2005 Chang Tai Gold Bamboo Mountain

This tea is from Bret at Tea Goober blog (many thanks!).

In my impression, most of Chang Tai's tea of those a couple of years named after "mountains" are quite enjoyable. At that time, Chang Tai was the leader of "mountain tops" teas, and was probably the only private company that could share the same table with Dayi and Xiaguan. Gold Bamboo Mountain is one of the relative stable series of Chang Tai and was offered in most of the years since... around 2002?? (I remember the starting year of Gold Bamboo Mountain is a big puzzle and hot spot of Chang Tai gossips...) It's in medium price range and a style I like very much. Just last year or early this year, I learned that Gold Bamboo Mountain (金竹山) is actually the same as Bitter Bamboo Mountain (苦竹山). Bitter Bamboo Mountain is a series that I like very much from another tea producer. And I didn't know these two "bamboo mountains" were actually the same mountain! It looks like that Bitter Bamboo Mountain was the original name, and Chang Tai (or somebody else around the time) renamed it to Gold Bamboo Mountain. You have to admit, in a commercial market, the latter one sounds more upscale and romantic. And indeed Chang Tai is good at this kind of things ;-)

Gold Bamboo Mountain is in Jing Gu (景谷) region, one of the home bases of Chang Tai. Although Chang Tai established their fame mostly with Yi Wu tea, some of their Jing Gu teas are very good, such as these twins.

Lovely dry stored leaves!

Sometimes when I get a chunk of tea, I would be reluctant to further break it. Then I would ended up using too much tea and regretted... I've been working on "not to use too much tea."

This is really too much tea... But this tea is very nice. It tastes like some arbor tree tea that doesn't get too harsh even when highly concentrated. But still, I think using too much tea is not a good situation and very often too wasteful. I brewed many infusions out of this tea. But later on, when I could taste the "straw-like" flavor from the top layer tea leaves that's typically found in a puerh near the end of brewing, I knew the leaves in the middle layer hadn't completely release all their flavors yet. I would rather brew these leaves in two different sessions instead of confining so much tea in such a small space. That's the number 2 reason I object brewing too much tea in each session - the number 1 reason is too concentrated tea polyphenols and too much caffeine all at one time is not very healthy, at least not healthy for my little subtle stomach :-p

This is the type of tea broth that I like very much!

In recent years I tasted quite a few samples of Gold Bamboo Mountain around 2003-2005, most of which are Guangdong dry-stored. Bret's Texas stored is one of the tastiest (and I guess Bret got his tea from a US source, likely from a dry enough place), along with a few other dryer stored samples. Many Guangdong dry stored teas I've tried are clean enough, but the humidity takes tolls on the aroma of the tea. And I think the unique aroma is the signature strength of Gold Bamboo Mountain. In contrast, some other teas I've had seemed to benefit some level of humidity (all of these are still within dry storage scope), such as the 2004 Xin Yun Cheng, and the Guangdong version in the 2003 Yi Wu twins (I will finish the report on the twins soon).

2004 Chang Tai Shi Kun Mu Xin Yun Cheng Ban Zhang (2004鑫昀晟班章)

This tea isn't labeled "Ban Zhang" anywhere. But it seems everybody calls it Ban Zhang - probably as unofficially released by the producer.

The photo on the left shows the two Xin Yun Cheng from that year, Yi Wu on the left and Ban Zhang on the right - it was about the time when people enthusiastically talked about "Ban Zhang is king and Yi Wu is queen." So these two make a happy couple.

Both cakes are 300g only, although both wrappers say 400g. The producer explained that it was a production mistake. I don't see how it could be even possible... As cynical as I am, I suspect it was because the tea material wasn't enough while they still wanted to produce so many cakes. With what I know about Chang Tai, I think my cynical theory is totally possible :-p

I haven't tried the Yi Wu yet. My puerh icon Ulumochi of Taiwan seems to have great faith of Xin Yun Cheng Ban Zhang, while in his critiquing with Tea Art magazine (some issue of earlier this year) he didn't give very good comments on 2004 Xin Yun Cheng Yi Wu - not very harsh critique either, though. What's interesting is, in the publication, Tea Art magazine mentioned the name of Xin Yun Cheng Yi Wu, yet printed on the same page a photo of Xin Yun Cheng Ban Zhang. Afterwards, Ulumochi mentioned that he was sure the tea sample for that tasting session was Yi Wu, not Ban Zhang, and the photo on the magazine must be wrong - I do believe him, knowing that his comments on Xin Yun Cheng Ban Zhang is very very positive.

