stand out. The market may become more ordered (or less disordered) after it calms down.

Unlike price increase caused by speculation, price raises caused by increased labor costs usually promote the income of farmers and first-hand producers, and therefore will contribute to promoting the quality of tea products.

If the prices increase too much and don't drop down soon, I guess we can always consider drinking more Shui Xian and less of other varieties with more inflated prices :-D

Overall, I wouldn't worry much about fluctuation of prices. Whether you are a fan of green tea, oolong, puerh or other tea genres, there are so many choices within each given tea category, and no need to stay attached to the most expensive ones. If the price of a tea is inflated too much to be bearable, stay away from it and drink other teas. Chances are, its price will eventually come down.

Bamboo Leaf Green, trademarks and lawsuits of teas

2011-04-25T11:19:00.001-04:00

The other day I had this cup of Bamboo Leaf Green (Zhu Ye Qing), freshly from Sichuan, China. It was a delightful cup of, 100% authentic, Bamboo Leaf Green. 100% authentic - if I say it too loud, I could be sued :-p I am kidding, but only 50% kidding.

Bamboo Leaf Green is involved in one of the biggest controversies about tea, and lawsuits have been raised because of it.

Bamboo Leaf Green is a famous tea from Sichuan. Many farmer families in Emei Mountain have been making this tea for years. In 1990s, Bamboo Leaf Green was registered as a trademark by Zhu Ye Qing Company. Therefore, it would be deemed illegal for anyone else to use this tea name. At that time, most Chinese farmers and local merchants were not familiar with commercial laws, and many small companies kept using Bamboo Leaf Green as their product name. Then in 1999, Zhu Ye Qing Company initiated lawsuits against tea manufacturers who, claimed by the company, violated their right of the registered trademark. Eventually, Zhu Ye Qing Company won all the lawsuits, and it was made clear by the court that nobody else should use Bamboo Leaf Green as their product name.

In spite of the result of the lawsuits, many people believe Bamboo Leaf Green, as a name of tea variety, should be a common cultural property and should not have been granted to a tea company as a trademark. Zhu Ye Qing Company did not contribute to developing the processing method of this tea, but obtained such a valuable trade mark simply by registering it. Up till today, although Zhu Ye Qing Company is the only large trader of this tea, many tea farmers still call their product Bamboo Leaf Green, and most tea drinkers buy their Bamboo Leaf Green from sources other than the company that owns the trademark. The tea I had the other day has a product name of "Bamboo Leaf Spring", although it's exactly Bamboo Leaf Green - the manufacture specializes in making Bamboo Leaf Green, but labeled their product with a different name, in order not to violate the law. I have a lot of sympathy toward them, considering they have to compete against a big company while not having an equal right of naming their products.

Bamboo Leaf Green is probably the largest trademark controversy in Chinese tea industry, but not the only one. If we look into the historical producers and sellers of puerh, Yan Cha and Liu An tea, we will see their names currently being registered by multiple companies, in different ways. Each trademark holder claims it inherits the legacy of the historical producer or seller, but basically what they had to do was simply registering a trademark in an innovative way, before anybody else did it. Like in many other industries, trademark laws are put into applications before there are enough regulations that examine the justification of each trademark registration.

This is only a beginning, as many Chinese tea producers have just stepped into the modern commercial society, and fine tea has just picked up its international market expansion. Who knows what will happen next? When I drink a cup of tea or eat an apple, I don't care what trademark it bears. The taste rules. But in the huge modern international market, trademarking is probably very necessary. Sometimes it's the only way for consumers to know where the products are from. I think it will be interesting to see how trademarks will be developed in tea industry and how the problems will be solved or unsolved.

Concept Tea (8) - purely dry storage '96 Xia Guan Butterfly Spring

2011-04-18T11:22:00.000-04:00

This is a rare tea, but not a novel tea. I would like to include it in Concept Tea because it serves as a typical example of dry-aged sheng, and there aren't many such examples.

A tasting note was logged on Steepster.

The tea was made for a Taiwanese merchant in 1996. Small amount was left in Yunnan, in dry storage.

Talking about dry or wet, average annual humidity (AAH) is a way of evaluation. New England region has an AAH of about 75% (rough estimation from this map), with AAH of Massachusetts slightly lower than 75%. AAH in the household is very hard to estimate, but I believe it's significantly lower than AAH in nature. I only have a very primitive hygrometer whose measurement is very hard to decipher. But I think it shows humidity of 50%-65% year around. AAHs of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Kunming and Hong Kong are 79%, 80%, 68% and 85% (data from a research on puerh storage conducted by Prof. Chen Wenpin of South China Agricultural University, published in The Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Yunnan Puerh, 2007). There is no official definition what is considered "dry storage". But generally speaking, people often refer to Kunming storage "dry storage". Guangzhou and Hong Kong are two important cities of puerh storage. I would usually call both of them Hong Kong storage (due to the significant status of Hong Kong in aging puerh), although nowadays a lot of "Hong Kong aged puerh" is actually aged somewhere in Guangdong, the Chinese province next to it. I will reserve the term "wet storage" to the type of storage using addtional artificial humidity. Besides, some people in Hong Kong or Guangdong may choose to use dehumidifier rigorously in monsoon seasons, and then the humidity is between dry storage and typical Hong Kong storage.

In China, there are some, but very few, discussions on storage in Northwest provinces. The AAH is 40% or below (think of Arizona with an average annual temperature of Montana). Some people are experimenting storing tea there after the the tea has spent some years in Guangzhou. Few people would consider such low humidity for long-term storage of puerh (unless the tea is expected to be "forever young").

So this tea falls in the range of dry storage. In China, this type of storage is often called "purely dry storage", with an emphasis on "pure" to distinguish it from "dryer" storage conducted in humid regions. But "purely dry" is still relative, and it's by far not "desert dry". If the tea spends more years in New England, I think it can still be called a purely dry-stored tea. I am interested in finding out what would happen to it in future years. But I am perfectly happy drinking it at its current stage.

The leaves of this tea are admirable. I wonder leaves of such quality can still be seen at all in modern day Xia Guan products.

As most other products for Taiwan market, the tuo is made very neat. But still, not surprisingly, I found a cotton thread... so far no stones or barley shells found...

The texture of the liquor is smooth and soupy. The front taste is somewhat like shu puerh, minus all post-fermentation taste of shu. It has some "aroma of age", but definitely "aroma of DRY age". What’s most wonderful is its aftertaste, which is like a weak resonance of a typical sheng, bright aromatic, even a little floral, and very sweet. This lingering aftertaste made me elongate the interval between sips and cups, and taste the tea very, very slowly. In between the front taste and aftertaste, I think I’ve tasted something milky and buttery. It’s usually not a feature I find in puerh, either sheng or shu. So it’s possibly just my illusion. But also possibly that’s what the tea mean to be, since I’ve tasted milky flavor from Hei Cha products, which went through post-fermentation as puerh does.

Lovely leaves... easily distinguishable from leaves of tea stored in higher humidity. As I've seen from some other dry-aged sheng, some well aged oolong and some heavily roasted Yan Cha, after all the years or roasting hours, eventually, all their spent leaves look surprisingly alive and display some vibrant youth!

I’ve seen a lot of discussions on dry storage, Hong Kong storage and wet storage. But currently the missing link is dry-stored old sheng – there aren’t many of them. Many Chinese tea drinkers I know don’t like the taste of Hong Kong storage. But there must be a lot of people, whom I may not personally know, loving it too, especially in Hong Kong and Guangdong. Currently, many people who don't like high-humid storage don’t have much dry-stored old sheng to choose either. Vast majority of dry-stored sheng in the market is only 5-8 years old. There are a lot of debates about dry storage and Hong Kong storage, because people have to hesitate and struggle between the two options. I believe in future 5-10 years, there will be more dry-stored older sheng (10-15 years, or older) available in the market or in hands of collectors. They will no longer be so rare, and very likely, will not be forbiddingly expensive. Once the direct comparison is widely available to most people, there is no need to debate. One can just compare and choose, without wondering how a tea will age in another number of years. It's just like, few people would argue which is better between green tea and white tea, because they are two different things, both easily accessible and ready to be selected by people of different preferences.

