Simulated Anneiling

Hoho, a pun to do with numerical optimisation.  Is there anything funnier than numerical optimisation?  If so, I don't think I've encountered it.

Today's article is about, you guessed it, tea from NEIL.  I.e., tea from Teaclassico.  Thx, Neil.  I have written extensively about "TC" before, and how Neil, simulated or otherwise, has a unique talent for separating me from the contents of my wallet.

At the time of writing, we have just had a partial lunar eclipse.  Being able to see two celestial bodies moving past one another, actually moving while one watches, is quite something.  Naturally, it has a strange effect on the psyche, and there have been outbreaks of lycanthropy, but otherwise we're all fine.

After shaving my palms, I settle down with some "1990s Fu Lu Gong".  I couldn't find this for sale on the Teaclassico web-site, but I am not a clever man and may have missed it.

Most striking is the loose compression, which is clearly "hand compressed".  I think it really means that someone put a large stone on the leaves and then, usually, stood on it, so perhaps it should be "foot compressed".  Such things don't impress me, ever since I was in a restaurant that claimed their salad included "hand-torn lettuce".  My brains have been in a liquefied state ever since, so I am no longer about to judge the hand/foot compression of a tea and its virtues thereupon.

As ever with older teas, I pack my little teapot to the brim, based on the principle that it is almost impossible to overbrew these old fellows.  The result is unexpected: there is absolutely no aroma, and the soup (while richly-coloured, as pictured above) really has very little flavour.

I know, I know: people who hope for flavour from their tea are such newbs.  We should be content with the feeling of the all-consuming CHAQI that surrounds us and penetrates us and which binds the galaxy together.  Hoping for some character to enjoy in the mouth immediately marks us out as a dilettante.

Nonetheless, this is thin and watery tea.  It ramps up (just a little) in the second infusion, to give the scent of heavy plums (the fruits, not the genitals).  Happily, it begins to smell just like an English country garden in summertime.  It is almost the precise simulacrum of my grandmother's old farmhouse garden, in fact, and this immediately makes me happy.  That said, there is not much going on in the flavour, still, nor anything in the throat.  It is cooling on the breath, and active on the lips and tongue, and is, perhaps, therefore more of a "sensations" tea. 

---

The night (morning) is young, and so I ditch the Fu Lu Gong and head into 1999 YIWU OLD TREE territory.

I miss those days, when every cake was YIWUZHENGSHANLAOSHUCHAWANG, but they are gone forever.  We can revisit them, though, with tea sessions such as this.

Once again, due to my innate dimness, I fail to find this tea on the Teaclassico web-site.  Once again I hope you will, Gentle Reader, take pity on us miserable offenders and point out my inevitable mistake.

The photograph above makes me thirsty, again, and I have just consumed nine pints of tea.  Such is the power of good leaves.  We can see large fragments - these have a sweet scent that already trumps that of the Fu Lu Gong.

The smooth, woody stability of this tea reminds me of brewing up an old table.  The colour, pictured above, is as satisfying in its heaviness as is the (for want of a better word) CHAQI.  While the mystical forces of the cosmos surge through my body, leaving my shakras and dantian trembling, I conclude that this sweet, sharp little tea is most welcome on a cold morning in March.  It is simple, it is a touch thin, but its woody sweetness just keeps on giving.

---

Young Boy's Sweets

young boy's sweets

rolling towards the back seats

ready for take-off

E-Z Listening

(Note: the name of this article is pronounced "EE ZED listening".  It's my article, and so I get to decide how it's pronounced.  I choose English pronounciation!)

Sometimes, you don't need your world to be rocked.  Sometimes, settling for "aww yeah" is just fine. Sometimes, a pu'ercha simply doesn't need to kick derrieres, nor take names.

Today is one of those times.  Both of these cakes came from the now-departed splendour of Origin Tea, which has sailed off into the Undying Lands of Elvenkind, far out across the western oceans, beyond the sunset.

The first of the fine pair of E-Z (zed) listening cakes is something named "1990s Round Tea", which is probably an English rendering of "yuancha", a straightforward descriptor for bingcha.  I wish I'd discovered Origin before I did: as it happens, I should be grateful for discovering it just before it closed up shop, a few weeks before it set sail.