The next a few photos aren't meant to be a blame on this tea at all, although they may look a bit astonishing... I'm sure this is a very, very rare case, because I know Shi Kun Mu tea is overall very carefully made and very clean for puerh. But when I first opened this tea, I was scared to see a bunch of... seemingly... black hairs!

Turned out, it was just a piece of nylon string, a quite long one!

Definitely much better than any black hairs :-p Actually this didn't give me any negative impression about this tea. For puerh tea, producers and sellers should hold high standards for themselves about hygiene. On the other hand, we know that at least up till this day, "gift with purchase" in puerh is almost inevitable, unless puerh is converted from an agricultural product to an industrial product.

The tea tastes quite young and obviously hasn't reached a peak yet. However, it does taste quite interesting, and not harsh.

I've had this tea for several times, sometimes it was less interesting, sometimes more interesting, but overall a tea of rich flavor and mouth feel. A few months ago, I got a small sample of this tea from a tea friend in Zhanjiang (a coastal city in Guangdong Province). The tea was stored at his home and he tried all he could to keep it as dry as possible. So the tea doesn't have the worrisome smell that we sometimes could find from a Guangdong stored tea. However, the storage was still more humid than my tea, which was stored in Shandong (a northern province) before I got it. I think my Zhanjiang friend's sample tastes so much better than mine. His tea seems to have already reached a small peak for enjoyment. 

The more I tried this tea, the more I like it. Tasting my Zhanjiang friend's sample made me feel I could see more of this tea's future. But by the time, it was already nearly impossible to get more of this tea at reasonable prices. This kind of things always happen in puerh. When a tea is still at its earlier stage, most people don't know how good or how bad it could be in the future. Sometimes we could choose to follow the guru's words, but then we don't know if we have the same tasting preferences as the guru. By the time we are sure we really like a tea, it may no longer be affordable. But what could we do? That is life. Fortunately most people having this problem actually also have more than enough tea to drink, haha! So if you take turns to drink different teas, for each tea, one or two cakes are enough to last for years, and during the time, there will be discoveries of new loves.

many changing views

Liu Bao by Peng Qingzhong, Wu Shing Books Publication, Taiwan, 2013

For everyone of us, views on tea change throughout time. Many of our tea views are fundamental and probably won't change much. But when looking back, we could always discover some changes in our views, which are, in some way, inspiring! It's inspiring because through the changes we see our tracks of exploring new territories.

Here are just a couple of my changing views on tea, more specifically, on liu bao, hei cha, and remotely, puerh.

I was never really interested in liu bao until lately. In the past several years, I was lucky enough to have got a lot of free tea samples from various sources in China. Along with puerh and other Hei Cha samples, I always got a lot of liu bao samples. But I gave away most of them, because I just didn't find anything interesting in liu bao. Earlier last year, I participated in a discussion on hei cha at Walker Tea Review,  where I also mentioned that "liu bao is tasteless to me!"

So I didn't find anything interesting in liu bao. But ever since I knew Mr. Peng Qingzhong (aka. 三口居士), I could never say it again. The change of view happened really fast, as I was having a blast of rich information from Mr. Peng's books and articles, as well as rich flavors of his tea gifts! Although I have yet to thoroughly digest his two brilliant books on Liu Bao and the numerous great liu bao samples he sent to me, the changes have already taken places. Ever since I know Mr. Peng, every liu bao I have now is completely different from every liu bao I had before - they are from different sources, and often made with a totally different processing method, or from the good old sources (CNNP or "3 cranes") but hand picked by Mr. Peng as the few representatives of historical liu bao.

In his book, Mr. Peng analyzed why liu bao in the market today is different from liu bao in history. This part of the book intrigued me even more than the technical part of the book. A mentor of mine used to say, you've got to know what you don't know before you manage to learn it. That's exactly what I feel about Mr. Peng's books. They led me to know a lot of things that I didn't know existing.

Here is a 2007 liu bao from Shan Ping, a historically famous liu bao producing area. This is one of the very first liu bao samples I've got from Mr. Peng. To me, it's completely novel. To Mr. Peng, it's nothing novel, it's THE traditional way of making liu bao.

I had never admired liu bao leaves before like admiring these leaves. These are not as elegant-looking tea leaves as green tea or oolong. But they are so much prettier than liu bao leaves I saw before! 

The spent leaves are even prettier! 

The taste is rather hard to describe. People often say good liu bao has "betel nut aroma". So far I haven't had any betel nut in my life yet. So I don't really know what "betel nut aroma" is. But it's anything but tasteless!

Since it's a "hei cha", I couldn't help using the left over tea liquor to make some milk tea :-D

A couple of years ago, I wrote a few blog posts about "what is puerh" (now I sadly realize more than 3 years have passed, and oops I never finished writing part 3!). Most parts of the writing were just plain narration of various sources of information, and not much of my own subjective opinions. However, in section 2, I went over several major debates on puerh and talked a little about my own opinions about these debates. One of the debates mentioned involved other types of teas:

Debate 4. ... ... can puerh be categorized as Hei Cha?