A puerh manufacturer in China (who stores his own tea in Kunming and in controlled dry storage in Guangdong) once said, people who love high humid storage will rarely change their taste, neither will people who love dry storage; so what's the point arguing which way is better? - His comment was in response to the current trend of Kunming-storage advocates rigorously denouncing Hong Kong storage. I don't think he said this just to show either side no offense or to be "politically correct". What he said is quite true.

I guess it's also possible that some people drink high humid storage for years and eventually find out dry storage is their "true love"; or the other way around - some people may drink dry storage for years and eventually wish they had tried high humid storage earlier. It's always important for each person to understand his own taste. But still, there is no need to argue which way is better.

discussion on Long Jing (4b) - comparing cultivars

2011-04-15T11:27:00.000-04:00

Discussion on Long Jing (4a) is here.

To demonstrate a comparison between the two Long Jing cultivars (Long Jing #43 and Long Jing Jiu Keng Group cultivar), I took samples of similar grade (first day harvest) of the two cultivars from the same Da Fo Long Jing producer, and brew them side by side with the same method.

The brewing method I use here is:

1. Use gaiwan with effective volume of around 70ml. Fill 1/3 of the gaiwan with boiling water. Put the rest of the boiling water in a container and in a thermos for later use.
2. Wait for one to two minutes, and throw 1.5g tea leaves in the gaiwan.
3. Gently swirl the gaiwan for about 20 seconds to allow the tea leaves to be moistured. Then pour in more hot water from the water container. Leave the lid of the gaiwan off.
4. Start drinking from the gaiwan after 1-2 minutes.
5. For the first infusion, when the gaiwan is 1/2 full, add in more hot water from the thermos. In later infusions, when the gaiwan is 1/3 full, add in more hot water from the thermos.

I used this method for comparison because this is the most convenient method that will almost never cause accident. In this method, the water will not be too cool to induce the flavor from tea leaves. With gaiwan releases heat very fast, and with tea thrown in between two times of pouring water, the tea will not be "cooked" by hot water either. Even if the 1-2 minutes waiting time is a little shorter or longer, the impacts of temperature fluctuation will be buffered by the rest of the operation. That's a way to control the brewing without a thermometer. In this brewing, I used a scale for comparison purpose only. Usually you won't need a scale to tell how much tea is enough to put in the gaiwan. In this brewing, later I found out that I would prefer less than 1.5g of tea, probably 1.2g. But for people favoring heavier tastes, 1.5g would be fine.

Following is the comparison of the two cultivars.

Dry tea leaves. #43 on the left; Jiu Keng Group on the right. Overall, #43 leaves have greener color, and Jiu Keng Group leaves look a bit pale and a little yellowish. But the color alone is not enough to tell one from the other. There are many other factors that can affect dry leaf color. For example, age of the tea and processing parameters can both affect dry leaf color.

Leaf shapes are also different between the two cultivars. Overall the #43 leaves look more slender. But leaf shape can be affected by harvesting stage of the tea, so it's not a determining factor to judge on tea cultivar either.

Although the two teas are both first day harvests from the same producer, the first day harvest of Jiu Keng Group cultivar looks younger with more buds than the #43 cultivar. I've seen this phenomenon with almost all Long Jing producers I know. I think there are many reasons behind it. One of the reasons is, the Group culitvar is already late than #43 cultivar, and the price drops from day to day in the harvest period. So there is a motive for farmers to harvest on Group cultivar as soon as they can.

Dry tea leaves of #43 cultivar.

Dry tea leaves of Jiu Keng Group cultivar.

At brewing step 2. #43 culitvar on the left.

At brewing step 3. #43 cultivar on the left.

At the third infusion. #43 on the left.
Usually the #43 leaves look a little "wrinkled" compared with the Group cultivar leavs. But after a few infusions, the leaves of the two cultivars look quite similar to each other. However, throughout the time, #43 leaves looks greener than Group cultivar leaves.

Spent leaves.

Spent leaves of #43.

Spent leaves of Group cultivar.

As I said in the last Long Jing discussion, it's not always possible to tell the culivar from tea product photos (for me, but it's much easier for experienced producers). The flavor differences between the two cultivars are easier to detect. Overall, #43 has a brighter, even floral aroma, while the Group cultivar has a deeper nutty flavor. Traditionally, Long Jing flavor has been described as "roasted chestnut flavor", which obviously fits the Group culitvar, but not exactly #43 cultivar. To me, the flavor of #43 is a little between "roasted chestnut" and green bean aroma. But overall, both cultivars have a light roasted flavor with sweet aftertaste that are typical of Long Jing.

Many seasoned Long Jing drinkers love the traditional cultivar and feel resentful that its production is shrinking in even the most traditional Long Jing regions. I have a lot of sympathy toward it and will keep supporting Xi Hu Long Jing products that use the tradtional cultivar. Meantime, in my personal experience, I've noticed that a lot of people would even prefer #43 for its sweeter, brighter taste. To me, it has a more spring-like taste than the traditional cultivar. In tea drinking, it's not always possible to say which is "the best", or which is better than which. But it's always interesting (sometimes even quite important) to know what cultivar it is and what flavor to expect from it.

Concept Tea (7) - Camellia sinensis Tea?

2011-04-11T11:08:00.000-04:00

What is tea? There are different definitions, some broader, some more peculiar.

This is a joke for people who think tea should only be from Camellia sinensis, a species from Theaceae Family (Tea Family) and Camellia genus. This cup of drink, whether you call it tea or not, is from Camellia sinensis. The sweet little flowers are tea flowers!

I've seen producers of different tea varieties selling tea flowers, by-products of their tea trees. This one is a little more creative. The tea is green tea made with oolong cultivar, processed into curled shape, and the flowers are from the tea trees.

I thought it was an interesting thing and was curious how it tastes. The taste is not typical for a tea. It's not something that would blow you away, but quite novel to try. The flower flavor is subtle but easily detectable. It's a mix of pollen flavor and very light honey flavor.

In southwestern China, especially Sichuan, there is a type of "tea" people drink in summer. It's not from a plant in Theaceae family. It looks somewhat like tea. It tastes quite different from most teas, but there is probably a tiny bit of similarity in flavor. These leaves contain a lot of tea polyphenols that are almost identical to those poly phenol molecules found in tea leaves.

And then there is the famous Ya Bao ("leaf bud") that was sold by a lot of Chinese puerh vendors a few years ago. Many of them are claimed to be leaf bud of wild tea trees. It turned out many, or most, of these "wild tea trees" are not Camellia sinensis, not the same trees people harvest tea leaves from.

discussion on Long Jing (4a) - comparing cultivars

2011-04-08T11:58:00.002-04:00

Discussion on Long Jing (3) is here.
Discussion on Long Jing (4b) is here.

In previous discussions, I explained why I think cultivar information is more important than production region information for Long Jing. Here is a comparison between the two most popular Long Jing cultivars, Long Jing #43 and Long Jing Jiu Keng Group cultivar. A third Long Jing cultivar, Long Leaf cultivar is also used by some tea farmers, but not as popular as the first two.

I will first go over the backgrounds of these two cultivars, and then in a later post, I will compare the two cultivars in terms of physical appearance and tastes. However, the purpose of comparison is not to demonstrate how to distinguish one from the other, since it's not always easy to do so by physical appearance. In fact, a comparison may instead demonstrate how similar they look. It's actually easier to detect their differences in taste than in appearance. That's why I believe it's important that producers, suppliers and retailers should always carry the information of cultivar for a Long Jing product.