As the photography might hint, this session kicked off before dawn.  A father of two fine young dudes  needs to either drink before dawn, or not at all.

Before dawn is a good time to drink teas in the E-Z (zed) listening genre.  This particular "round tea" is crisp and pinewood in its sweetness.  It needs a lot of brewing, straight for the get-go, to get anything resembling character out of it.  Uncomplicated and tangy, it is a basic tea that has been aged quite well - presumably HK following by Taiwan, if this follows the pattern of other Origin Teas.  The nondescript name of the tea is fitting for its character, but that's OK.

Not every tea has to shake the world.

---

Also from t'Origin, here cometh the 1999 Kunming "Red in Red".

There's something rather smug about these "X in Y" names that rubs me up the wrong way.  I cannot quite put my finger on it, but something is ab-so-lutely wrong about Westerners using this phrase, even though it is a straightforward translation of a phrase that simply describes a zhongcha character in its usual encirclement of eight other zhong characters.  The irritation I feel for the affected nonsense of the phrase "X in Y" is not unlike the irritation I feel concerning use of the phrase "tea master". 

Just a personal beef there.  And aren't personal beefs the best kind of beefs?  No-one likes impersonal beef, after all.

Tar-like, cloying, and strong, this is More Like It.  There is compact, dense sweetness that could only have been acquired from hot and humid storage.  The Taiwanese component of the storage, if it existed, must have been significant in duration, because it has "aired out" considerably.  Some activity remains on the tongue, suggesting that the humidity has not claimed the entirety of this cake's soul.  It is not particularly complex, but it endures.  

Pu'ercha is so very satisfying: even a straightforward tea such as this makes for a comforting and enjoyable session.

---

Dawn Station

dawn station

loose suits, distant stares

empty coffee cups

dawn sun

and double espresso

melting the frost

Sith

Some of my favourite music at school included (among death metal, progressive trance, and the opera of Lorenzo Da Ponte), albums made by East-Coast US groups from "The Projects".   If there is a common thread among these very different genres, it is that they can all be really, really good.

One of the side effects of my extended flirtation with East-Coast lyrics is that I have a detailed and nuanced, if biassed, understanding of life in New York State.  To my limited education, Americans are either (i) gangsters from Staten Island or (ii) musket-wielding revolutionaries from Concord, Massachusetts. 

My own childhood was spent in a dark, remote place in the middle of the English countryside, famous for a certain university and the likes of Isaac Newton. On recently receiving an invitation to return home, to the heart of darkness, I was reminded of the meeting of Obiwan and Darth Vader on the departure deck of the Death Star.

Gentle Reader, you surely know by now that I was the Sith Lord in this analogy.

Cf. this.

The Big Man himself prepared for his Death Star encounter by meditating in his Sith Chamber.  What they don't show in Empire Strikes Back is that, in the solitude of his Sith Chamber, Vader was actually listening to albums from the aforementioned East Coast affiliates.

My equivalent was to recline in the mechanised sanctuary of the teatable, my life-support helmet temporarily removed so that I could work on my Dark Side.  My prep involved meditating on the thesis (pictured above) produced by some poor nerfherder rookie, hoping to earn his stripes by locking his s-foils in attack formation.  I could almost smell the moisture farm.

Accompanying my Sith meditations was the 2005 BIG ZHONG from w2t, a tea vendor whom I inexplicably seem to know now only as "Dubs".  

(As in, "This came from Dubs.  Let me show you the web-page.")

While I sharpened my (obviously scarlet) lightsabre, ready to hit up the Death Star, I reflected on the humid darkness of the Big Zhong.  It smells like Tatooine, in case you were wondering.

It starts slow, like two users of the Force circling one another to estimate the depth of their adversary's affinity for that power that surrounds us and penetrates us; that binds the galaxy together.  There is malt and darkness (in the tea, not in the Force), but it is slow and reticent.  It a bedrock of naturally humid storage.

It is constant and sweet, but... it doesn't grab me.  Activity, warmth, a cooling sensation - but something is missing.  It reminds me of the hollow victories of the Dark Side itself: promising much, tempting one in with promises of ultimate power, and yet, somehow, absent any purpose or greater meaning.  Ultimately, it cannot last, and will eventually be overcome.

It is a sobering message for all practitioners of the Dark Side.