At that time, I had thought that puerh should be a category by itself, separated from "Hei Cha". And I expressed this opinion at a relevant discussion at teadrunk.org too (probably it doesn't take a botanist to figure out "biloba" is me :-p).  Now here are some changed view too. With time being, I more and more believe that it's unnecessary to separate puerh from other types of hei cha. I even somehow feel it's necessary to bundle all of them in one category, because:

1. The more I understand and appreciate various types of hei cha, the more I believe that although puerh is unique, puerh is not unique in its uniqueness. Each of other types of hei cha is quite unique too, and there is no way we create numerous tea categories and assign one category to each tea.

2. In my puerh tasting, especially tasting of some rather "off mainstream" puerh samples, such as various types of "wild puerh" (which could be a varietal of puerh, a unique ecotype of puerh, or even a completely different subspecies or species of Camillia genus) consumed by Yunnan local people and some Myanmar puerh with novel tastes (although many Myanmar puerh products taste highly similar to Yunnan puerh), from time to time, there are some flavors that resemble tastes from other hei cha such as tian jian and unfermented liu bao. I can't figure out what's the connection in the flavors of all these teas, but somehow they seem to be all connected with each other. In these sense, puerh, liu bao, tian jian and other types of hei cha seem to belong to one category.

3. Similarly, in my tasting of other hei cha, from time to time, there are some favors that resembles tastes from puerh. The first thing that made me fall in love with some hei cha is that they tasted like shu puerh but without any hint of the stinky pile fermentation flavor. In some lightly fermented liu bao, I feel there are even flavors that resembles old sheng puerh. Puerh and other types of hei cha aren't the same, because there are no two teas that are exactly the same in the world. But at this point, I feel puerh and other types of hei cha are close enough to be put in one tea category.  

3. There is no perfect way for tea categorization, as tea categorization is rather subjective. The major factors used for tea categorization, such as tea variety, processing method and processing region, although largely relying on natural conditions, could also be subjectively assigned by people too. For example, if we think of liu bao and fu brick, they seem totally different in terms of tea varieties, processing method and processing region, most of the time! However, in Mr. Peng's "liu bao" collection, there were fu bricks made by Wuzhou Tea Factory (the major state-owned factory for liu bao) and a few other factories of Guangxi. Some of these fu bricks were made with local liu bao tea varieties, and some were made with fu brick tea varieties transported from Hunan. (This is partially why I'm often thrilled by Mr. Peng's books and stories! They never stop surprising you!) With all these mix-ups, I feel there could never be a perfect way to categorize these hei cha teas, and to tell which and which are closer to each other and more distinguishable from others. While there is no perfect way, I would rather go by the simpler way. Six tea categories are already a handful. Unless it's absolutely necessary, I would rather not create a seventh tea category, and would rather let puerh stay with other hei cha.

In this past autumn, I've found that liu bao has replaced a big part of my shu puerh drinking quota. I'm not bothered by the competition between them, and find it interesting that the "niches" of these two teas partially overlap. It's also interesting to think back that it was only in recent a couple of years that I started truly enjoying shu puerh. There was a long, long time that I didn't find them interesting at all. So indeed there are many changing views on my side! And I'm glad that most of the changing views involve enjoying more tea in more different ways!

for those who have wondered, here it is...

Not those who wondered about the tea. For the tea, tasting is the answer. For those who wondered about the human issues behind the tea - more accurately, problem of one single person -  here it is...

Tolerance and patience are what I always value, as probably indicated by the long list of timeline I put at the bottom of my comment. But tolerance and patience aren't the equivalent of foolishness, and shouldn't be taken to a level that nurtures fraudulence.

My apologies for bringing up such a negative message. But I spoke up because I do believe it serves a positive purpose.

are yixing teapots more expensive today?

Are yixing teapots more expensive today than 3 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago?

Short answer: of course!

Long answer: depending on the way of calculation and your benchmark... 

Last week, a few Chinese tea friends and I discussed how much things were back in 1980s in China. In fact, I couldn't recall many details. Back then I hardly spend any money except on food and books :-p But I do remember things were much cheaper then, and of course people made much less money too. According to some other people, back then, 30 rmb (about US$7) would be more than enough for a month's basic life expense in a large city like Beijing - this doesn't include rent though, but back then most people didn't have to pay a rent anyway.

