2009 Xi-Zhi Hao Shu minibeeng

This is the second minibeeng from the Xi-Zhi Hao pu-erh tea gift set sold by Hou De. As Hou De stated, it's made from tiny pieces of mao-cha that left after sieving the spring 2009 Xi-Zhi Hao mao cha used for sheng cakes. These leftovers were then fermented by an ex-Meng Hai Factory master.



The beeng looks and smells good, the smell reminded me of 2005 Menghai Golden Needle White Lotus I have. Not a bad start. The tea brews very dark yet clear soup with no fishy or pondy taste or smell. I drink shu pu-erh only once in a while, because I know, how it's made, but this tea is fine by me - it's gentle and smooth.


What is hidden in the dark depths of this tea?

Now, the negative side of this tea. As you can see on these bottom picture, the tea leaves are extremely fragmented, it's almost a tea dust, so you cannot expect too many good infusions made of this beeng. Even when I broke a whole chunk, it fell apart in seconds, making a coffee-colored liquid and in fourth brew it sharply started to fade into nothingness.

This pu-erh requires either very short infusions with moderate amount of tea leaves, making it into sixth or seventh infusion gracefully, or slightly less leaves with longer infusion times - but then you can expect only two or three good brews. Even prolonging the infusions at the end does not help, the tiny bits of tea already totally gave up.



So my resume is: this xiao beeng, like it's sheng counterpart, is good for softcore tea-drinkers (is this an accurate opposite of hardcore tea-drinker?), being easy and smooth without unpleasant taste. For more experienced tea-drinker this pu-erh may be a bit light and short-living.

To be continued... with the two minibeengs as a whole gift set.

2009 Xi-Zhi Hao Jing Gu minibeeng

A good sheng beeng, at last!

Or, according to the small size - a good sheng sample, at last! (© by Hobbes)

This is one of the two xiao (mini) beengs from the Xi Zhi Hao gift set sold by Hou De. According to the description, this is from Jing Gu area, same, as the 2007 Pu Zheng beeng. Unlike MarshalNs experience with Jing Gu teas, the Pu Zheng is one of my favorites. Expensive, yet very solid pu-erh.



I really like this pygmy beeng. The mao cha it's made from is said to be from 2100m high ancient plantations near the Daoist temple "Da Shi Si". I believe this claim - the leaves are whole, big and strong. This is the fourth year tea trees are harvested in this area and they still possess some kick and character.

As I see it, Mr. Chen made this tea as a "gift tea", designed with less orthodox tea drinkers in mind, so we can expect a pleasant experience, not an overpowering one. No smokiness, slight bitterness, good acidity, thick soup with peach notes. On the other hand, the tea isn't powerless or bland and has nice and clean aftertaste.

I believe this is one of the better teas Xi Zhi Hao made after the first productions in 2005. And here is a proof of my appeal for this tiny and young sheng - I'm used not to drink the same tea more than once a week, and yet there's the same beeng after ten days.



To be continued... with the shu xiao beeng from the same set. And then, my thoughts on the whole gift set.

Light Roast Da Hong Pao

Most tea lovers in my area become addicted in the same way. They were introduced to tea other than tea bags in tea-houses or by friends. Most of us started with simpler and cheaper teas and only gradually learned how to enjoy expensive high quality specialties.



But in search of great tea the tea lover should never underestimate the cheap ones. Happens, not often, but nonetheless, that even among them we can find real treasures. One of them is this light roasted Da Hong Pao, sold by Yunnan Sourcing. When I first tasted it, I immediately realized that I discovered something special. Fortunately for me, I already got half pound of this Wu Yi Rock tea.

Of course, you can’t expect a masterpiece, "just" a really good everyday tea. Yet, in this category, it’s among the best that I drank over last two or three years.



Leaves are uniform, whole (the post office workers handled this parcel with less aggressively than they usually do) and they carry pleasant fruity-floral aroma. Actually, fruits and flowers can be found in all characteristics of this oolong, giving it balanced, fresh and energetic taste with pleasant mild bitterness.