Long Jing Jiu Keng Group cultivar is the traditional Long Jing cultivar. Long Jing #43 was cultivated through genetic selection on the Jiu Keng Group cultivar. As a result of genetic selection, Long Jing #43 has stronger tolerance to cold weather, it's easier to propagate than the traditional cultivar, and it's leaves and buds are somewhat prettier than those of the traditional cultivar. The cold resistance feature is why Long Jing #43 is the dominant cultivar in most new production regions in Zhejiang province, the home province of Long Jing. However, in recent years, even in Hangzhou, the hometown of Long Jing, many farmers grow Long Jing #43 too. In early spring, even before Qingming (around April 4th of every year), the price of Long Jing varies from day to day. The price difference within a week sometimes can be as much as 300%. Long Jing #43, due to its early harvest (1-2 weeks earlier than the traditional cultivar), is considered more profitable than the traditional cultivar. Meantime, in recent years, expansion of Long Jing #43 and shrinkage of the traditional cultivar growth has made a lot of people cautious, among them many loyal fans of the traditional cultivar. Therefore, some farmers in Hangzhou are committed to growing the traditional cultivar, and many farmers in new production regions have started growing the traditional cultivar to attract more Long Jing lovers.

Among Long Jing lovers, there have been a lot of debates on which cultivar is better, the traditional cultivar or #43 cultivar. But after all, they are genetically related and highly similar to each other. Besides, when it comes to taste, there are always personal preferences.

At the retailer level, #43 cultivar has been adored in the past several years, largely because the tea leaves of #43 cultivar are generally considered prettier than leaves of the traditional cultivar. Dry leaves of #43 cultivar are greener, and look more "well-pressed". But in recent years, many small retailers in China are more committed to the traditional cultivar to meet the demands of a lot of fans.

The early harvest feature of Long Jing #43 sometimes can backfire. For example, last year, when there was severe snow and ice storm in early to mid-March, harvest on Long Jing #43 was greatly impacted and production was reduced a lot. Meantime, the weather impacts on the traditional cultivar, Jiu Keng Group cultivar, were small to none, since the tea buds were not out yet during the snow and ice storms. In such a year with unusually cold March, #43 cultivar, which could bring more profit in other years, would cause great monetary loss for the farmers.

When I was a child, the aunt of mine who lived in Hangzhou was in charge of getting Long Jing for all of us. Every time she sent us many cans Long Jing, she would specify which cans were the highest quality for grandparents or as important gifts, which cans were for daily drink, and which cans were of decent quality. Usually the best tea was pre-Qingming (harvested before early April), and the rest was pre-Guyu (Guyu is around April 19th). Occasionally, in certain years, even the best tea was pre-Guyu, harvested after early April. And Aunt would tell us, "There is no pre-Qingming Long Jing this year, and pre-Guyu is as good as pre-Qingming of last year." Sometimes when there was no pre-Qingmign harvest, the tea could be even better than in other years, because of the cold weather and longer time allowed for tea leaves to accumulate nutrients.

Nowadays, with new cultivars (and probably more or less as a result of global warming), there is always pre-Qingming harvest. Even if cold weather delays tea harvest or damages tea buds, there is usually enough time for more tea buds to grow before early April. I think it's really nice that we can get new tea earlier with the new cultivar. But on the other hand, I think the traditional cultivar is very unique and its production should be maintained.

In my own tea shopping, I would usually buy products of Long Jing #43 from production regions out of Hangzhou, and products of the traditional cultivar from Hangzhou. It's pretty much my personal choice, since there are very good products of both cultvars in and out of Hangzhou. I choose Long Jing #43 from out of Hangzhou, in order to get the earliest harvest at a reasonable price. I'm not able or willing to pay for the earliest harvest of Xi Hu Long Jing from Hangzhou. The price is simply too high, even when the purchase is made directly from tea farmers, because too many people wan it. In some years, I help arrange such purchases for some crazy Long Jing enthusiasts, but I don't want to pay the price myself. Earliest harvest from other production regions (such as the Da Fo Long Jing from Xinchang County) is expensive, but at least the price is more "normal". Then, for the products of the traditional cultivar, I would choose the traditional tea producing villages in Hangzhou. When buying Long Jing of the traditional cultivar from Hangzhou, I would avoid the earliest harvest and wait till the few days before Qingming for the price to drop a little. Although the traditional cultivar is raised in other production regions too, these historical Long Jing villages have the best natural conditions and best processing skills passed on from generation to generation. Besides, as some farmers in Hangzhou have switched to the new cultivar and tea experts start to worry about dwindling of the traditional cultivar, I think currently it's very important to support those Hangzhou farmers who stick to the traditional cultivar.

In the long run, I am not worried very much about the traditional cultivar going to extinct. A cultivar can last only when supported by the consumers. I believe the traditional cultivar will always have a lot of fans. I think both #43 cultivar and the traditional cultivar have unique, nice tastes. But to me, the traditional cultivar has the familiar early spring taste from childhood. Besides, we can imagine, it is the same taste enjoyed by the emperors throughout Qing dynasty :-D

tea commercials in China

2011-04-03T20:31:00.003-04:00

Tea commercial is a new thing in China. Traditionally, tea was treated as a produce, like apples and peaches - there were famous producing regions and famous traders, but very few brand names. TV commercials of tea appeared only in recent years. Most tea commercials are for bottled tea and teabag products. But there have been a few nice ones for serious tea products. They caused some controversies whether TV commercial would cause inflated tea prices. On the one hand, I think money spent on TV commercial is eventually paid by the consumer, and that's a factor of price inflation. On the other hand, some commercials are really very nice! After all, even prices of most large tea companies are not as inflated as prices of many other commodities in our life.

San He Tang commercial at Guangzhou subway stations. Oh, beautiful! It cost about 1.5 million rmb ($220K). But many fans believe it's money well spent. On the first day when the commercial was put on, some fans went to the subway stations just to show support.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI-xUpryjR4

By the way, did you notice the pornography in San He Tang commercial? No kidding :-p

Dayi commercial at CCTV (a mainstream TV station). Very expensive... It's not as artistic as San He Tang's commercial, but is indeed perfect for TV. Dayi knows how to reach Chinese families. Most puerh consumers in China are middle age city workers, many of them are away from their parents. Dayi's commercial makes people cry...

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjIzNzE4NTcy.html

Lipton. Not comparable to the other two, but probably it is the most expensive one. The man in the commercial is one of the most expensive actor in Asia. The theme here is, Lipton symbolizes Royal Life. At the end of the commercial, when he holds the paper cup, his line is, "This is my royal moment!" Funny, huh?!

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjExMDU2NjM2.html

Tea Nazi

2011-04-01T14:47:00.000-04:00

Remember the soup Nazi? :D

A friend of mine, Pan, I call him "tea Nazi". But since he doesn't watch Seinfeld, there is no way I could explain to him about it.

I am not saying he kills with his tea :-p He is the owner of a small teashop, which used to be in Maliandao (the "tea city" of Beijing), and now is in transition, after he got a "real" job in a TV station of Hangzhou.

You know, most small sellers are very nice. Many of them are truly very kind, and some others at least fake smiles to their customers. Pan, I have to say, is not nice to everybody. He has a lot of rules, and says a lot of "no" to customers. For example, for all requests of price reduction or free samples, his answer is usually "no", without additional explanations. He does give free samples to buyers, in my opinion, very generously. The 2005 Bai Mu Dan I blogged is a sample from him. It's a top grade tea of 5 years of aging. The Meng Ding Snow Orchid I blogged is another sample from him, a tea I would otherwise have no way to obtain. And there are a few other very nice samples. But he only "assign" samples to people, and doesn't allow people to request samples. When Pan tells people about a tea or a brewing method, he sometimes talks in a way like a teacher to a 5th grader. I guess many people don't like his way of conversation, considering he is only 24 years old, and most customers are much older than he. But indeed he is very warmhearted, and wants to help you as much as he can in terms of these questions. Besides, with my experience of dealing with people, I can tell his way of talking is not because he has too much ego (though he does have some, I would say), but because he is truly crazy about the subject matters.

Once Pan told me such a story. A customer in his shop asked him, pointing to a White Peony, "why is your white tea in green color?" Pan said, with a straight face, "yeah, it's green because I dyed it green." The customer immediately escaped the store, scared and puzzled. Pan told me the story with a good laugh. But I was scared too, "How can you ever say something like this to a customer? Now she truly believes it and what if she tells other people you put green dye to your tea!" Pan said, "If she really wants to know, I would explain to her with more details about white tea. But she didn't seem to be that curious at all." This is even worse than telling a customer he didn't want to sell a tea to her, which, of course, Pan has done for a few times too. I didn't know what to say except telling him how buyer-repellent he could be!