The discussion was triggered by a "price list of Jiangsu Yixing Purple Clay Art Factory (aka. Factory #1) in 1989 - Grade A" provided by a collector friend. A quick glance told us that back then, prices for most of the top grade yixing teapots range from about 5 rmb (US$1.2) for smaller, simpler teapots to 40rmb (US$10) for larger teapots or teapots with more sculpturing work. There were 4 grades based on quality. Prices for Grade B would be 80% of the listed prices. Prices for Grade C would be 60% of the listed prices. Grade D... barely anybody mentioned them, but there were tons of them :-p

The market prices would be about 15%-30% more than the listed factory prices. The famous artists' prices are made based on each piece of work. According to the recollection of an early-days merchant, he got a Gu Jingzhou teapot for about 160 rmb (US$35) and some other artists' teapots for 30-80rmb each (US$7-17). And more complicated designs of famous artists' teapots would be up to 400-1000 rmb (US$ 90-220). But to buy famous artists' teapots from the factory, the buyer would be required to buy a few dozen commercial grade teapots along with them.

Roughly speaking, in late 1980s, 100rmb (US$22) would be a decent monthly salary. One could easily buy 10 Grade A yixing teapots from Factory #1 (top grade among the commercial level teapots) - although most people of sanity wouldn't spend all salary on teapots, of course :-p

Today, one would need to spend about 1000 rmb (US$160) on a good commercial grade old Factory #1 teapot of around 1990 (that's in Chinese market, not overseas market). But meantime, I don't know if 10k rmb could count as decent salary anymore in today's large cities in China. Between late 1980s and now, in Chinese large cities, people's salary increased for about 10-500 folds (roughly based on people I know, but not a societal statistic). Between late 1990s (real estate privatization didn't start yet in 1980s) and now, housing prices increased for roughly 10-100 folds. As my tea friends and I talked about these changes, none of us could afford either a Beijing apartment or a famous artist's 1980s teapot. But somehow with all the context, it looks like yixing didn't get more expensive at all, after the monetary discounting.

As for tea, it seems that most (probably puerh shouldn't be included) top grade teas have got cheaper, after the monetary discounting of the past 20 years... It does sound somewhat odd!

reunion of twins (3a) - Yi Wu, 10 years later

Other reunions of puerh twins or triplets can be found here.

This pair of twins are different in terms of two factors, one factor is storage location and the other factor is the shape of tea. Brother #1 is a brick and brother #2 is a cake. One of them was stored in Kunming between 2003 and 2013 and one of them was stored in Guangzhou throughout the time (both dry-stored, and the supplier of the teas literally repeated for more than a dozen times that the Guangzhou-stored one is dry-stored, dry-stored, dry-stored...) Their difference in taste, I believe, is mostly due to their storage environment. But it's unknown to me how much the shape of the teas has affected their aging.

Traditionally bricks were often made with lower grade leaf materials than cakes (and against today's trend, tuo used to use the highest grade of leaf materials). Up till today, many puerh brands still have both cakes and bricks in the same product series, and higher leaf materials are used for the cake. But these two teas are made of exactly the same leaf materials from the same batch. So they are indeed twins. And I think it's cute that they even have same clothing.

Both teas have decent leaf materials, but not as pretty leaves and buds as today's most expensive puerh products. Like many other good teas made in early 2000s and before, the tea doesn't look as meticulously made as many modern-day products. But it's easy to tell the leaves are nice and nutritious.

Brother #1 brick

This one has a "gift with purchase" - a cotton string

Brother #2

This one also has a "gift with purchase" - a wheat shell

One small piece off each:

Close up look of the piece from the cake:

Close up look of the piece from the brick:

Since this is not molecular biology, but just casual tea tasting, I didn't weigh the 2 pieces, and just took two pieces of seemingly suitable sizes and took two teapots (of different shapes and clay textures) of seemingly suitable sizes. And of course, no thermometer for water temperature and no timer for infusion time.  ;-)

It turned out indeed I mistakenly took too large a piece of the brick for the teapot I assigned to it. This kind of things happen rather frequently, I have to admit. One of my favorite tea seller often says, "I don't know anything about Cha Dao (茶道), I only know something about Dao Cha （倒茶）." While I guess you all know what Cha Dao means, I want to point out that Dao Cha means pouring tea. He is a professional and knows how to pour tea very well. Compared with him, I don't know either Cha Dao or Dao Cha, and I just lower the standards for myself :-p

And indeed all these discrepancies in a comparative tasting would contribute to the final tastes of the teas. Would it affect a fair comparison? Well, if you think of it in another way - if you have to control all the brewing factors to detect the tiny small difference between two teas, wouldn't you just conclude that these two teas are *almost* the same and not distinguishably different from each other?