Actually, mostly due the very light roast, the taste of the tea differs from the usual Da Hong Pao taste quite a lot, being much closer to the taste of Dan Cong teas. This Dan Congish taste is totally unexpected, especially given the price.



Durability of leaves is reasonable, giving 5-7 good brews in gaiwan or yixing teapot, and only then are the last bitter and fruity flavors lost and the tea transforms to a sweet and refreshing juice.

I apologize for slightly propagandistic nature of this article, but I am really excited about this tea and I wanted to share my feelings.

Gamma - "Bulang Shang Yun"

After quite a some time I'm finishing the five samples Hobbes sent out to us in the Yunnan Sourcing tasting event. This is Bulang tea made of semi-aged 2006 autumn maocha harvested in Man Nong village near Ban Zhang. The leaves should be harvested from wild arbor trees.



The beeng looks nice, with medium-light compressions – it separates easily into leaves. The leaves are definitely darkest of all five samples without any detectable smell. The pictures are somewhat darker because of my dark tea tray, but they show off the leaf and liquors real color quite well.



The liquor is orange, maybe a bit too orange for its age. This certainly isn’t a very complex tea; the taste is clean with some aftertaste. I was surprised, how short living is this pu-erh – it turned into sweet juice by sixth infusion. Also, I disliked the mushroomy taste in late infusion – I hate the smell of mushrooms.



I’m not fan of this tea. It’s short living, lacking the so needed kick and real character, just a shade of best Bulang teas. I judged it as last of the first three samples.

The samples so far, from best to not so best:
1. Alpha - Yi Wu
2. Beta - You Le
3. Gamma - Bulang

Other reviews - Tea Goober, MattCha's blog, My Private Tea Collection and The Half-Dipper.

Beta - "You Le Zhi Chun"

This is the second sample of tasting of pu-erh teas made by Yunnan Sourcing. First was one of the most expensive teas made from high altitude Yi Wu mao cha, this tea is made from spring 2009 mao cha harvested in Long Pa village of You Le Mountain. The beeng is on a looser side with nice whole leaves. The fresh scent is less powerful, than the smell of the Yi Wu sample.



I liked this tea less then the Alpha. The overall craftsmanship is good, the tea produces clear yellow soup with just a little smokiness, lasts quite long and has some kick. Yet, it’s more crude then the first sample, with much less sweetness, fruitiness or vegetal tones.

The leaves are mostly small, though some large can be found in the mix. The black dots tell us, that pesticides were probably not used this year, and that’s good. Some of them are much darker and shows signs of bad processing with too late kill-green step. Fortunately, these dark leaves are only a few.



This is an OK tea compared to the whole selection of pu-erh offered by Yunnan Sourcing, yet from these five samples this is definitely not the tea of my choice.

The samples so far, from best to not so best:
1. Alpha - Yi Wu
2. Beta - You Le

Other reviews can be found on Half-Dipper.

Alpha - "Yi Wu Gua Feng Zhai"

This is the first of the series of cakes produced by Scott at Yunnan Sourcing LLC. The tea leaves were picked at "Gua Feng Zhai" (The Stockaded Village of Howling Wind) - according to descriptions, one of the remotest and highest regions of Yi Wu. Leaves from the same area were used by Chen Guang He Tang in his 2006 and 2007 Yi Wu beengs.



This tea is very fresh. After opening the sample bag I immediately felt the aroma of tea leaves – fruity, slightly grassy. I’m certain this tea will change considerably within next year – it will loose this young feeling and will turn into something different. The tea leaves were quite nice and at least some of them had the wild feeling.

The tea was yellow, clear without any detectable smokiness nor astringency. A very good drink-me-now pu-erh with some kick. For me, it’s more on the drink-now side then the age-me side. And since I have way too much beengs opened for drinking right now, I will not buy a beeng of this. By my opinion, this tea is decent, but lacks the true strength and character to be it exceptional.



While this tea was good, it certainly wasn’t the best – at least its cha qi did not make me jump, like one of the other samples. While Hobbes liked this one the most, my favorite will be reviewed later.