---

I return to my Sith Chamber.  Helmet up, Staten Island tunes playing on the stereo.  What went wrong with the Big Zhong?  I must meditate.

I crack open a bag of 1999 "Special Order" 8582.  It reminded me of the 1999 "Commissioned" 8582 from Teaclassico.  However, this version has a green, rather than a red, zhongcha character on its wrapper.  Twodog, the proprietor of the Dubs, noted that this cake has been stored in Guangzhou, which means humidity.

Even from the first infusion, in which the leaves (pictured above) have not separated, this tea is filled with character.  It begins with a red-orange colour, pictured below.  Woody sweetness, sitting in the throat, reminds me of warm feelings that Sith Lords do not usually experience.

Big, malty, dense, tingling - whereas the 1998 "Commissioned" 8582 from Teaclassico was all soft comfort, this is a harder, woodier tea with real bite.  It has an edge in the finish that causes the mouth to water.  Sith Lords don't get a lot of mouth-watering.  I was impressed.

---

Finally, to close this trilogy, and to end with the catharsis of the original Star Wars trilogy, I warmed up the tetsubin for a sample of 1998 "Hong Kong, Dry-Stored 7432".  The owner of the Dubs noted that this was not, in any quantifiable way, a bargain.  This is, in fact, a 1998 Liming cake.

Like Vader picking up the Emperor Palpatine in the conclusion of the Return of the Jedi, this tea brings even the darkened soul of the unredeemed out into the cleansing power of the Light Side.  Interestingly, there is almost no caffeine - instead, this tea is packed with comforting, energising, narcotics.

Seriously, this tea is drugs.

Tangy density, heavy and pleasant, the eternal comfort of the Light Side - this tea is so (so, so) far beyond my purchasing threshold that I can simply marvel at its potency.  So this is what Yoda had in mind.  Maybe he wasn't such a nutball, after all.

The confrontation back on the Death Star turned out to be, likewise, a thoroughly charming and friendly affair.  The nerfherder did good.  There may well be one more doctor in the world, before too long.

---

This Year's Apples

this year's apples

made from last year's apples

in the compost bin

You're a Dinosaur - A Relic of the Cold War

Despite M's famous words, sometimes it's OK to be a relic of the Cold War.

Today, I am going to show you some photographs of black, gloopy teas from bygone days, one of which is definitely from the Cold War period.  All three of these teas were provided by Teaclassico, a splendid outfit of which I have written before.

1999 Tongcanghao

First up: shupu.  It's cooked, it's composted, and it's suitably old so that the rank dampness has departed.  This is the 1999 (or 1997?) "Tongcanghao".

I'm not too sure what's actually happening with this cake, because it isn't for sale at Teaclassico, but only at Generation Tea - although it was supplied to me in a Teaclassico sample bag.  Hence, the tiny image above is from Generation Tea, where it sells for $135.  There is some overlap of the inventories of Teaclassico and Generation Tea, but the former has lower prices than the latter.  The owner of Teaclassico assures me that there is no relationship between the two teashops.

My eyebrows wobble slightly at the fact that Teaclassico has actually replicated the Wade-Giles spelling of this cake ("Tung Chang Hao") that is also shown at Generation Tea.  If there is truly no relationship between Teaclassico and Generation Tea, then I suspect that they simply buy their cakes from the same Taiwanese dealer.

I am aware of Taiwanese spelling habits!

Either way, this is some MEAN looking shupu.  Checks ye out the leaves above: they really put the proverbial lotion in the proverbial basket.  If you are going to buy composted tea, then you may as well buy composted tea made out of some seriously chunky leaves.  The Tongcanghao does just that.

The leaves do, it must be admitted, look a little grey.  This is usually a sign of some substantial Hong Kong influence, or, alternatively, the use of a hose to spray down the cakes as if you were Boris Johnson trying to calm down a rioting crowd of Londoners with a high-pressure water cannon.  Kek.

What does the combined effect of shupu composting AND tons of water do to a cake?  What on earth do you think it does?!  It makes it humid!  And dark!  And super black!  This is like drinking liquid evil.  It is Lucifer's tears, or some other even worse bodily fluid.