For these twins here, in spite of the discrepancies in brewing, the differences between the two teas are still very obvious and it doesn't take a trained professional to tell. Besides, it's also very obvious that the differences are mostly due to the storage environments of the two teas.  

I know I'm rather wordy and I still have a lot to blah-blah about the comparative tasting of the two teas. So I would take a break here and come back to the tasting notes later. And here is a question for you (which is not a tricky question): from the dry tea photos alone, could you tell which one was Guangdong-stored and which was Kunming-stored?

ordinary teapots and ordinary potters

As you know, my tea motto is, tea drinking is a luxury of time, and not necessarily a luxury of money. We all know that yixing prices are higher and higher nowadays. Not necessarily a luxury of money? Well, it's all relative what "luxury" means. But overall, I believe yixing purchase just demonstrates that spending time is more important than spending money. I'm sure money could help one have a lot of fun. But having a lot of money isn't the only way to have a lot of fun.

This little teapot showed above is one of the least expensive yixing teapots I have. I bought it several years ago from Yunnan Sourcing for about $25. I bought it partially because it was a good deal (Yunnan Sourcing has a lot of good deals!) and partially because it was an interesting phenomenon that *many* people from teachat back then bought this same teapot from Yunnan Sourcing. It was pretty much a group effect. I remember seeing numerous tea-show photos from various people on teachat with this teapot. When I bought it, I took a look at the author's name - Zhou Huaqiang - and didn't think much of it. There are hundreds of thousand yixing potters in China. It's not always possible to tell who is better than whom.

I use this teapot very often. It's probably not one of my top 10 (or top 20) favorite teapots. But it's just so easy to use and so pleasant. As mentioned before, it's one of my favorite travel teapots. This is very similar to the phenomenon in shoes (I mean women's shoes, not necessarily men's shoes). I have about 60-80 pairs of shoes, but probably fewer than 15 pairs of them are in constant use, and my favorite and prettiest shoes are not all within these 15 pairs. (And there are several pairs that I have never worn yet since purchase.)

Later, a tea friend of mine in China mentioned to me that he got an inexpensive teapot that worked very well. And the name of the potter is Zhou Huaqiang. I was happy that we share teapots from the same rather unknown potter. What a coincidence (because there are hundreds of thousands of yixing potters)! And this helped me remember the name of Zhou Huaqiang better.

In the past a few years, I talked with more yixing professionals and learned from them several key points to aim at if one wants to make shui ping teapot "the Factory No. 1 style", including the shape of the tip of the spout, the connection lines at various locations, and angles of different sections. Then, I realized that this summarizes very well why some shui ping teapots look nice and are easy to use. At that point, when I looked back to Zhou Huaqiang's little shui ping teapot, I could see that it indeed hits all the key points. The teapot is made of regular grade of red clay mixed with sands - nothing fancy, but regular and good clay. It's a semi-manually made pot - hand made facilitated by shaping tools (this method would qualify as completely hand made in most other fields of pottery, but is classified as semi-manual in yixing, in contrast to the fully hand made method). Overall it's not an upscale teapot. It's just an ordinary teapot made by an ordinary young potter. But when I gained more understanding about the shui ping style, I've come to appreciate this teapot more, and know that it's a sincerely made piece.

I usually don't have much idea about how much each specific yixing potter is "worth". But recently in an occasional market observation, I noticed that these days Zhou Huaqiang mainly focuses on fully hand made teapots (a sign of "doing well" for a yixing potter) and all his teapots are sold for a lot higher prices than $25 (this is also because they are fully hand made, of course). This by no means indicate that the little shui ping I have and my peer tea drinkers have are worth a lot of money now :-p And that's not my concern anyway. But it's nice to know that Zhou Huaqiang is doing better and better in merely several years. And I was not surprised. The man who put sincere work into a regular piece of work that didn't make much money for him, is a sincere artist. And he deserves success. I'm sure it takes much more than hard work and good work ethics to succeed, and there are talented and hardworking artists who don't make it to the very top of the food chain. But I'm glad to see this guy is doing well, and I believe being sincere to the work is one of the basic and essential quality of an artist. 

Another teapot I used to like very much is this one. And probably you could tell I really enjoyed it from my 2-week report.

 
Since I bought it myself from China, and since back then USD to CNY was still 1:8.3 (yeah good old days!), this one cost even less than $25. And it's such a cute pot! I said I *used to* like it very much, because very unfortunately I broke the lid shortly after the 2-week report :-(

I managed to "glue" the shattered pieces with rice soup - not a water-proof glue, of course...

The teapot holds as one piece very well (rice soup is miraculous) as long as it doesn't touch water.

