2007 12 Xiansheng "Weizhongwei Yiwu"

I'm never too proud to admit a mistake, and my first session with this tea was what is technically known as a "balls-up".

Thanks so much to Nada for this cake, pictured left in the above photograph. As with its sister cake (the 2007 Shi'er Xiansheng "Weizhongwei Menghai"), this is exceedingly tight in its compression. Therein lies both cause and consequence of my errors with this tea.

As can be seen, the leaves are pleasant, tending towards the smaller sizes, and are rather fragmented. This is pu'er of the Old School, of which the 12 Gentlemen are proud to produce. Their manifesto is printed on the ticket below, which takes the prize for the most well-worded and correctly-engrammarised of any neipiao [inner ticket] that I have ever come across:

...though sometimes I miss the heady bygone days of "the greater mellowness the more time".

My first session used clumsy force to break out some chunks of leaves from the tight cake. The result tasted appalling.

My second session was an attempt to redeem this tea: I was exceedingly careful, slowly working just the tip of the pu'erdao between layers, from all angles, until a small section of leaves could be lifted from the bing.

That first session resulted in lots of sediment in the hulu [gourd filter], and a curiously dark orange soup, which was so cloudy that it looked almost milky. The tea was bitter in the extreme. Removing leaves from the pot did not improve matters, and the whole affair was thin in texture, and low on flavour.

The second session was like a completely different tea: a wonderfully cooling sensation came from the leaves, testifying to their laoshu [old tree] status. The flavour was a complex blend of charming Yiwu sweetness and rich honey, right from the first infusion. Some ku [bitterness] was present, but only in a well-balanced proportion in the finish, to provoke some serious mouth-watering.

The entire second session was a revelation, and I walked away i) relieved; ii) highly enamoured of this fine tea.

A catalogue of my original failures, and my consequent revisions, may be seen below (as always, clicking on the image will provide a more easily-read large version):

This was a real education. I learned a lot about brewing tea from this cake, or rather, in the effect of leaf-damage on the resultant tea session. It seems that there really can be no saving a session if inadequate care and patience are shown with the knife.

It reminds me of a similar lesson that I obviously did not learn well enough from some point last year: MarshalN kindly send a batch of 4-5 samples out to a number of folk, and I was fortunate enough to be included. At that stage in my brewing, I was typically using far too many leaves than was sensible. I used the majority of each sample for single sessions, and found the results to be unpalatable. These results were not published as there was simply no information to be gleaned from them, save from the fact that using too many leaves results in poor tea. I wasted some good teas, and didn't get any closer to deciding whether or not they were enjoyable. This nearly happened with this tea, and I count myself fortunate to have eventually learned a valuable lesson...

This is a tea that has achieved a certain "technical" excellence. Some teas are beautiful in the manner of a rough diamond: a natural ruggedness. Some teas are beautiful because they are rarefied and elegant. This tea is beautiful in a carefully-maintained and well-constructed fashion, like the careful lines of a pre-Raphaelite.

The Shi'er Xiansheng are very much in control of the variables, it would appear, and the result is a technical success that remains thoroughly enjoyable. The whole rings cleanly and true like a well-tuned bell. Great stuff.

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A third session: I sat down, expecting to be underwhelmed and disappointed, suspecting that my previous enthusiasm for this tea would be dampened. I was greatly surprised by the real enjoyment and obviously high quality of this offering. Complex, stuffed full of character, and long-lasting, this tea really took me by surprise, again. Tasty, tasty, tasty.

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Addendum
13 June, 2009

It's been over a year since I tasted these cakes - after a conversation with GV, who is considering buying some for storage, I thought I'd get reacquainted.

The iron-hard compression has eased quite noticeably (shown above). While still tight, it isn't quite as insanely tight as I remember, and it was easy to separate out plenty of leaves without causing breakage:

The leaves have darkened significantly during the past year, which you might be able to see if you compare the above photograph to the admittedly awful equivalents from last year.

Much has changed in the last year - I use a tetsubin-and-hotplate, and tend to leave my water out in a jug the night before a session.

Much has also remained the same - I use the same water as a year ago, the same pot, and presumably the same technique.

This tea has maintained a strong, creamy, grain-like character that I enjoy very much. I did not notice it before, but the maocha is a blend of autumn and spring leaves, and this is patently clear in the flavour: it has the bass, rich flavour of autumn combined with zesty, sweet Yiwu springtime.

The quality of the leaves is very good. I previously wrote that they had been mulched, Taiwanese/Big Factory-style, but this is not the case. As may be seen above, the majority of the leaves are large fragments, or whole. They are thick and healthy, which is encouraging.

I don't believe that I used enough leaf this time around. There was just a hint of plantation roughness in the end session (around the 15th), but the majority were smooth, indicating a decent blend. This absence of roughness should have allowed me to beef up the leaf quantity, but I played it very conservatively because of my initial experiences, written above, in which it came out very bitter.

One year later, and I find it to be smooth and flavoursome, and would benefit from using plenty of leaf. It hasn't so much aged, so as much as left its infancy. It's nice to see it getting darker, however.