To be fair, Pan is a nice guy and loved by a lot friends. Out of his tea store, he looks totally normal, and doesn't offend people as much as when he is in the tea store. There are a lot of people who were not freaked out by him and bought his tea again and again. He is outgoing and very frank to comment on his own teas about their strengths and shortcomings. And he does have a unique collection of tea. Although I do believe he could be milder and more sophisticated, his craziness doesn't bother me at all. I am surrounded by all kinds of crazy friends, and I like a lot of crazy people :D I think it's quite interesting to have one or two (as long as not too many!) soup nazi or tea nazi in real life, and it's even better when they are good guys who bring us good stuff.

2008 Jing Mai Ancient Tree cheap small cake sheng

2011-03-29T11:30:00.001-04:00

I think this is a lovely little cake. It has the charming Jing Mai aroma, almost no bitter taste and very light astringency which dissolves instantly.

It is a 100g small cake. Unlike most cakes of its size, this cake is made by manually compressing with a stone mill. The cake is even looser than most manually compressed large cakes and is very easy to dissemble. The loosely compressed cakes may not be suitable for decades of aging. But it's quite drinkable now anyway.

What's good about it being loose is that one doesn't have to crush a lot of leaves when prying on the cake. The cake is composed of consistent leaves from old trees. It's nice to get them as almost whole leaves in brewing.

This cake is very inexpensive. Some of my friends say, unknown small factory inexpensive products of arbor tree or ancient tree can rarely be good... don't buy them... I followed the advice. I didn't buy them. This one was given to me for free and I love free stuff! :-D The manufacturer said, "If you hire someone to do marketing for you, you've got to spend money. If you hire a designer to make your product or store look good, you've got to spend money. If you put on advertisement, you've got to spend money. If you hire people to write good things about your products, you've got to spend money. Then, I thought, instead of doing any of the above, I would rather give up some money by giving tea for free to people so more people will know my products." That's how I got this little cake. And I like the manufacturer's philosophy. Recently, Dayi has put on its smart looking commercial on the major TV station (and the most expensive one) of China, which is said to be a 50 million rmb ($7.5M) deal. We've got to have some puerh manufacturers that give us free tea instead of letting us pay the expensive TV advertising bill.

And this little cheap unknown cake, I ended up liking it a lot. Not that I would start buying unknown cheap little cakes. But I can surely consider buying more after tasting some sample.

The cake is claimed to be a product of ancient tree (but ancient tree in Yunnan can mean any tree of 100 years or older, not necessarily "ancient-ancient"), and from early spring (there are indeed quite a few buds and spring twigs). Still I am not sure of its age-ability (but at least, after its first 3 years, the cake stays well). And of course arbor trees or ancient trees can have different conditions and different levels of rarity. But the price for such a cake surprises me. Anyway, the quality of this little cake is more than reasonable for its price. And I know I've yet to experience more to fully understand why there is such huge price difference between teas, or, in other words, why such huge quality difference between teas of the same price range.

Discussion on Long Jing (3) - Five dragons

2011-03-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

Discussion on Long Jing (2) is here.

Photo is from 家在龙井村

She sent me quite a few pictures but this is my favorite. I love those hams hung off the eaves! Hangzhou is one of the food paradises in China. It's so much easier to get tea shipped across the Pacific. But the ham and other food, I can only dream of them.

Long Jing literally means Dragonwell - a well whose name is Dragon. People in Hangzhou (where Dragonwell is located) often say, the title of "Long Jing" include 5 dragons. Here they are:

1. Dragonwell is the name of the above mentioned well. In ancient time, the well didn't dry up even in drought years. Therefore people believed there must be dragon (which is in charge of water in Chinese mythology) living in it. That's how the well gained its name.

2. Dragonwell is the name of a Buddhism temple, which was built in the 10th Century and located near the famous well. But the current temple is 90% newly rebuilt.

3. Dragonwell is the name of a village. Long Jing Village is a center of the famous Shi Feng (Lion Peak) Long Jing. Another famous center of Shi Feng Long Jing is Weng Jia Shan Village, also located on the Lion Peak Mountain.

4. Dragonwell is the name of tea tree cultivars - there are a few commonly used Long Jing cultivars.

5. Dragonwell is the name of the tea product made with traditional Long Jing processing method.

I think the above 3, 4 and 5 are very important when we talk about authenticity of a Long Jing.

For #3, the location is not necessarily Long Jing Village, but should be in or next to Lion Peak Mountain.

#5 is usually not a big problem, because it's easy to tell from the appearance of the tea product. But about tea processing, in recent years, there is rising concern about many producers using machine processing to replace traditional manual processing.

#4 is very often overlooked by tea drinkers pursuing authentic Long Jing, but I think it's often a bigger concern than #3 and #5. I believe genetics is the number 1 important factor that determines the taste of a tea. Traditionally, non-Dragonwell cultivars have been used to make Dragonwell-style tea, but they cannot be called Dragonwell or Long Jing, even if they are grown in Long Jing village.

Discussion on organic cultivation (3) a piece of news from Menghai

2011-03-21T11:31:00.000-04:00

Discussion on organic cultivation (2) is here.

It's a piece of news from Agricultural Department of Menghai County. It caught my eyes because it's about Zhang San (章家三队, the 3rd Team of Zhang - "team" is a residential unit in rural China), which, believed by many professionals, may have the best small tree (30-50 years old) puerh in Bulang region.

The news is about the recent pest outbreak. It's supposed to be a normal news. I would like to discuss on it here, because probably I am not the only one who would find it a bit odd, if reading between lines.

Here is a link with the news from the government website:
http://xxgk.yn.gov.cn/canton_model1/newsview.aspx?id=1620701

If you are interested, you can google translate the text. But I will briefly summarize it here.

1st paragraph: There is a pest outbreak involving multiple pest species. Economic loss is in millions of RMB and still increases.

2nd paragraph: Experts are working on it and training farmers to fight against the outbreak.

3rd paragraph: According to analysis of the experts, causes of the outbreak are: (1) Long-term shortage of management, including lack of trimming; (2) lack of fertilizer; (3) climatic factors.

4th paragraph: Currently, people are working on: (1) training farmers on harvesting, fertilization, trimming and pest prevention; (2) trimming off and removing dead and damaged branches with pests; (3) apply fertilizers to strengthen surviving trees; (4) apply pesticides efficiently, including using biological pesticide, application skills and applying all fields simultaneously.

Well, most of the experts' opinions, I can't say they are wrong. Although we don't like to see pesticides, at a pest outbreak, in order to save the whole village's production, probably that's the only choice. And the experts did recommend some biological pesticide and application strategies. But overall, I feel I would expect more in-depth advice from the experts than above mentioned. Also, I got an impression that the experts' advice just focuses on the current pest outbreak, as if it were not connected to everything else. Or probably this is just what the reporter has taken from the experts - but even in that case, I am still shocked what a superficial view the reporter took out of a pest outbreak.

About the news report, what seems most odd to me is the third paragraph. From a consumer's view, I feel what the experts said about "shortage of management" (lack of trimming, letting the tree grow on their own...) is ideal situation for puerh. Thinking positively - what these experts said make me like my own stock of Zhang San tea even more :-D Thinking negatively - are the experts blaming farmers' way of cultivation for the pest outbreak? :-( Do people think pest outbreak will not happen when "right" management is used?

I think it's fine that the experts train the farmers about everything mentioned in the 4th paragraph in response to such an emergency situation. But as for long term cultivation and management, I doubt the experts are qualified to teach the farmers. Zhang San is a place with tradition of tea production throughout generations. Many tea professionals comment that in Zhang San, farmer's processing skills for Mao Cha (raw tea before compression) are respectable, which makes me think usually the farmers know how to grow tea well before they know how to process tea well. Zhang San is also one of the numerous villages in Yunnan that hadn't even seen pesticides or other modern agricultural technologies by early 1990s.