So I barely ever use this teapot anymore. But I still use it as a sharing pitcher from time to time. And occasionally, I put the lid of the aforementioned Zhou Huaqiang shui ping on top of this teapot and it fits quite well. Funny thing these two made a good match!

This teapot was made by Ji Weicheng - and of course he was only one of the hundreds of thousands of yixing potters and I didn't have much idea how much he was "worth". But overall I was impressed how well made it was for its price level. When I saw the name of Ji Weicheng earlier this year, he was listed as a well respected yixing artist and he mainly focuses on fully hand made teapots nowadays. Obviously he is doing well, after merely several years. His teapots aren't yet among the most expensive ones, but obviously he is at a whole new level now. And I was not surprised. I only regretted that I didn't wrote to him to beg for a new lid when his teapots were much cheaper :-p

Not all the unknown potters are as good. Around the same time I bought the Ji Weicheng teapot, I bought another inexpensive teapot made by another unknown young potter (whose name shall not be mentioned here...). At the beginning, it had great difficulty just pouring water out of it. After a quick examination, I found that 3 of the 7 strainer holes were clogged by clay, and another few of them were half-way clogged. It was the first time I had ever done something like this. But I found a big pin, straightened it, and used it to dredge the 7 strainer holes. I did it successfully and it took me 10 minutes. I felt both upset and amused. I understood that it was an inexpensive teapot, with regular clay and regular level of craftsmanship. But I did expect a teapot to pour smoothly. Besides, it doesn't take that much work to do some quick quality control or quick fix (it took me 10 minutes). The potter who made this teapot, as far as I know, is by far not as successful as the above-mentioned two. Probably he could still make a good living in the billion-people market of China. But I believe he is at a completely different level than the other two.

When reading my own 2-week report of the Ji Weicheng teapot, I saw that back then I said I was quite satisfied with these well made inexpensive teapots and wouldn't plan to buy any expensive teapots anytime soon. The funny thing is, I still feel this way now. In today's market, maybe $25 yixing teapots aren't that common, and even twice or triple the price would be seen as inexpensive. But within the relative price ranges, I've come to see many more well made inexpensive (well, relatively inexpensive) teapots made by unknown young potters. I didn't become much richer than several years ago (although I wish for the other way). Besides, I break things rather stupidly (as witnessed by the Ji Weicheng teapot...) and probably I should be banned from using expensive and fragile things :-p That being said, if I had a lot of money, I will surely buy more beautiful yixing teapots and spend more money on them (when I said this, someone in the house is scared...). But meantime, I always believe ordinary and sincerely made teapots deserve our appreciation too.

some thoughts on puerh storage at home (1)

 

Can you believe that I have more than 100 blog drafts stored in my system, yet I could never finish them!

This piece I wrote the first part more than a year ago, and only have the first part here. I will need some time to recall what I meant to write for the rest of it :-p

Just casual chat. No technicalities here :-)

Generally speaking, I don't plan to store a lot of puerh at home (oh well people define "a lot" differently). But with shopping going on and when seeing teas that I really love, storage natural happens. I have friends whose homes dedicate more area to puerh than to people :-p But I don't think I'm heading there.

Although I've been interested in comparing "twins" or "triplets" of puerh for the contrast of different storage effects, my purpose was mainly to satisfy my own curiosity rather than gaining knowledge about actually storing puerh myself - I'm too lazy to do any environment control and New England is great for lazy people to store tea :-D

So I will first talk about why I don't store a lot of puerh at home, and then some random thoughts on optimal home storage of puerh. 

I don't plan to store a lot of puerh at home, mainly for following reasons:

1. Many puerh professionals hold the opinion that home storage of puerh can never be as successful as puerh storage in professional warehouses. Generally I think this opinion is plausible. In home-storage, the hardest part might not be control of temperature or humidity (if one cares enough to strictly control them), but the density of tea storage (having as much tea as possible in each cubic meter of storage) and small proportion of edges (the smaller the volume, the larger the edge effects).

2. I believe aged puerh of decent quality and affordable prices would be more and more abundant in the years to come - I gave some explanation about why I think so in this post, but probably I'm more optimistic than many other people.

3. Even though buying old puerh is expensive, home storage is not cheap either, if considering money spent on buying a home (that must count, right?!) and tea ruined in storage (either due to owner's mistakes or due to factors out of human control). A puerh producer I know once commented that he believes currently nationwide (in China),  tea ruined in storage may amount to 60-80% of total puerh annual production. It's just a rough estimation, and probably not a pessimistic one. If you think 60%-80% sounds too much, just think of it in terms of decades. For puerh, one accident could end it completely.

Here are some of my thoughts on home storage of puerh.