Unsurprisingly, given its moistmoistmoist treatment, there isn't much in the way of power or duration, here.  Everything it had has been accelerated out of it, and traded away for pure, gloopy, darkness.  It is a deal with the Dark Side, and its soul has certainly been transacted.

That said, if you were going to drink only one Tea of the Thrice Damned this week, you might like to try this one.  As hellbound beverages go, this one is quite enjoyable.

---

Washing ourselves down with holy water and then having the teatable re-sanctified by a passing exorcist, we turn our attention to something a little less macabre.

1999 Commissioned 8582

"Commission" usually means "rocking" when it comes to Menghai Factory.  Believe it or not, I used to find 8582 a little underwhelming.  Apache, among (very) many others have since turned my eyes to the light, through a substantial exercise in collective generosity, and I now admit the error of my ways, and enjoy older 8582s on a semi-regular basis.  The big ol' leaves certainly make for some decent aging, in the world before Dayi.

What was 8582 like in 1999?  If this cake is anything to go by, then I'd say it is not too bad.

The difficulty with this cake is that we have to peer at it through the lens of Hong Kong storage.  This is no bad thing, but it is not a lens that leaves it subject unaltered.  It has been aired out in Taiwan, apparently, and this leads to a good, clean, crisp edge that pleases - its Hong Kong background is entirely pleasant.

As always with older teas, I use tons of leaves.  It's not like you're going to be able to overbrew something like this (assuming that you use water-in, water-out infusions as is my habit).  It has a "beefy" sweetness that reminds me of non-Dayi Menghai, and which I like a lot.

It is sharp and abrupt, and, it must be stated for the record, that it doesn't really endure particularly, either in the mouth or in its number of infusions.  Its starting storage conditions appear to have taken the wind out of its sails.  The overall effect is very positive: the Hong Kong storage has focussed and heated its sweetness; the Taiwanese storage has opened and crispened it somewhat.

I was on the edge of thinking rather seriously about this cake (price $199), but the trio listed here eventually trumped a purchase decision.

---

Let's now return to the title of this article, and end with a relic of the Cold War.

1980s Yinminghao

Admittedly China was a very different place to Europe in the 1980s, but there remains a certain feeling of nostalgia for those of us who were alive at that time.  Not that I remember it particularly well, but I am definitely delighted to try some tea from that era.

This is a serious $329, which is far beyond my limit, and so, thus freed from any other considerations, I therefore get to enjoy the tea without worry about whether or not I should be buying it.  This is a considerable freedom, it must be said.

As pictured above, this is a blend of just about everything, from tip to stem.  It has the red-grey colour of old Hong Kong tea, and is faded and distant in appearance.

The first infusion requires absolutely no time to open, and this cake slams its foot onto the accelerator right from the start.  It is smooth, dense, and very slippery.  There is a fine, enjoyable core of Hong Kong mineral humidity.  The older this mineral character becomes, the more dense it becomes, as if being compacted by gravity.  The first few cups entirely clarify my mind, and feel most positive.

This is a big, soft tea, and it requires maximum attention.  Its consistency prevents extended description: it is long, vanilla-like, and smooth, and stays that way as long as I stay at the table.  It is quite something, and you might be well-advised to procure at least a sample, to acquire the data-point in your training set.

With thanks again to Neil of Teaclassico, it has been a fine week for tea.

Mutual Inverses

Blending a tea session, in the sense of stitching together consecutive teas that work together, can be a fine art.  For me, it is mostly just a product of blind luck.  This morning, I found myself awake before dawn, and randomly happened across a pair of teas that, while not so much complementing one another, are precise mutual inverses.

It is not even easy to split the teas into "yin" vs. "yang", or "feminine" vs. "masculine", because they are both, well... perhaps it is better, in the words of A.A. Milne, to start at the start and end at the end.

The first tea is, as pictured above, the 2013 "Few Single Trees" maocha from Essence of Tea.  This is made from a small number of "old trees" in the Bangweishan area (in Lancang county of Simao diqu, not far from Jingmaishan) and the Bulangshan area of Menghai county in 'Banna diqu.  Mr. Essence made a 2012 "Bangwei 33" cake that I enjoyed to such a degree that I felt the need to sketch.

