Reading Haiku

reading haiku
I am surprised
by joyful tears

2004 Yichanghao "Yiwu Zhengpin"

Thanks to KC for buying this pair of cakes for me by proxy in HK.  One is gancang [dry storage], the other shicang [wet storage], making for an interesting comparison.  KC settled on the 2004 Zhengpin after comparative sessions with Yichanghao from other years.  Good Yichanghao can be very impressive, and I am very grateful to KC for giving me the opportunity to extend my experience with Changtai's famous brand.

The cakes, shown below, look sumptuous.  The compression is loose, which suffered somewhat from being packed in nothing more than an envelope (!), but they're mostly fine.  The leaves are dark, and perhaps already a touch red.  They have the aroma of a little age, in correspondence with their 5-year maturity.

Pictured below, in a white-balance nightmare, the gancang cake (lowermost of the two cakes below) can be seen to be darker and richer than the shicang cake (uppermost of the two cakes below), while the latter is almost grey.

What sets these cakes apart is, apparently, the presence of the little blue stamp on the neifei:

KC notes that these cakes are made from 2002 and 2003 maocha.  As may be seen below, many of the leaves are long and whole.  Both cakes are very desirable, it must be said.

Following the dry aroma, the soup is a solid orange in both cases.  Unsurprisingly, the shicang version is a darker, deeper orange.  Both have an aroma of sweet, woody, vanilla, but this is more advanced in the shicang version - and, of course, the shicang version has plenty of wet flintiness about it, which I rather like anyway.  With my eclectic pu'er tastes, I'm just as happy in the gancang areas of Beijing and Kunming, or the shicang-favouring Hong Kong.

Interestingly enough, the shicang cake is almost a text-book comparison with the gancang cake: the wet version is heavier and "more aged", and yet it runs out much faster.  The dry version is sweeter, a touch thinner, but marches on for many more infusions.

I enjoyed both of these cakes tremendously - thanks again to KC for finding them for me.  I have since found equivalents for an excellent price on Taobao, and look forward to stocking up the shelves a little.

Buy more Yichanghao, pu'er fans of the world!

2006 Menghai 7742 (601)

Regular readers may recall that I use a mnemonic device for remembering the various Menghai numbered blends.

There are the famous trio: the powerful first-son (7542), the sharp first-sister (7532), and the elegant second-sister (8582). We also have the surprisingly strong little baby (0622).

To this family tree, I'd like to add the first-cousin, the 7742. He is two years younger than the first-son 7542, but definitely masculine.

If this goes on too far, I'll be down to naming recipes after the family pets

Holy smoke, the photography in this article is atrocious. I took these photographs back in February, when Tan originally provided the sample (thanks again!). I must have had an off-day with the camera. At least the rest of the photos will look better by comparison with these monstrosities!

Ware the white-balance

Like the 7542 first-son, the 7742 is made from smallish leaves. More darkening has happened here than one would expect for a mere two-year maturity, and this suspicion of interesting processing is further supported by noting a low, smoky aroma. My Xiaguan-sense is tingling.

Via judicious cropping, I attempt to rectify some otherwise appalling image composition

This first-cousin must be a big smoker, because this a smoky tea. The soup comes out (you guessed it) orange. The aroma is that of a factory tea: constrained, clipped, and limited in both amplitude and duration.

In its favour, a low sweetness accompanies the smoky flavour. Most of the bitterness has been removed, leaving this tea a dark, smoky husk.

Holy heavens, that's some awful lighting

Burned savoury grain, light smoke, and plenty of huskiness. Beneath it all, traces of Menghai mushroom and straw.

I wonder to myself if 1977 was the year that they invented the "drink-it-now" pu'er, by oxidising and burning out the heart of the tea in order to make it more appealing.

If anyone has come across some aged examples of 7742, do please let me know your impressions - I'm fascinated to know how something this heavily processed ages, as it might help me to understand what may become of the 0622 and the modern Xiaguan special productions.

This first-cousin is tough, smoky, and burned-out. The poor chap.

I can't bear to end on such awful photography, so here's a nice picture of a wasp at dinner

Museum Garden

museum garden
the butterfly pauses
at a flower

- Bill Kenney

1990 Menghai 9062

I'm not a great fan of blends of shengpu/shupu. However, this is the first production of the 9062 recipe, and so I'd thought I'd give it a crack by buying a sample from Nadacha, where a brick currently sells for between £50 and £60.

The mixture is obvious

The dry leaves are heavily fragmented, and appear to be a mixture of copper-coloured shengpu with darkened shupu leaves. The aroma is very pleasant, reminding me of rich plums.

Similarly, in the wenxiangbei, it remains appealing: a host of creamy, smooth scents with good duration come from the decent brown-orange soup. As pictured below, the miniscus is already yellowed.

I first notice the powdery, damp texture and flavour of the shupu, but this combines well with the sharp, bitter twist of shengpu. Even after all this time, the two components are quite distinct, yet complementary.

The tea is absent much in the way of kougan [KOH-GAN, mouth-feeling, texture], which makes it seem a little bit dead. Can one be a little bit dead?

Later infusions turn out to be lo-fi woodiness, with some gentle sweetness. While not the most clock-stopping of pu'er, it turned out to be enjoyable. I was ready to buy one of these, but the sample has convinced me otherwise, however.

If this tea were a Heidu facial expression, it would be:

Meh