2009 Wen Shan Fo Shou

I had the Fo Shou (Buddha hand) oolong harvested in summer 2009 in Wen Shan area of Taiwan. I got this tea from a local vendor, Longfeng, who delivered me lots of great teas before. This particular oolong is hand harvested and home roasted.



The leaves are small and even with light fruity smell. I prepared this tea “Czech tea-house style” – it is actually a gong-fu preparation in a yixing teapot, though gaiwan is more often used - mostly because good gaiwan is cheaper than a good yixing teapot. There is one specific though - the water used during preparation is kept hot in a glass pitcher with a tea candle lit under it. Because of this, the water isn’t boiling, so you have to use longer steeping times and more leaves.

This style of tea making has two major benefits – one do not have to care reheating the water and also there is no danger of burning the tea leaves.



This is a quite good oolong – lasted for 8 good infusions, with clear soup and very fresh and fruity aroma. The roasted taste was nearly undetectable. I liked this one a lot.

White Jade

I spent the last week in Prague, so I took the opportunity and met with Mr. Prachař, owner of Longfeng tea shop. Even though I had extremely little time - it was the last day of our course and my colleagues were very, very eager to go home, I left them and returned an hour and half later with big bag full of teas and tea samples.

Among the teas that I bought there were some Chinese red teas. I haven’t had them for quite a time, so I decided that it's time to drink red tea!



Bai Lin (白琳), literally White Jade is a less known traditional Chinese red tea. This one is the highest grade produced in city of Hu Lin in Fujian province.

The quality of tea leaves speaks for itself – the leaves are long and covered with dense pale hairs, so they resemble miniature dachshund puppies quietly sitting in the cha he. The smell of tea leaves is intense, sweet, reminds me of caramel.

Photo stolen from www.josephpets.com

The quality of tea leaves forces me to prepare it gong fu style. I use one of my oldest yixing teapots made of high quality zi sha. I decided to go for 4 grams of tea per 150 ml of water. I could use more leaves, but I never liked too strong black teas. I keep the infusion times low and use boiling water (fortunately this tea is really made of tea leaves and not miniature dachshund puppies, so boiling water is OK).



Liquor has a crystal clear orange-reddish color and makes a strong sweet scent. I know now why I do not drink so often Chinese red tea – it’s just too sweet for my palate, just like Hungarian wine from the Tokaj region. Never mind, let's drink. The taste of tea is sweet caramel mixed with fine fruity flavor; the aftertaste lingers in mouth and reminds me of high quality dark chocolate. I like this one.

Limited Karigane Gyokuro Super Premium

It’s quite a time I haven’t written anything. Probably a sort of laziness I developed in most recent times. But it caused not only stopped blogging, but also drove me to some easier ways to prepare tea, than gong fu.

But spring is finally here, as you can see from pictures. Yes, it's real sunlight. And as the nature wakes up this time of year, I finally gathered enough will to continue writing about tea.



Last month or two I tried Japanese green teas - I ordered a tokoname kyusu teapot and few teas from Hibiki-An and O-Cha and experimented with preparation. Actually, it’s really easy – you just boil the water, let it cool down, pour the water into teapot, let it infuse and drink.

All I need now is to perfect my skill, learn the right water temperature, amount of leaves, infusion times.



Today I had Karigane Gyokure Super Premium from Hibiki-An. Karigane is made from leftover stems and veins of gyukuro (shaded) leaves. Because the karigane is by-product, it’s cheaper than equally good gyokuro or sencha. Also, karigane is made only from high grade of Japanese green teas, so you get good value for your money.

As seen on dry leaves, the tea consist mostly of soft, short, light green stems and dark green leaves. The smell of these leaves if fresh and vegetal, yet very subtle.

Subtle is good description for this tea. The liquor is very light green in colour, clear, like spring water, the smell reminds me of citrus fruits. The taste is sweet, again the slightly acidic, refreshing taste predominates. Fortunately for me, the fishy, sea smell sometimes found in Japanese tea is absent in this tea.



This tea isn’t really complex and it’s quite easy to ruin it into potato sweetness, but I still like it. Interesting experiment, I have to compare it with other karigane teas I have sampled.