In China, organic movement is at its beginning stage. As much as I like the idea of organic movement, I always feel some concern about it. While agriculture of some crops in some areas is being converted from non-organic to organic, the opposite is also happening, as it has been happening world wide since the so called "green revolution" in agriculture. My concern is, if all the focus of organic movement is on conversion "from conventional to organic", and not enough prevention action is taken on the change from traditional "cleaner" agriculture to "modernized" agriculture, then we may see some kind of polarization in the future - small amount of agricultural products are made purely organic, and very expensive; meantime, most other agricultural products are made very non-organic, and consumed by most ordinary people. Such polarization is already more or less happening in developed countries. But when it happens in China, it can be much, much worse.

In recent years, food safety of agricultural products in China have caused a lot of concerns nationally and internationally. But it remains a challenge how to address these concerns. In many discussions among Chinese scholars, media workers and officials, strengthening inspection standards and educating farmers are stressed. I have no problem with the first point. As for educating farmers, generally speaking, I think it's necessary and a right thing to do. But then, I think we should also be very cautious on this. In some areas, maybe we have a lot more to learn from the farmers than to teach them. In some other areas where agricultural practice is very unfriendly to the ecosystem, while educating farmers is important, it's as important to examine what have been taught to the farmers in the past 20 years. Many of the unsustainable agricultural practices we blame today, were taught to the farmers as new technologies and blissful means toward "agricultural modernization". Some of the eco-friendly practices we've learned as new lessons today, were known to the farmers 100 years ago. Experts and educators should always be careful what they teach to the farmers.

Concept Tea (6) - 2008 CNNP sheng, puerh?

2011-03-17T16:42:00.000-04:00

Concept Tea (5) is here.

This is a tea with CNNP brand label. Many CNNP products, such as this one, are from unknown factories - CNNP is infamous for contracting out a lot of its production. Generally speaking, this is bad. But on the other hand, it does allow some opportunities for good small factories to contribute.

The label says "thousand year old tree tea". But of course I have no way to tell how old the trees are.

The tea leaves are of very high quality and the tuo is well made. I forgot to take a photo of tea in a cup.

I like this tea very much. It's not as aromatic as some other sheng, but it has very long lasting aroma and sweet aftertaste. Its flavor also feels heavy enough to further develop in future years (but this, is just my guess, because I don't really have a methodology to know how it will develop in future years).

This tea is nothing novel. I include it as a Concept Tea mainly for fun :D What causes the question mark after puerh in the title is, the tea leaves in this tuo are from Myanmar. According to the National Standards for Puerh (defined by some official documents in recent years and summarized here), "Puerh is unique geographically-patented products of Yunnan. It is made with Yunnan big-leaf tea tree cultivars grown in locations that are qualified for puerh production regions." Of course Myanmar is not one of above mentioned "puerh production regions". But does it make this tea non-puerh? I believe most people's answer will be "no" - we can't say it's non-puerh just because it's produced out of Yunnan. This tea looks 100% puerh to me. Ecosystems extend above country, province and county borders. This is one of the reasons why many people challenge the idea of geographic patent of tea.

Another relevant example is the village of Gua Feng Zhai, a rising star of Yi Wu region, sitting inches away from Laos border. Traditionally, people in Gua Feng Zhai set up their toilets on trees. There is a local joke saying that it's not uncommon if you climb up a tree to empty your bladder and find yourself on a tree branch in the air of the Laos side of the border. Gua Feng Zhai produces very high quality puerh. But I guess it's not because the tea is produced on the Chinese side of the border. It's not likely that the Laos side of the border doesn't grow any tea trees, and it's not likely that the Laos tea trees are in any way different from those on the Chinese side.

In these cases, I guess most people believe the tea should all count as puerh, no matter in which country the tea is made. But there are more debatable cases and more complicated questions on the geographic patents of other teas, such as Xi Hu Long Jing, An Xi Tie Guan Yin and numerous Taiwan oolong products raised in Fujian (or Vietnam, or Thailand) by Taiwanese tea farmers.

Something else interesting about this 2008 CNNP tea is, it was made in 2008, the so called "sequela year" of puerh. Not that every puerh from 2008 is bad. In fact there are some very good ones. But 2008 was the year when, after the puerh madness of 2006-2007, many tea trees were over-harvested and started to yield poorly. I don't know if that's why CNNP got these tea leaves from Myanmar. But even compared with tea leaves from better years of puerh, these leaves are very good and have been carefully processed. I guess, it's very possible that Myanmar, being out of the puerh madness center and with lower labor cost, can produce much higher quality of tea than tea produced in Yunnan with comparable cost.

Between Green and Black (3) - Southern Fujian Shui Xian

2011-03-14T11:33:00.002-04:00

Between Green and Black (2) - Fo Shou is here.

A few times I bumped into questions like "what's your favorite tea?" or "what's your favorite oolong?" There is no way I could answer the questions. I have no clue. Too many choices. My mind would blank out. But if asked "what's your favorite tea cultivar?", I would immediately have "Shui Xian" in my mind, although I am not 100% sure of the answer either. I love Shui Xian very much, because it has various styles, and so far I like every one of them that I've tried.

I've never had very green version of Shui Xian, and don't know if Shui Xian is even suitable for light oxidation, since not all cultivars perform well with very light oxidation. I like the intermediately oxidized Zhang Ping Shui Xian very much. Recently, I was very lucky to have got some charcoal roasted Zhang Ping Shui Xian, privately roasted by a very young Senior Tea Taster in Xiamen.

This mini cake is slightly heavier than the unroasted version, but looks more compact. It's about 9.5-10g. I put one whole cake into a 150ml teapot. But later I thought probably I should have broken it in halves. It's too much tea to take in one time, by myself.

The taste is somewhat similar to that of roasted Tie Guan Yin. But this Shui Xian cake is only medium grade. Top grade roasted Tie Guan Yin can have roasted aroma as well as prominent floral or peachy flavor. I have yet to experience more Shui Xian cake to see if Shui Xian can catch up with Tie Guan Yin in that aspect.

What's in common between the roasted and unroasted Shui Xian cakes is, they both cause prominent honey sweet aftertaste. The roasted version has some dark fruity flavor, but not as fruity or aromatic as the unroasted version. The roasted version has great throat feeling and smooth liquor texture.

First infusion:

Third infusion:

I forgot to take photos afterward.

All of these cakes came in small sealed bags. I guess, ideally I should take them out of the little bags and put them in a ceramic jar. But the little bags are convenient and safe. So probably I will only break some of them. If they can develop some peachy fruity aroma after several months, like what happens to some roasted Tie Guan Yin, it will be fantastic. But currently I can't predict how they will develop.

Another Southern Fujian Shui Xian I currently have is from last spring. It's in the regular pearl shape, roasted.

It's a very pleasant tea, but not yet a top grade tea. I guess, if higher grade leaves were used, and processed in exactly the same way, the tea could have been even better. Currently in tea market of China, Southern Fujian Shui Xian isn't commonly seen, and there aren't a broad range of products to select from.

A few years ago, I could easily get grocery level Southern Fujian Shui Xian sold by Hong Kong companies (some of those grocery products are not bad at all, but not made of high quality leaf materials). But within the market of mainland China, it was barely seen. In an article, a writer and tea book author once wrote about the abandoned Shui Xian plantations in Southern Fujian. In 1990s, when the state-owned tea companies started to withdraw from business, and with various opportunities of economic development, many tea farmers abandoned their Shui Xian plantations, or chopped down all the tea trees and changed the plantations into orchards - similar story to what happened to Southern Fujian Fo Shou, and somewhat similar story to what's happening to some Yunnan farmers who would switch their tea plantations to coffee fields, as covered by a recent article of Corax at Cha Dao.

