Tea Notes: Observations of the Leaf
2.19.08 | Notes on Rishi Jingmai Green Puerh 2005
It's a miracle that I haven't drunk this puerh completely. I only have a little 2"x3" chunk left from this tea I bought at my favorite teashop, back when I was just a customer.
While tasting the tea today I realized that I have been drinking the same tea from the same gaiwan for four years! It's traveled with me across various apartments in Seattle, and now to San Francisco. It's like we're growing up together.
The tea keeps changing and improving, and each time I taste it it's different but wonderful in its own way. It's been fun to compare it to my previous journal entries about it. It's made up completely of white buds, so I suppose it could be considered a "white puerh"? Previously I noted a very strong muscatel flavor, but now it's been replaced with a deep chocolate aroma I wasn't expecting. The wet leaves also gave off earth and fire; both the musky smell of wet loam and a distinct smoke/charcoal note that seemed stronger than before.
The liquor, however, still maintained the sweet syrup texture of a white bud tea, but it was more full-bodied and flavorful. It brewed up golden-yellow. In place of the muscatel note was a general fruity flavor with soft cocoa undertones. An incredibly smooth taste, it only had a slight hint of smoke. It may not be the most complex puerh I've ever tasted, but what it does have is enchanting. I like my puerh milder, so the first two infusions were at about 180 degrees. I did quick third and fourth infusions with boiling water, which yielded a little more smoke but no bitterness.
Hopefully I'll have the patience to wait for this tea to age further. Otherwise, I may just have to buy anther cake of it!
11.1.07 | Notes on Golden Moon "Pu-erh"
I received this tea as a gift, and the description of this tea did not bode well:
"This mysterious varietal is aged in secret caves for several years where it takes on a sweet, earthy aroma...can take a bit of sugar."
Why must companies claim tea to be a mythical and mysterious elixir? I suppose it's a good marketing strategy, but I prefer to make tea as personal and un-mysterious as possible. Secret caves? Like, as an analogy for warehouses? Ok, caves maybe. But sugar? Ech.. At any rate, no reference to garden or factory or year. Oh, I just noticed the ingredients say "Aged Chinese tea from last century" so I'm assuming it's seven or eight years old.
The tea is a loose leaf cooked puerh with very large, well-twisted leaves. I took a sniff in the canister and came back with a strange mustard scent, like honey-dijon pretzels. Fortunately the infusion did not smell like mustard. The liquor that gave off a healthy dose of earth and maple syrup in the aroma. When I smelled the lid of the gaiwan, it concentrated to smell a bit like fresh-brewed coffee.
The tea is deep red and tastes like a forest after a rainstorm. It has a thick and strong body, though not quite as smooth as my smooth standard for cooked pu's, which is a Seven Son 2004 Mengku cake referred to at The Teacup as "that walnut heaven puerh" :) I liked the strong earthy flavor of the Golden Moon puerh, but it didn't have that overpowering dirt you get in some cooked puerhs.
I don't know why, but often cooked puerhs make the middle of my tongue tingle. I've informally surveyed various puerh drinkers about this; some women, but never men, say they've experienced this too. The Golden Moon puerh seemed to stimulate the sides and back of my tongue more than the center though, and it revealed many layers of complexity that I wasn't expecting.
This tea proved to be a very pleasant surprise. It also came with a good lesson: don't judge the tea by its canister!
p.s.: Many Chinese tea drinkers say that puerh has little caffeine, but in my experience (as a super caffeine-sensitive individual) it's been the green puerhs that have less effect on me. I tasted this black puerh in the early afternoon, and it kept me up for hours! This is good to know for those nights I need to stay awake to study.
10.1.07 | Notes on Taipei Tea Culture Expo mini cake 2006
I purchased this cake from Hou De Fine, with much anticipation. I wanted to try this cake every since I read about it in The Art of Tea magazine while hanging out behind the counter at the teashop I worked at. I wish I had the article to consult, but if I remember correctly the cake was made from tea from each of the seven main puerh tea-growing regions in Yunnan.
My first impressions of the cake were a tad disappointing. Images in the magazine of the larger cake showed long multi-colored leaves and silver buds intertwined into the whole. The smaller cake had the same lovely leaves, but they were more squished together, creating a less attractive effect. Breaking off a chunk, I had to pick out a fuzzy feather and a sizable tea twig. Still, the leaves were clearly of very high quality, and I geared my gaiwan up for a brew.
Rinsing the leaves produced the most wonderful fruity aroma, and a slight smoky afternote sauntered out as if it missed the initial cue from the hot water. It was the sweetest green puerh I can remember smelling. Then the tea itself: also very sweet, smooth, and balanced. I felt like I could taste the care that went into the recipe; very bright and full of "tea qi," as the Art of Tea magazine might say. While I do have an affinity for puerhs in the 0-10 year range, I think this one may still benefit from a bit of aging, since it did have an astringent edge.