1. People are more important than tea.
Oh well, I'm not sure if everybody agrees on it. But that's what I believe ;-) How is this related to puerh storage? I believe we should make our homes comfortable for people to live before considering how to make homes suitable for tea storage. And usually, when we take care of ourselves, a lot of tea storage problems are solved.

For example, for more than a dozen time, on both English language tea forums and Chinese tea forums, I've seen questions like this, "My house has a relative humidity of merely 30% during winter. What am I going to do about my tea storage?" Every time I see this question, the first thought in my mind is not about their tea, but - "How do these people live in a relative humidity of 30%?! Forget about the tea for a moment. Raise the humidity for yourself!" Maybe some people are accustom to this kind of humidity level, but not most people, I guess.

"People are more important than tea" is probably just a philosophy that one may or may not cherish. But from the practical point of view, when we maintain a healthy overall environment for our homes, it takes little to no effort to maintain a healthy small environment for the tea stock - this is related to my 2nd point.

2. Most environments that are livable for people are good for tea storage.
Again, I'm not sure if everybody agrees on it. This is just a way of thinking, but not a rule. And this doesn't include people who prefer extreme environments or people who prefer extreme environments for their tea :-p

I've heard this message, "an environment livable for people is good for tea storage", from various puerh and Hei Cha professionals when they talked about home storage. And I like it. Not only that it makes sense to me, it's actually the easiest way too - taking care of your tea by taking care of yourself. Besides, in my observation, people's preference in tea is more or less associated with the environment they are familiar with. For example, coming from northern China (relatively dry), I have little tolerance of damp smell or flavor. On the other hand, Cantonese (in southern China next to the ocean) invented humid storage of puerh.

And of course, on top of the theory of "an environment livable for people is good for tea storage", common sense should be used - such as, unlike people, tea should stay in a dark place.


To be continued...

3. Generating a comfortable environment for both people and tea.


4. Ziploc-ed or not... Rubbermaid-ed or not...

5. Site and size of storage

6. Box, envelope, jar, wrapper, storage of broken cakes

7. A few role models

Discussion on Long Jing (8) - Grading of Long Jing (now and then)

Other discussions on Long Jing can be found here.

The grading of Long Jing discussed here focuses on the national standards created by Chinese government and local standards by Long Jing farmers. Names of grades created by other organizations or individuals are not within the scope of this discussion.

The grading of Long Jing has changed a lot in the past a few decades.

In the old days (before 1995), Xi Hu Long Jing was classified into 13 grades, from Superior 1, Superior 2, Superior 3, Grade 1... to Grade 10. From Grade 1 to Grade 10, each grade was divided into 5 levels. So there were totally 13 grades and 53 levels. It was the official and universal way of grading when everything within the tea industry was state-owned. Each year, standard tea samples of all 53 levels were made available as benchmarks to grade Long Jing products collected from tea farmers and to guide the market of Long Jing. It was a nice and strict system. But 53 levels were just too many to be practical for a growing market of luxury tea in China (Long Jing has been the utmost of the luxury tea in China since Qing Dynasty, after being "advertised" by generations of emperors).

Back then, the highest grade Long Jing (higher than Grade 4, or any pre-Qingming tea) was not available in the market for ordinary people to buy. On the other hand, money was not the key to get the best tea. "Connections" were sometimes more important. There were many years when the whole family of us got pre-Qingming Long Jing along with Long Jing of medium grades from my aunt who worked in the Science and Technology Department of Hangzhou. Somehow their office got Long Jing "samples" every year - which basically meant a few kilos for everybody in the office, yet it was called "samples" :-p With our special connection through my aunt, we were lucky to enjoy nice and fresh tea each year. But the amount was small for each person and the tea was seen as very precious. 

In 1980s, once my father went to Hangzhou, and bought some grade 4 long jing - the highest grade then available in market for ordinary people to buy. Up till these days he still says how much better the grade 4 Long Jing was than many so-called superior-grade Long Jing products in market today. I don't believe it's all because of his wrecked memory and nostalgia. Back then, everything went by the universal standards, and a grade 4 was a solid grade 4. Nowadays, many things could be called superior grade with a big price tag - I think I sound like a senior citizen now :-p

In 1995, the grading of Long Jing was simplified to 7 grades, including Superior 1-3, and Grade 1-4. This simplification was partially to make the grading less complicated, and partially because many farmers stopped autumn harvest of Long Jing. Autumn tea of Long Jing was of lower grades than spring tea (and this is true for most Chinese green teas). With increasing living standards of Long Jing farmers and higher labor costs, the lowest grades of Long Jing tea were discontinued.