What makes me feel very optimistic about Southern Fujian Shui Xian is, in just past few years, I could clearly see it was definitely coming back to the market, more and more. When there is a market for high quality tea, and when tea farmers can make good profits, we will all have better chances to get high quality tea for a reasonable price.

updated Tea Harvest Calendar

2011-03-11T01:25:00.001-05:00

Recently I did some updating on a Tea Harvest Calendar I made a few years ago. From time to time, people send me questions about harvest times of teas. In fact, I am not sure how to make a harvest calendar that's easy to read and inclusive of important tea information. Still, I am afraid I get stuck in between - the current harvest calendar is not easy to read, and it seems forever impossible to be inclusive. But this is the best I can do so far.

In addition, I am not exactly sure why people would like to see a harvest schedule (but indeed many people would like to). Most teas we can't get within the few weeks after harvest. And most teas are not in the best state within weeks after harvest - even for fresh-tasting green teas like Long Jing, old tea farmers would say, the tea starts to taste the best after 1-3 months of careful storage. But as a curious person myself, I can surely understand people's curiosity about tea harvest schedule. Besides, during those winter months, it's always nice to have a harvest schedule so that you would feel there are things to look forward to, especially if you are a green tea lover :D

Another potential challenge of a tea harvest schedule is, up to now, the accessible varieties of Chinese green teas in foreign market are still quite limited (many famous green teas have very small annual production and are of limited amount even in Chinese market) - what's the point including teas that most people cannot get access to? Some of those teas are still on my wish list, and some of them I don't get hold of every year. But I guess one reason to include them on the harvest schedule is, so that we have something to dream of :D The great diversity of today's US specialty tea market may not be something one could dream of 10 years ago. In the years to come, there will surely be more and more varieties and products of quality.

So here is the tea harvest schedule. The image can be clicked to enlarge. A web version is posted here:
http://www.lifeinteacup.com/harvest-calendar

I am sure there is a lot of negligence. I will keep working on it. Feedback and critiques will be highly appreciated.

___________________________________________

Introduction

Throughout the year, the relative positions of the sun and the earth can be expressed by 24 solar terms. Dates marking these 24 solar terms stay almost the same year by year on the international calendar. The 24 solar term marks directed a lot of agricultural activities in traditional society of China, including tea cultivation. On this Tea Harvest Calendar, the harvest dates of various teas are sorted in temporal order based on the solar terms they belong to.

More information about the 24 solar terms can be found on this webpage of Hong Kong government:

http://www.hko.gov.hk/gts/time/24solarterms.htm

(Name translations of the solar terms are slightly different between this Tea Harvest Calendar and above webpage.)

Tea harvest dates vary slightly from year to year. The system of solar terms helps us understand how tea harvest is connected to climatic patterns.

This Tea Harvest Calendar includes names of the 24 solar terms in English and Chinese, their dates on the international calendar, and harvest times of some well-known Chinese teas. Additional notes are made about climatic changes and traditional agricultural events of some solar terms.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Sources of information:

1. Tea farmers, who are, of course, the best sources of anything pertaining to tea.

2. 中国茶谱－ Wan Xiaochun et al. (2007) The Book of Chinese Tea. China Forestry Publishing House, Beijing.

3. 中国茶经－ Chen Zongmao et al. (1992) The Tea Classic of China. Shanghai Cultural Publishing House, Shanghai.

4. 中国茶叶大辞典－ Chen Zongmao et al. (2000) The Encyclopedia of Chinese Tea. China Light Industries Publishing House, Beijing.

5. 中国名茶图谱－ Shi Haigen et al. (2007) The Atlas of Chinese Famous Teas. Shanghai Cultural Publishing House, Shanghai.

6. 品茶图鉴－ Chen Zongmao, Yu Yongming, Liang Guobiao & Zhou Zhixiu (2009) An Atlas for Tea Tasting. Yellow Mountain Press, Hefei.

7. 中国乌龙茶－ Gong Zhi (2004) China Oolong Tea. Zhejiang Photography Press, Hangzhou.

8. 中国红茶－ Gong Zhi (2005) China Red Tea. Zhejiang Photography Press, Hangzhou.

9. 茶文化学－ Liu Qinjin et al. (2000) Studies on Tea Culture. China Agriculture Publishing House, Beijing.

Tibetan Hei Cha Ya Xi Grade (藏茶芽細）

2011-03-05T16:44:00.000-05:00

Sichuan is the major supplying province of Tibetan tea. Starting from Qing dynasty, Tibetan tea from Sichuan is categorized into several grades. Ya Xi is the second highest grade. Since its leaves are younger and tender than regular grades of Tibetan tea, this tea is often brewed in a teapot, instead of boiled in a pot on stove top, in consumption. Without an exception, Tibetan tea of Ya Xi grade is made of tea leaves from above 1000m (3000 ft.) elevation with tedious processing. In traditional Tibetan society, Ya Xi grade was exclusively for royal families, Lamas and affluent merchants.

The tea I've got here is packaged in an elegant, hand-woven bamboo encasing. Bamboo is the most common and inexpensive material in the mountains of Sichuan, and hand-crafted packages were common and inexpensive in the old days. But today, hand made packages with natural fibers are less and less seen. So in my eyes, this bamboo encasing is exceptionally adorable.

One has to dis-weave and tear open the bamboo encasing to take out the tea. Breaking such a nice package makes me feel seriously guilty!

Based on my past experience with Tibetan Hei Cha, I have the impression that many of them are quite strong in taste, stronger than what they look like. So I used less tea than I would normally use for other Hei Cha or shu puerh, and brewed the tea in a 150ml small teapot, with 10 seconds infusions. However, I can imagine no real Tibetan would brew Hei Cha in a 150ml teapot. It's just a convenient volume for me. But maybe brewing in a larger pot is more suitable for this tea.

The flavor of this tea is somewhat earthy - it's not the soil type of earthiness found in some shu puerh, but rather the grassy type of earthiness. And there is some mushroom taste that's similar to what's found in some shu puerh. One thing I like very much about Hei Cha is, from time to time, you may find some features in it similar to certain features of shu puerh. But in Hei Cha, you will probably never get the stinky taste of over-fermentation, which is not rare in shu puerh. I think I also got some marine taste (seaweed taste) to a degree that I can enjoy (I dislike marine taste in other types of teas but like it in Hei Cha), as well as some grassy taste (which I think is less enjoyable than the grassy taste of some green teas). The aftertaste is not prominent. I feel the strength of most Hei Cha is not at aftertaste or multiple infusions, but at unique tastes.

The tea tastes stronger than indicated by the liquor color, and last for as many infusions as puerh. This surprised me a bit. Most Hei Cha I've had so far doesn't last for many infusions. They tend to give all they have in the first a few to several infusions. I guess it's mainly because most Hei Cha products are made of older leaves, even with significant amount of stems. This tea is made of much younger and tender leaves (however, still much older-looking than leaves of most other tea types). Besides, the geographic elevation of production must contribute to the durability of the leaves in brewing.

Not surprisingly, this tea mixes with milk very well. The more I drink Hei Cha, the more I tend to believe in the story that Englishmen might have got their milk+sugar style of tea brewing from Tibet, by way of Nepal and India.

Many Tibetan people like to brew a tea, store it in a thermos overnight, and enjoy it the next day. It's probably largely for the convenience. But some people also believe the tea improves by sitting overnight. I don't know if that is true. Since I often have a few different types of tea throughout a day, I usually save left-over tea leaves in the pots and brew them the next day or even a few days later. I did this for a few times on this Tibetan Hei Cha Ya Xi, and noticed I did like the latter infusions better for there was less grassy and earthy taste. But this could be simply because when the tea was weakened in latter infusions, it reached a favorable concentration for my taste buds.

Overall, I like its unique taste, the comfort the tea brings, and its convenience. Along with my beloved Fu Zhuan, this tea and a few other Hei Cha are good for large volume brewing to be saved for casual drinking of a whole day. Mixed with milk (and maybe sugar too), they also make great after-dinner beverage, especially after a heavy meal.