1.4.07 | A perfect day for tea--wait, that's every day The
reason I’m typing on this blog today is because I don’t want to work on
my school applications. As another layer of procrastination, today I
compared two green pu-ehrs from the Black Dragon Tea Bar: An
Awazon cake made in 2004 and a Menghai Wild Old Tree cake from 2000. Both
of the dry cakes are lovely to look at. The Awazon has more silver
leaves, but both have flecks of silver, yellow, and olive leaves on a
background of dark green. The cakes are tightly compressed yet each
leave is discernible. After a quick rinse, the Awazon
smells like dried fruit, sweet and light. The Menghai, on the other
hand, smells like an old forest after a rain shower. As the leaves cool
it yields a lingering sweet note, but only as an after-thought beyond
the earthy-smoke scent. I steeped the teas in water
about 170 degrees for somewhere between 1-2 minutes. The Awazon
produced a straw-colored liquor while the Menghai showed its age with a
darker, bright gold brew. As for flavor, the Awazon’s
taste matched its aroma—sweet and fruity. It is definitely a pu-ehr,
but is also reminiscent of a green tea, like the Emerald Lily. The
Emerald Lily green tea sold at the Teacup came from the Yunnan
province, the same province where pu-ehr is produced. The
Menghai tastes much more like a characteristic green pu-ehr, with a
smoky high note but deeper, nectar-earthy tones. A much thicker, fuller
flavor, the Menghai is clearly the more mature of the two pu-ehrs; four
years can make a lifetime of difference. And yet, the
Awazon has a beauty of its own. It may be raw and rough around the
edges, but it possesses a lightness and purity of youth. It can only
get better with time! As I was cupping these teas, the
skylight above me lent a view of a cloudy grey sky from which hail was
falling, bouncing off the glass pane. Looking straight ahead, the glass
sliding door to my porch showed the hail falling against backdrop of a
clear blue sky, perhaps only a mile away. I marveled at the strange and
wondrous world I live in, and decided that it was the perfect day for
drinking green pu-ehr. Well, back to work on those school applications. At least as I work I’ll carry with me the memory of these two flavorful teas!
7.29.06 | Oriental Beauty indeed This month I splurged and bought my first ever Yixing teapot. It's the tiniest pot ever, holding perhaps three ounces, and I love it. Yixing (pronounced yee-shing) pots are traditional teapots made with a special clay from Yixing. The clay pots take on the flavor of the tea over time, and can greatly enhance the tea flavors. Because of that, the pots are supposed to be dedicated to only one type of tea. Using quality tea, you can steep the same leaves over and over in the small pot.
(me and my cute teapot)
I bought my round, dark brown pot primarily to drink Bai Hao, or Oriental Beauty. Bai Hao is about a 50-60% oxidized oolong with a sweet, toasty flavor. The Oriental Beauty I am using in it is from Floating Leaves Teahouse. This tea is one of the smoothest Bai Hao I've tasted; it is reminiscent of a milky carmel. The lovely brown leaves and silver buds unfurl to reveal whole leaves for the most part. While the tea is very sweet, there is a distinct vegetal flavor to it as well. I don't know if it would make sense to anyone but myself, but this tea seems very carbohydratey in flavor. It practically slides down your throat, and feels like a meal in and of itself.
The Bai Hao that truly converted me, however, was a fall 2005 sample from Black Dragon Tea Bar. Prior to tasting this tea, I wasn't a big fan of the very oxidized oolongs, favoring instead the greener and floral types like the honorable Wenshan Baozhong. This Bai Hao, however, knocked me head over teacup. The first thing I noticed about this tea was the striking colors of the leaves, which ranged from olive green to rust brown to green-black. Flashes of silver buds peeked out through the skillfully twisted leaves. In the water they turned red-brown and displayed their two leaves and bud sets.
The infusion itself was golden and honey sweet. From my notes about the first infusion: "It wasn't just the sweet, fruity flavor or the subtle toastiness which complemented it so well. It was the way it felt in my mouth. Not "sour" like past Bai hao experiences I've had, but gently tangy--nothing overpowering, but each layer of complexity balanced and pleasant." The second infusion proved to be my favorite balance of sweetness, toast, and tang.
Though my usualy preference is for greener teas, something about Bai Haos intrigues me. Its warm flavor is comforting, and I find myself wanting to drink it in the evenings right before bed (unfortunately, caffeine prevents me from imbibing too much--even with the 60-second steep trick). I've come a long way from my initial impressions of Bai Hao, and am so glad to have learned to appreciate this Oriental beauty.