The maocha is tippy, and fragmented to the degree that it easily enters the teapot without breakage.  There is very little scent to the leaves.  The colour of the soup is thin, but recognisably Simao-brown; the scent in the wenxiangbei [aroma cup] is so quiet that pruning a dead leaf from a nearby arrangement of geranium plants produces a scent that entirely dominates that of the tea.

It is big and smooth, but absolutely devoid of all flavour, excepting the low roast of the wok.  Then, crashing through in the finish, is the obvious contribution from the Bulangshan component: the brassy kuwei [good bitterness], possibly added in recognition of the fact that the Bangweishan component needed a little kick to perk it up.  After the kuwei comes a warming, comforting yunxiang [after-scent] of buttery wok.

The whole thing is "very much Mr. Essence's cup of tea": it is delicate, elegant, clean, and has a brightening feeling to it.  It is a strange drink.  I don't doubt that I will attract comments such as "Oh, newbies are always interested only in flavour", but a tea that is entirely invisible is hard to love, no matter how gently comforting the "chaqi" might be.

---

As promised, the 1999 Yiwushan maocha from Pu-erh.sk is the complete inverse.

Here, the maocha is ready to go: it has the punchy mineral sweetness of humid storage, which immediately sets my mouth watering and stomach rumbling.

The soup is solid, immediately dense in colour, and this tea piles its characteristics of smooth vanilla and long sweetness into the first infusion.  The taste of humid redness has aged into a rounded state that makes this tea very easy to love.  It is good, old-fashioned Yiwushan tea of the kind that has been around the block a few times.

It is also, because of its aging in the maocha state, rather devoid of energy, to my taste.  It is all flavour, but little in the way of huigan and real zest, as if the combined forces of humid heat and loose (i.e., zero) compression have sought to give it a beating.

These teas, then, are precisely opposite.  It is hard to love each entirely, because each has desirable characteristics - body, duration, and energy for the 2013 Bangweishan and sweet pu'ercha flavour and scent in the 1999 Yiwushan.

Just for the record, the former sells for the equivalent of $276/357g (ahem), while the latter appears to be unavailable at the time of writing.  Thanks to both Mr. Essence and Peter Pu-erh.sk for the generous samples.

1999 CNNP 8582

Have you come across Tearoma yet?  This new shop appears to be based in Taiwan (and the US?), and has a small but very well-priced selection of cakes of a decent age (late 1990s, early 2000s).  Were the prices too good to be true?  Could it be that this 1999 cake is correctly priced at just $56?

To pre-empt my conclusion, I am decided that Tearoma is a decent shop, and that the prices are accurate reflections of the quality of the tea.  That this cake is low-priced allows us to guess my opinion of it.

The Tearoma representatives have been consistently helpful and friendly throughout my dealings with them, and this has given me a great deal of confidence.

The caveat emptor relates to the quality of the individual cakes, which is variable - however, they are all fairly priced.  "You get what you pay for."

1999?!

Initially, no samples were on offer.  After some protracted wrangling, the proprietors kindly consented to sending me a package of four samples, as long as I paid the postage.  Fair enough, and much appreciated - more generous than most other vendors, in fact.  I plumped for a range of attractively-priced cakes with around ten years of maturity, this 8582 from 1999 being one of them.

Please take a moment to consider the above photograph.  Note in particular the colour of the leaves, which are almost green.  There is little to no sign of aging on these leaves, which is a surprise - it is not a heavily-compressed cake.

Associated with the rather troubling appearance is a similarly troubling aroma: the scent of the leaves is pure, buttery green.  I associate that butteriness with the wok, and so it is quite a surprise to be able to detect it after a supposed twelve years of ageing.

Perhaps that's just me being oversensitive, thunk I, and continued on with the brewing.

Feast your ocular faculties on the images above and below, and marvel at the distinct yellowness of the brew.  Something is clearly afoot.

Strangeness abound in the cup, as vibrant sweet straw is encountered, but not much else - it is energetic, but rather empty and passive.

If I were tasting this cake without information, I would say that this is a mainstream modern cake, of no more than three or four years of age - and not a particularly great one at that.  The spent leaves, pictured above, support this conjecture, given their overwhelming greenness - any red hue has been added by the colour-correction of my camera in this instance.