Xia Guan Jia Ji Tuo (下关甲) and Xia Guan Yi Ji Tuo (下关乙）

2011-02-28T10:35:00.002-05:00

Xia Guan is probably the most renowned tuo manufacturer. They make so many types of tuos. Just in their basic routine Sheng tuo products, there are (graded based on leaf materials used, from highest grade to lowest grade):
Te Ji 特级 (Superior Grade)

Jia Ji 甲级 (Grade One or Grade A) - "Jia" is like letter "A" in the alphabet, meaning number 1.

Yi Ji 乙级 (Grade Two) - "Yi" is like letter "B", meaning number 2. But in recent years this product is also labeled as 一级 (still "Yi Ji" in pinyin)，which literally means Grade 1, but compared with Jia Ji, it's in fact Grade Two. The product name in English can be very confusing. Therefore, if you see a Xia Guan product labeled as Grade One, it's necessary to figure out if it's 甲 or 乙。

Bing Ji (Grade Three) - "Bing" is like letter "C", meaning number 3. But in recent years, this product is also labeled as 大众 (meaning Folk Grade). This product is mostly sold to Northwestern China and is not as commonly seen as products of other grades.

Besides above grades, there are tuos of Superior Grade and Grade One for Taiwan market, and there are tuos of other lines with fancier names.

Xia Guan Factory gives little information about comparison of these tuos in terms of their tastes and how they age. There are many different opinions among tea drinkers. But there is no dominant conclusion. Some believe the higher the grade, the better the tea ages. Some believe Grade Two ages better than Grade One. I don't have much idea about this, and haven't had much hands-on exploration. But here is one study I recently done, with a Jia Ji Tuo and a Yi Ji Tuo, both from 2004, stored under similar conditions.

Jia Ji

Yi Ji

Jia Ji

Yi Ji

Jia Ji (left) & Yi Ji (right) 5g in 90g gaiwan

All following photos have Jia Ji on the left and Yi Ji on the right.

First infusion - Some people say, Yi Ji ages faster than Jia Ji. In this brewing, Yi Ji does show darker liquor color. Taste of Yi Ji is less smoky, more woody and has a woody type of sweet. But Jia Ji has more prominent smoky aroma (by this time not very aggressive and quite pleasant to me) and overall stronger taste. I feel I like Jia Ji better.

Second infusion -

Third infusion -

Fifth infusion - in later infusions, the color difference between tea liquor of the two is not obvious on the photos, but there is indeed a color difference.

Spent leaves -

Personally I like Jia Ji better for its more prominent aroma and stronger taste. But it's just my personal preference. Yi Ji does taste more aged, sweeter and mellower. I don't have very big preference in "aroma of age", and to me tastes of other aspects are more important. But I can imagine many people may prefer the taste of Yi Ji, and if the tea ages for more years, probably Yi Ji taste a stage ahead of Jia Ji in terms of sweetness and "aroma of age". But before that happens and before it's really tasted, everything I guess now is only a hypothesis.

I don't really like tasting two teas side by side all by myself. It's too busy and yield too much tea at one time for me to finish. Besides, it's hard to keep tasting going while allowing enough time to experience the aftertaste of each tea. Besides, the aftertastes of different teas can mingle and "contaminate" each other, even if I rinse my mouth after each sip (which I couldn't manage to do throughout the entire time). But comparison of the two tuos satisfied my curiosity very well :-D

Next time, let's have a comparison of Jia Ji and Te Ji :D

first sip of 2011 spring tea

2011-02-25T13:29:00.000-05:00

There was 3 inches of snow fall last night. But spring has already come!

Before the winter started, everyone was saying this would be the coldest winter in recent thousand years. I don't know if that turned out true. But it has been a cold winter. This tea, Frosty Spring, was harvested in Yunnan in late January, almost three weeks late than last year.

Overall, I feel this tea is pretty similar to what it was last year. It tastes a little sweeter, maybe because of the colder winter, maybe it's just my thirst for 2011 new tea :D

The tea bowl is made by Petr Novák. It's my recent favorite for green tea.

I also chewed a few leaves. They don't have more flavor than the tea liquor, but are quite palatable. A tea friend (who made the tastiest steamed buns) once told me she likes mixing small amount of spent tea leaves into the vegetables and meat stuffing for steamed buns. I would like to try it someday!

2007 Lao Lin Cang Silver Tip Tuo

2011-02-21T14:32:00.000-05:00

The tea leaves are from ancient tree of Nan Mei village. I tried a Nan Mei village tea last year and liked it very much. While I was thinking of buying more, it was all bought up by somebody! What one fails to grab is always the best :-p From then on, I had the name of Nan Mei village in mind. Rumors are a lot of puerh products claimed to be Bing Dao tea are actually made with harvests from Nan Mei village. I have no way to find out how true it is. But Nan Mei village is indeed very close to Bing Dao, and therefore its taste is somewhat close to that of Bing Dao.

This tea is from a factory that was bought up by another company in 2007. Therefore, the trade mark as showed on the wrapper (the little hills) no longer exists. There have been more than a few tea factories in Lin Cang and their names are all something like Lin Cang Tea Factory. So the trade mark is important for recognizing products.

These products were made with leaves from old tree in Nan Mei village. It used to be common to use leaves from old trees to make puerh. Nowadays, not many factories make 100g tuo out of leaves of old tree. So these tuos mark the end of an era for this factory. Interestingly, a few people, including an award winning tea export, Yang Zhaofei, started a new company, Old Lin Cang, to continue the products and styles of their old factory. I think that's a neat idea and wish them good luck! One of the factory traditions that they have retained is using leaves from old tree only, for all their products.

I don't think I am very crazy about puerh. But I do love puerh from Lin Cang region very much. Sometimes, when I recommend Lin Cang tea to people, I would say, even I love it :-p Unlike a lot of teas from Meng Hai, many Lin Cang teas are very drinkable when young, with great mouth feel and floral aftertaste. I believe that's why Lin Cang was one of the most important tribute puerh regions, and Meng Hai was never one. One thing I am not sure yet about Lin Cang tea is, if it's so tasty when young, and if its strength is the aroma, will it age well? Taste is subjective to each individual. I already suspect that I would rather drink Bing Dao and Yi Wu before they get too old, but I shall wait to see more. I remember seeing a very positive review of a 1980s version of this tuo by a famous tuo collector. I still don't know if that means the taste absolutely improves after 20 years, but I guess at least the review indicates this tuo has pretty long shelf life.

There was something else that made me intuitively like Lao Lin Cang as a company. Shortly after I made my purchase of some tuos and cakes from them, they started a promotion with reduced prices. The price difference was not large before and after the promotion. But I got a few extras of these tuos from them, and these tuos are my recent favorite! Besides, there was a letter explaining the matter, hand-written with an ink pen, from the manager, who happens to be an outstanding calligrapher. The calligraphy on the letter is at artistic level. I don't think the manager hand-wrote this letter out of a spirit of perfect customer service. I guess he would just take any opportunity to use a pen and write something physically on a piece of paper, and typing was just not an option for him. These days I've almost entirely lost my capability of hand writing, and my ink pen has dried out for years. So I read this letter with a lot of admiration.

a personal review of 2010 tea

2011-02-17T20:10:00.000-05:00

(Photo by Robert Seto.)

Every year, my greatest tea pleasure comes from varieties that are completely new to me. In the past year, I was very lucky to have tasted some new varieties. Some of them I had wanted for years. Some of them were completely surprises and found their own ways to me.

New varieties that I tried in 2010 and absolutely adored include:

1. Orchid Fairy Twig - my favorite green tea of the year!

2. Zhang Ping Shui Xian - one of the most aromatic Fujian oolong I've had! I didn't get time to taste this tea until early this year. But it's a 2010 autumn tea. I also managed to obtain a privately charcoal-roasted version of this tea, which will arrive in a few weeks.

3. Tong Cheng Small Orchid - It's somewhat similar to a few other green teas from Anhui. But I was very excited to taste this tea, just for the sake of getting hold of it.

4. Zen Patriarch's Tea - One of the tastiest green teas I had in the past year. Besides the taste, it just feels great to have a tea rooted from the earliest Zen-tea culture. In addition, thinking of this tea, I will always remember sipping it from Grandpa's gaiwan in my parents' sitting room on summer afternoons. Every time upon the first infusion, my mom would say, "This tea smells so good!"

