Redness and the 2008 Douji "Bulangshanyun"

When will I ever learn?

It has a pretty wrapper, at least

If a cake is being sold without a sample, beware. It's like a film coming out without being shown to critics beforehand. Such films, their producers reason, would assumedly get such bad reviews that it would harm the box office takings. So, you only get pre-screenings of films that the producers are confident will do well - or, at least, will not be ubiquitously awful. It's the same with tea - if a cake doesn't have samples, it's either too cheap, too dreadful, or both.

On the plus side, the Douji rear labels are always handy for remembering the cake's details

If a sample was available of this cake ($30, Puerh Shop), I would have not finished the sample and never dreamed of buying a cake. Being the complete twonk that I am, I thought "Ooh, Douji. No sample? Never mind! What's the worse that can happen?"

I'm such a putz.

Uh-oh: it's a bit brownish-red for a 1-year cake

I'm a big fan of Douji. They can make superbly complex, enjoyable pu'er. They also have a number of "padding" cakes at the lower end of their price range. For whatever reason, Western-oriented vendors only seem to sell these lower-end Douji cakes each year. That said, the mid- and high-end Douji cakes sell for about the same amount of money in RMB that we see the lower-end cakes sold for in USD. I won't go down that line of reasoning any further!

The aroma is equally troubling, being reminscent of cooked cereal

The leaves of this cake are concerning: a large proportion of the blend is brown/red, with a smaller proportion of standard black/dark-green leaves. The aroma is also concerning: it's a bit "baked cereal".

Well darn it. Orange tea.

If your 1-2 year pu'er is orange, and you're not drinking a Xiaguan special production or an 0622, then you should be worried.

This tea is orange, and it's neither Xiaguan nor 0622, so I'm worried.

Quelle surprise, it tastes as if it's had its claws cut off and its teeth filed down. As always with these orange teas, it's consequently impossible to overbrew. There's nothing in it. The flavour is constrained, compact, and tightly limited. It excels in no direction, but delivers flat, sweet, slightly cereal-like characteristics throughout.

Humbug - cooked to death. Too much shaqing? Left too long before shaqing? Both?

I have a friend who used to refer to things that he didn't like as being "the suck".

This 2008 Douji "Bulangshanyun" is the proverbial suck.

And I'm the sucker.