Was it a wrongly-packaged sample?  I gave Tearoma the benefit of the doubt, and asked them if it might be possible, and asked for a few words that they would be happy for me to quote in this article.  The response was polite and courteous, and stated that people's preferences vary, and that people's interpretations of tea vary.  I was reminded of recent experiences with Zhizheng Tea, who explained the thorough redness of their tea as being down to my inexperience with real pu'ercha.

The ever-polite correspondent from Tearoma included a scan of a page from China Teapot magazine, showing how the usual panel of "celebrity" reviewers couldn't agree on the ranking of a set of teas under review.  However, while I find it quite reasonable that a set of tasters might rank teas in different orders according to their preference, surely most experienced sippers could agree on the substantial, distinct, and obvious differences between entirely green tea, and a properly aged 12-year-old cake.  Deciding which is the better car given a choice of a Porsche, a Lamborghini, and a Lotus might vary according to driver*, but surely the differences between those three and a Ford Fiesta are fairly evident.

*Obviously, the Lotus wins.

So, my first encounter with Tearoma was a surprisingly negative one, in terms of the quality of the tea.  Perhaps this is implicitly understood by the seller, because younger cakes (such as a 2003 Menghai) sell for approximately double the cost of this (really rather dodgy) "1999" cake.

However, there were some good leaves to be had from Tearoma - I invite you to stay tuned for further fumblings.

1999 Chen Guanghetang "Yiwu Longma"

A long time ago, I wrote about a cake that I enjoyed very much, the 1999 Chen Guanghetang "Mengsa".  Its sister, the 1999 Yiwu Longma [Dragon and Horse] proved rather more popular with Iwii and Nada at the time, and now, years later, I return to examine the other half of the story.

Lei tells me that "Tang" (as in Xizihao's "Sanhetang" and Chen Zhitong's "Chen Guanghetang") literally means "hall", and that it is the ancient manner of naming a company in Chinese.  "Guanghetang" would therefore be, approximately, "broad/covering together hall".  Very roughly.

In the manner of the stereotypical Chinese / Taiwanese merchant, Chen Zhitong does not give the immediate impression of being a modest man.  "This is better than Big Green Tree!", quoth he.  

If there's one thing that rubs me up the wrong way, it's bluff old bravado.  Then again, he does make good tea, so his claim may be entirely fair.  The proof of the pudding is in the tasting...

This is pretty tea, you have to admit.  Feast your ocular facilities over the long, lustrous, lascivious leaves shown above.  Desirable, non?  Some twelve years after plucking, and they resemble wulong.

Fortunately, that is where the similarity to wulong ends.  The soup turns out to be a chunky, fat red (as may be seen below), which contrasts immediately with the yellow-orange of the similarly aged, but dissimilarly stored, 1999 Dadugang "Yunnan Yuanbao".

Smooth, thick, and heavy in chaqi - however, the flavour is hidden, being distant sweetness, behind the texture, and overall kougan [feeling in the mouth].  This is a tactile, lively tea, but it doesn't taste of a great deal.

By the fifth infusion, it requires substantially lengthened infusion times, which, combined with the very distant character, make me wonder if this tea is a touch exhausted in some way.  It has been stored in a sealed sample bag for some years, and so I'm sure that it isn't at its best - but other teas from the same year, stored in the same imperfect manner, have retained their potency where this has not.

I pile in the leaves, but little difference is made.  On reading Houde's notes, I suspect that we may have found the reason why: this is a blend of maocha from various years, from various locations throughout the Yiwu region, from various seasons, and from various types of growth.  It is a varied blend, but this seems to have detrimentally affected its potency.

On the face of the evidence, I must conclude that Mr. Chen's claim that this is "better than Big Green Tree" is, unfortunately for him and for me, pure bunk.

1999 Dadugang "Yunnan Yuanbao"

Kudos to Dr. Lee for stocking a varied and enjoyable range of "tasting sets", some four years ago. It consisted of some landmark teas, such as the 1999 Menghai "Dalushu" [Big Green Tree].  Concerning the latter, if you will excuse me for quoting myself, I wrote the following when I dipped into it, during 2008:

This is an excellent tea with which to "kill the Buddha". History, yes. Landmark in the tradition of processing, maybe. Awesome tea: that's less obvious.

It's important to keep an open mind, and to see what's really there in front of you, not what others have told you is there.  This is "killing the Buddha".

