2008 Menghai 7542 (801)

Where's MY cup?

I try to at least sample the major Menghai recipes each year, partly for education, and partly because I find them right tasty.

They're blended for stability, according (as is my limited understanding) to a fairly specific recipe, and using a fairly exacting process. Menghai like to call this the "Dayi process" in their product literature, if that has any meaning.

The handy thing about Menghai making tea according to the same recipe and process each year is that it allows a limited amount of comparison to be made between each years' leaves. As far as controlling the infinitely large scope of the variables each year, testing out the major Menghai recipes is about as close as we're ever likely to get to a fair test.

It's also quite fun not just to compare the major recipes each year, but also to compare the same recipe from different years. Assuming that the content and production is reasonably similar every time, it allows us some interesting insights into how the nature of young tea changes as it ages, and how the various aroma, flavour, texture, and chaqi components evolve over time.

I don't claim to have arrived at any earth-shattering conclusions, but instead mention it as a mere suggestion. As is my constant advice, take everything with a pinch of salt, and find out what all this means to your own palate. Ultimately, I'm just another monkey tapping away on a typewriter, knocking out some notes of my own.

I love the price of 7542. Even the "Western price" is nice. Tan recently observed that the Malaysian price is an extraordinarily inexpensive $6 US. Though I bought this for about double that price, I'm happy with it, given my distorted Westernised view of tea prices.

7542 is the butch, ham-fisted, loud-mouthed elder brother of the Menghai family. (I write as a loud-mouthed elder brother myself.) It's aggressive, sharp, and uncompromising when young. It's also one of my favourites. I'm an easy man to please when it comes to pu'er - just give me something with character and I'm well away.

As with every Dayi, it's a small cake. Despite being the regulation 2500g / 7 = 357g, it is small. The compression is tight-ish, but it's not a tiebing [iron-pressed cake]. It is dense. There's some matter in these small little cakes.

Like every young Dayi cake, this one emits a potent aroma of youthful, spicy "green" on opening the wrapper. The product page at Yunnan Sourcing, where I bought these, indicates that this was made from 2006 and 2007 maocha. Perhaps you might be able to make out in the above photograph that the leaves are already a touch darker than one might otherwise expect.

The soup is dazzling yellow. Absolutely nothing has been done to this tea at all, which is quite encouraging, and part of the reason that this cake is traditionally considered "good for aging".

Potency is what the 7542 is all about, and this is obvious even from the wenxiangbei [aroma cup], in which sugary Menghai scents are delivered with all the punch for which this tea is famed. In the mouth, the vibrancy on the tongue and lips is the first sensation to grab the attention, rapidly followed by tons of patented Menghai mushroom-and-straw.

One session with this tea at 5 a.m. resulted in me being wide awake by 5.01 a.m. Marvellous stuff.

It rings in the mouth, bitterness piling in at the end to create a significant huigan. Unlike lighter Menghai blends, this has that depth and low flavour that a fanciful imagination could easily extrapolate into becoming the dense, bass flavour beloved of older 7542.

After a few cups, the chaqi is lightly dizzying; after a whole session, I could run a mile - even in English weather.

Though I don't want to wax lyrical about a blend that is a real stalwart each year, a bastion of dependability, I can't help but love this Old Faithful. Every year, it reinvents itself anew in my affections.

2008 was a good year for Menghai.

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Addendum
October, 2013

I have a pile of these ticking away quietly on the shelf, and just noticed that I have not tried them since buying in 2008...

It has darkened during five years, as you might be able to tell from the image below.  I have the advantage of clearly remembering this cake as it was in 2008, and so it is heartening to see some changes have occurred.

This is strong tea.  I was cautious, leaving some of the leaves in the chahe (char-her, pictured below).  This has sweetness, and has a long huigan that I did not expect, after remembering the robust potency of the original.

Some of my cakes taste humid, some taste "dry" - this is more towards the latter.  It has the dark, long sweetness of comforting Dayi, but is definitely not "dark Asian tea".  Perhaps that should be expected, given its environment.