4.8.06 | Shades of green Wednesday morning I was at the corporate watering hole filling up a cupful of hot (hot-ish, at least) water. As I turned to let the next caffeine addict fill up his coffee cup, he did a double-take at my cup. Taking a second look myself, I couldn’t blame him for the odd glance. My cup with the teabag label hanging out the side might have looked like one of the Ceylon teabags the office provides for staff, but in my cup a pyramid-shaped nylon tea pod of fukamushi sencha bobbed happily in the water. It produced a split-pea green liquid, and the plethora of tea particles created a foamy frost across the surface. I suppose it didn’t make a very appetizing site, especially if you’re expecting to see a cup of black tea!
If I had to choose only one tea to drink for the rest of my life, well, I would cry. Then I would try to bargain my way out of it. If that failed, I would deliberate a long time and eventually choose sencha—Japanese green tea. Japanese tea comes from the Chinese varietal of tea plant, but the flavors are completely different. Much of this has to do with the way the tea is processed. Picked leaves are withered and rolled, but Japanese teas tend to be broken into small pieces, whereas Chinese teas are often valued by the preservation of whole leaves. Also Japanese teas are steamed instead of pan fired in order to halt the oxidation before being rolled. The particles in Japanese teas can add more body to the tea, and it’s not a sign of poor quality to see tea sediment floating in the bottom of your cup.
Whatever combination of plant, climate, and production go into Japanese teas, they can be tasted in the flavor of the tea. Japanese green teas refresh me like no other teas. Something about the sweet, grassy flavor makes me feel like I’m just a step away from being outdoors. A lot of people dislike sencha for this reason (sencha “stunk,” according to a woman at my table during the level two tea certification class… I had to think happy thoughts to avoid feeling defensive).
Green teas may not be for everyone, but to me there is something special about green teas. Black teas are oxidized, which could be considered the first stages of decay (in a good way though). Green teas are closer to the plant, if that makes any sense. A good sencha is so fresh, you can practically smell the ocean and taste the fresh air of Japan. It also transports me to the days of studying at a sadobu--another story for another day. But for these reasons you may see me walking around with a dark green, yellow-green, or spring green beverage; now you know why. And whatever you do, please don’t tell me it stinks! :)
4.1.06 | Tea snob no, tea nerd yes I am now Level 2 certified by the Specialty Tea Institute. I still don't know what I'm certified to do, per se, but the classes were extremely enjoyable, and I think the basics of tea production and tasting are finally hammered into my head.
Both Levels 1 and 2 included an extensive tea tasting, in which the class of about 80 students had a grand time weighing tea leaves, filling their special steeping pots, tipping the brewed beverages into tea bowls, slurping the resulting liquors from soup spoons, and pretty much making a mess. We did our best to generate insightful comments like "hmmm, this sencha is very vegetal," or "mmm, this oolong has floral nuances." I'm sure that a professional tea taster would have been horrified, but we had a blast.
The lingo of the tea world fascinates me: Biscuity, malty, muscatel, full. Hay-colored, jade green, golden, amber. Other times descriptions can get downright poetic. Tea can be reminiscent of pine trees swaying in the summer breeze, or the lingering essence of nectar can caress one's palatte. I love the fact that teas can evoke such a sense of passion and poetry! Just when I thought I had a grasp for how great tea is, I find a new tea that makes me fall in love with the beverage all over again.
Sometimes though, I wonder if we get so swept up in the complex and, well, deep characteristics of tea, we start to think that it is the "right" way to drink tea. I.e. loose leaf, not teabagged. But is there a right way to drink tea? What if someone prefers to drink tea like the ancient Mongolians, and put bits of yak butter or onion in his tea? What about the Europeans who used to enhance their tea with a shot of brandy? Would they be expelled from Tea Snobs of America?
During the tea certification class, one of the instructors said something that captured my sentiments: The right way to drink tea is to drink it the way you like it. I would add, don't let quality tea overshadow quality time.
Rather a cup of tea served in friendship, than the finest tea served out of obligation.
Part of appreciating tea is to recognize the wonderful variety of ways to drink tea. Each culture developed its own way to drink tea, and people are still thinking of creative new flavors and blends. And there is room for all of them in the tea world, be it Lipton or Lapsang. If served by a friend, I'd gladly drink either one. Of course, if you served me a spring Darjeeling that had just been harvested the week prior, like the one I tasted at the Tea Expo, I might just float away in ecstasy, something that no Lipton could ever induce. Ah, the freshness of that exquisite tea stays with me even now. Full of body, and perfectly astringent and sweet at the same time! (I may not be a tea snob, but I'll always be a tea nerd :))