For all you Beatrix Potter fans out there

Some years later, I realised that I haven't tried some of the "tasting set", such as this "Yunnan Yuanbao" [Yunnan round treasure] cake from Dadugang.  This bing has a convoluted history: the famous state-owned Dadugang brand was acquired by Longyuan [Dragon Garden] Tea Co. in 1999, and this must mark one of their first productions.  Or it would be, had they made it - instead, according to Guang's notes, they deemed it unprofitable to make a small run of laoshu cakes, and so contracted the job out to (the similarly newly-established) Changtai Tea Co.  

So, this is really a Changtai cake.  Surely, this is A Good Thing.

It also makes it the very close sister to the 1999 Yichanghao "Songtiban", with which it shares many characteristics, and the sister of the 1999 Yichanghao "Yiwu", with which it has rather less in common.

At $14/10g ($525/cake) at Houde, this makes for a moderately expensive session, but one to which I feel thoroughly entitled after changing nappies, bathing babies, and doing tons of handiwork around the home.    It's also the first day after the end of Hilary Term, and therefore requires some celebration.

(He said, attempting to justify his own hobby to himself.)

An advanced plummy aroma jumps out of the sample packet.  As may be seen above, this is an old-fashioned cake, made from small leaves.  You can also see that it has aged rather well.

Clean, woody, and sharp - this has seen a great deal of dry storage, which also comes out in the colour of the soup, which (contrary to the photograph above) starts out as a yellow-orange.  That razor-sharp precision in the character has seen very little muddying or dampening due to more humid types of storage.

Is it a charming, woody, and enjoyable tea?  Yes, it is.

Is it a classic of our times, likely to stop clocks and halt traffic?  No, it is not.  The body is "loose" and watery, and its character feels distant, as if observed from far away.  It is smooth enough, in the manner of downy, tippy pu'ercha, but it is not full, nor robust.  

I enjoyed its soothing chaqi, which was of that remarkable type that simultaneously calms and brightens, just like a tonic.  I am reminded of the stories of elderly Chinese chaps holding onto tons of old pu'ercha for precisely that purpose: a tonic with which to balance the physiology.

Just what a man needs on a special Saturday morning.

1999 Yichanghao "Songtiban"

This tea is called "Songtiban" [Song dynasty style/edition], which is confusing, because tea was consumed in the matcha style (whisk + powder) in that era. I'm surely missing something.

Nonetheless, this is a special cake, because it is one of Changtai's first, given that they were founded a year before its manufacture, in 1998.

Trust a Taiwanese person, in this case our dear Dr. Lee, to call the "Song" dynasty the "Sung"

I continue to ransack my most ancient and neglected samples, having bought and then never tried this sample from Houde many years ago.

Opening the sample packet releases a powerfully sweet aroma, as if I have just opened the door to a bedroom in which someone has been sleeping for years.  

As shown above, my sample looks as if it has come from the middle of the cake, being a tight, hard little nugget.  It seems that the cake itself has some larger leaves, but my sample is mostly fragmented.

Sitting in the air, the aroma becomes much more quiet.  The colour is a charming dusty red.

This is a reticent tea.  I used far too many leaves (the entire 10g sample), and it still seemed underpowered.  It has a good, red soup, but the texture is thinner than one would hope for.  It has a tangy, pine-like character, but it comes as if from a long distance.

Giving this tea many infusions, throughout the morning and afternoon (interrupted by a rather decent Thai sunday lunch), this tea refused to come to life.  

I tried long brews, short brews, hotter water, cooler water, but eventually concluded that these leaves are a touch knackered.

The feeling in the mouth is decent, and its quiet pine vapours linger in the nose and clear the airways, but I am left with the suspicion that this tea has seen better days.  Of course, being stored in an air-tight sample bag for years isn't going to help this tea to age, but I usually agree with the school of thought that says locking pu'ercha in an air-tight container (such as shrink-wrapped old cakes throughout Maliandao) merely inhibits the  aging process, rather than depleting the tea of all character.  If it were so, we could imagine that those classic cakes in Beijing are gradually being destroyed by their air-tight surroundings.

After twenty infusions, the tea has become slightly coloured water, and an older tea should last significantly longer than this.  Whatever the route that this tea has taken to reach my tea-table, it seems to be beyond the realm of human artifice to bring it back to life.