5. Yong Xi Huo Qing - It's so much better than I had expected that I felt guilty for having neglected it in all these years.

6. Huo Shan Huang Ya - a traditional yellow tea made into green tea in modern time.

There were teas that came out of accidents. I don't know if they will be produced again in the coming year, but I enjoyed the experience of having them. One such tea is the Red Dan Cong, as a result of artistic rescue of blizzard-attacked tea leaves. Another is Wild Oolong from our Shi Fu of Tie Guan Yin, in order to kill time while yields of a few other oolong varietals were diminished by the snowy weather.

There were also familiar varietals that were from unique sources or made in novel ways. One of them is special edition Tie Guan Yin (blended with high mountain Mao Xie). Semi-wild Huang Shan Mao Feng is another unique product of a familiar variety. It's another of my favorite green tea of the year. Every time drinking it, I felt like to kiss my teacup out of joy :D Although being quite insensitive about puerh, in 2010, I got this one that made me feel like falling in love. It's a bold idea blending old tree leaves. It can be a wonderful idea when the producer knows what he is doing.

In my tea adventure of 2010, I also had a lot of fun making my first group of Tea Grapefruits (this actually started in the last few days of 2009) and trying out the legendary Battle of Dragon and Tiger.

I am grateful that 2010 was a great year of tea. Now waiting for the earliest 2011 green tea to arrive in several days, I expect to have a lot of fun of tea drinking in 2011 too. Cheers!

CNNP An Hua Factory Hand-Constructed Fu Zhuan brick 手筑茯磚

2011-02-10T16:51:00.002-05:00

By weight, this tea is by far the one I consumed the most since the autumn started. In some sense, I feel as if I am not *drinking* it as a tea, but *eating* it as some soup.

It's a 1kg brick, and the first 1kg brick that I think I can finish in foreseeable future :-p

The most important feature of Fu Zhuan is "golden flowers" - yellow fungal growth inside the brick. In traditional Fu Zhuan market (which was mainly in Muslim and Tibetan regions of Northwestern China), amount / density of golden flowers was the sole criterion to evaluate the quality of Fu Zhuan. Therefore, in the package of almost every Fu Zhuan product, the manufacture would brag about how abundant the golden flowers are on their Fu Zhuan. The frequently used advertising is "Abundant golden flowers and rich fungal aroma" - which may sound funny if used on any other food product :-p

Usually the golden flowers are not seen from the surface of the brick.

Once pieces are broken off, "golden flowers" inside the brick are exposed.

Compared with typical Fu Zhuan in the past several decades, this Fu Zhuan uses leaves of significantly higher grade. This one I tealogged on steepster is a typical old style Fu Zhuan with much older leaves and a lot more stems. Usually older leaves and a lot of stems are necessary for a brick to nurture "golden flowers". There is technical challenge involved when higher grade leaves are used in a Fu Zhuan. But interestingly, golden flowers in this brick are really abundant. And to my surprise, I barely found any golden flowers in the older style Fu Zhuan I tealogged on steepster - which might be just an exception, since that product has a reputation of having lots of golden flowers.

Sometimes I gongfu-brew this tea. It has all the sweet, buttery aroma of Fu Zhuan, and tastes smoother than most other Fu Zhuan products that are made of older leaves. The tea doesn't have much aftertaste. It's bold and straight forward, not the lingering type. Probably it's these features of this tea that make me almost feel as if it's a soup instead of a tea! Sometimes, it feels like a need to drink it after a big lamb chop meal. This tea makes me feel as if I were a nomad or a hunter on the prairie :-p

More often than not, I feel it a little funny gongfuing such a tea, a drink of nomads. So sometimes I make it into milk tea by mixing half a glass of tea with half a glass of milk. When mixed with milk, the tea's taste is weakened. But it's a very pleasant way of drinking milk, and I think I enjoy milk tea in winter more than in summer.

In the past, I had Fu Zhuan only occasionally. The typical Fu Zhuan was made of crude older leaves and a lot of stems. In fact, I never dislike the cheap Fu Zhuan. It tastes quite sweet. The one I tealogged on steepster is a typical old style Fu Zhuan. It looks somewhat scary, but tastes ok. But with the older, crude style Fu Zhuan, I never drink Fu Zhuan as frequently as I am drinking the current one now. I had been wanting a kettle to boil Hei Cha (or sometimes even puerh) for some time. But it was not a great need until I started to make Fu Zhuan a winter night routine. Eventually I bought this simple kettle from Amazon. I throw Fu Zhuan pieces in cold water and boil them on the stove to make a big pot of tea for the night, and often there is extra for the next day.

Hu Nan Hei Cha ("Black Tea" in Chinese traditional terms) has become more and more trendy in recent years. Last year, to my surprise, Hu Nan Hei Cha was even listed as one of the top 10 Chinese Famous Tea in Shanghai World Expo. I immediately thought the top 10 list must be a list of money and power. And later I was confirmed by one of the organizers of the "top 10 list committee" that each representative (local government OR a company) was officially required to *donate* 1500K rmb (USD $230,000) to be listed as one of the "top 10". I never think it's fair to list Hu Nan Hei Cha in top 10 of Chinese tea (besides, Hu Nan Hei Cha is not one tea at all, but a general category). But if seeing Hei Cha fashion from a more positive view, I am glad that the promotion of Hei Cha is not just a market hype, but involves significant changes and improvements in products. This CNNP An Hua Factory product is quite different from typical Fu Zhuan in the old days.

Seeing the changes in newer Fu Zhuan and some other Hei Cha products, I hesitate to call them "new style" and the older style "traditional style". For example, this CNNP An Hua Fu Zhuan is hand-constructed, while the older-style ones are mostly machine-compressed. But wasn't hand-constructing the only way to make a tea brick 100 years ago? Then this newer product is closer to tradition. Besides, Hu Nan Hei Cha had its brilliant history of being a royal tribute tea. Was the royal tribute in Qing dynasty all made with crude, lower-grade leaves? The newer Hei Cha products made with higher-grade leaves, who can say they are not closer to the traditional tribute tea?

By taste, I think Fu Zhuan is one of the most friendly teas - sweet, easy to brew and almost no bitterness or astringency. It has some marine / sea weed taste that some people may not like. But the marine taste of Fu Zhuan is not as overwhelming as in some other teas. In fact, I usually dislike marine taste in tea, and Hei Cha (especially Fu Zhuan and a few other Hunan Hei Cha) is probably the only tea with marine taste that I adore. But I don't know if Fu Zhuan can ever get popular in modern society. About Fu Zhuan, one of the most interesting feature is, of course, its golden flowers. This feature, I believe, is also why people may reject Fu Zhuan. I once run a golden flower survey on TeaChat. Although there are not many responses, it demonstrates something - people would either take it or reject it, without much hesitation in either way. The overall result of this survey is quite similar to that of a same survey I once ran on a Chinese tea forum. As much as it's adored by many ethnic communities, Fu Zhuan has never been popular in "mainstream" society in China any time in history. Most of my Hunan friends never consume Fu Zhuan. You can't blame people for not wanting to put some yellow fungi into their mouths. But then, I am not here to say Fu Zhuan *cannot* become popular. I somewhat feel Fu Zhuan gets along very well with meat/dairy dominant diet, which was not typical in ancient China but more of a trend in modern China and most parts of the post-industrial world, for good or for bad.

This tea may never get much attention from the administrators. But sometimes I am curious about this - if FDA were to inspect a Fu Zhuan, would they ever approve it as a food / beverage product? Last time when I gave some Fu Zhuan sample to a friend, I said, half-jokingly, "It's not FDA-approved. It has yellow fungi, a lot. You are welcome to take it away and do whatever you wish with it. I didn't urge you to take it with you. I am not suggesting you should drink it. I am not suggesting anything..."

(I put a "puerh" label with this blog entry, mainly because Hei Cha is categorized with puerh in many books and by many vendors. However, I personally think Hei Cha and puerh, either sheng or shu, share very few common features and don't belong to the same category.)