You Know Your Collection is Too Big When...

...you discover untasted cakes that you cannot remember buying.  According to my notes, this cost 60 RMB before overheads, from Taobao, in 2009.  The current price is quadruple that, in just four years.

P.s. Hi from Beijing.  I just landed and spent the afternoon drinking tea with PM of white2tea, who is 1x awesome chap, despite being American.

This is Basic Douji.  The blends are tasty, but I have no idea how they will age.  The 2008 version and 2012 version were both decent, but what really makes me happy about Douji from a few years ago is the low prices, combined with that reliability.  Obviously, they are not going to turn into frightfully amazing classics, but we can hope for a little something, given the strength of their backbone.

If you've ever tried to get into a Douji cake, you know the sheer agony of the images above and below.  Those big stickers cannot come off without major collateral damage!  Perhaps this is a misguided attempt at controlling for people tinkering with the contents of wrappers.

So, this is four years old.  The leaves are dark and mostly whole, as pictured below, and I am struck by the forthright aroma of the cake.  It really has a lot of activity.

The compression is just about right: one can withdraw leaves without too much trouble, but they are compressed enough to help the aging process.

Shown below, the resulting leaves are long and luxurious - surprisingly so for a very humble blend.

The soup is a heavy orange, and I assume (from the 2012 version) that this started off a similarly yellow colour.  Such a change in four years is quite exciting.  Exciting, I tell you!  (These are the sad thrills of the collector of pu'ercha, for which you must either forgive me, or be guilty of committing in yourself.)

This cake has been stored nowhere except for our house, and so it is a fascinating (and rather nerve-wracking) "control" for my experiments.  Happily, it has the dense sweetness of decent storage, with the endurance and long, penetrating kuwei [good bitterness] of a young cake.  It is extremely encouraging.

The leaves, shown above, are healthy and thick with little wastage, and no sign of weakness.

For a fundamentally basic cake, that cost next-to-nothing, this has come on incredibly well.  I allow myself a little hope for the remainder of our collection.