Today the aforementioned two systems of Long Jing grading are still in the textbooks of tea institutes and are still used in tea labs of research institutions. But most tea estates and tea companies are privately owned now. Producers and owners can grade their tea in any way they wish. In Long Jing, as well as in many other types of tea, I've seen a lot of grade 2 teas from certain producers that are much better than superior grades of some other producers. So I think nowadays the grading doesn't tell you much about the tea itself, but tells a lot about the standards of a producer/supplier/vendor.

Without a centralized, consistent grading system, nowadays a lot of farmers of long jing, bi luo chun and other green teas use harvest dates to grade their tea - although it's not a perfectly scientific standards, it's probably more objective. For approximate dates of tea harvest, here is a tea calendar. But please keep it in mind that the harvest dates vary from year to year, depending on weather conditions.

Evolution of Tea Drinking (I)

This is an excerpt from the book Chinese Teas, which was previously introduced in this blog.   

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Chinese Teas, by Wan Xiaochun, Gong Shuying, Gong Zhengli et al. 
China Forestry Publishing House, Beijing. 

Translated by Miles Liu, Gingko Seto

Photos courtesy of China Forestry Publishing House. 

Evolution of Tea Drinking

I.  Tea Boiling Practices 

Tea Boiling practices as a brewing style date back to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 220
A.D.) in China and have lasted to the present. Throughout the Han Dynasty, Three Kingdoms
Period, and the Six Dynasties (265 - 589 A.D.), boiling tea enjoyed an unprecedented popularity.
It is still a preferred brew in isolated regions of China (*).

i.  The Origin of Tea Boiling 

Tea drinking began with tea as food and remedy. Thus, boiling tea as a beverage rooted
in cooking tea as food and medicine. As food, freshor dried tea leaves were brewed in boiling
water to make soup, usually concocted with salt. For medical use, tea leaves—fresh or dried—
were boiled with ginger, cinnamon, pepper, dried tangerine peel, mint and/or other herbal
condiments to make herb syrup. The earliest writtenrecord of tea drinking, excavated in
southwestern China (today’s Sichuan Province), goesback as far as to the beginning of the first
century around the end of the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C – 24 A.D.). 

ii.  Features of Tea Boiling Technique 

(1)  Tea Leaves to Use
This brewing technique would use any type of tea leaves, fresh and processed. But
compressed tea needs to be broken into small pieces and ground into powder before brewed in
boiling water. 

(2)  Tea Boiling Utensils
Tea Boiling utensils and cook wares tended to be interchangeable before the Tang
Dynasty (618 – 907), since no specialized pots or kettles were designated to the preparation of
tea. Mixed kitchen wares used for boiling tea included boilingpot, cauldron, tripod-cauldron, bowl, and gourd scooper. Specialized tea utensils began to emerge during the Tang Dynasty. 

Among the most popular for Tea Boiling practices were narrow-opening cauldron, large-opening
water pot, flat-bottom boiler, kettle, brazier, teapot, ceramic jar, bowl, flat bowl, gourd scooper,
wooden ladle, etc.

(3)  Preparing and Drinking 

The Tea Boiling technique is not rigid or restrictive in its execution. Tea leaves can be
put in before or after water in the pot. The water can be cold or hot when put in a pot, but must
be brought to full boil. The water can be boiled once or for a long time. The boiled tea can be
mixed with salt, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, and/or butter curd, depending on the drinker’s taste.
Consuming the boiled tea plain, without any condiment, can be just as enjoyable. However, this
drinking style is known for adding various condiments to the boiled tea. 

iii.  Evolution of Tea Boiling Practices 

Tea boiling and drinking were rather simple before the mid-Tang Dynasty. Tea was
boiled and brewed in soup or made into tea porridgemixed with cereals. Boiling fresh tea leaves
was out of fashion from the mid-Tang onward thanks to the development and improvement of
tea processing techniques. While the Tea Boiling practices were wide-spread before the Tang
Dynasty, they remained popular mainly in some ethnic regions after the Tang Dynasty and were seen elsewhere in China only occasionally. Today, compressed tea such as “tea cakes” and “tea
bricks” continue their popularity among Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghur people, and other ethnic
groups in China. It is their continued practice of this tea drinking style that keeps the Tang
Dynasty’s Tea Boiling tradition alive and well. 

Tea utensils used in ancient China:
 

Picture on the left: Turtle-shaped silver tea box (front), silver tea-crushing roller and silver tea bowl (back).



Picture in the middle: Silver tea chopsticks used in imperial palaces (front) and silver sieve box (back).

Picture on the right: Gold-plated silver tea cage

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Some more blabbing from this blogger... 
One of the take home messages from this piece, I think, is that if you use milk for your tea, don't feel bad about it or let others make you feel bad about it (one of those days you would hear that sort of talk about tea and milk, you know...). It's one of the most traditional ways of tea drinking ;-)