Congregation of Vapours

I have of late, but wherefore I know not... lost all my mirth.  Foregone all custom of exercise.

And, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me... a sterile promontory.

However, what better way to desterilise one's promontory than with some EoT?

This little baby has been sitting in a box, on a shelf, in my office, calling to me.  Every day, I come into the lab, and it starts its siren-song.  DRIIINK ME.  Every day, I bustle around pretending to be busy on something or other, and, before I know it, the end of the day is upon us, and it's nursery pick-up time.

But not today!  Today, we stand and fight.  Today, we are all Kunlu!

OK, this isn't the Kunlu, but it's a nice recent (Darjeeling) tea all the same

It looks as if the old addage "You snooze, you lose" is true yet again; as I peruse the EoT web-site, I learn that many of the 2016 cakes have long since been vanquished by a ravenous public, starved for affection and good tea.  Thus it ever was, and rightly so - it's good to see the ol' Essence pimping its wares effectively.  Long may the pimping proceed.

If there is one (just one) thing that bothers me about the charming, dazzling white of the EoT website it's the fact that every cake seems to cost between £0.08 and £0.40, judging by the main page.  "What a great price!", thought no-one, ever.  Instead, we ceaselessly have to click through to each individual page to determine the actual price of each cake - presumably, this clicking is the point.  It rather feels like putting the milk at the far end of the supermarket, so that you have to walk past shampoo and haemorrhoid cream to reach it.  It feels like those shops that put chocolate bars next to cash tills, on the hope that some poor child will convince their tired parents to buy them a package of solidified diabetes while they queue to leave the shop.  It really sticks in my craw - and, Gentle Reader, if there's anything I don't like, it's a sticky craw.  I keep my craw glisteningly clear of all such nonsense.  It's a source of pride.

So, this cake doesn't cost "£0.20", which is the price shown to me by the product page, as it lies to me through its fetid teeth.  The cost is, in fact £32, which is a rather larger number than £0.20, but which is a more accurate number than £0.20.  Also, this cake is "Out of stock".  I believe I may have whispered "MOTHERF*CKER" to myself, at that stage of the proceedings.

The tea.  As the description on the EoT page reads ("Perhaps not for girls, or for people who are girlymen cowards"), this is rather a bitter tea, and tastes like KUDINGCHA - bitter tea, of the astringent kind that puckers not just one's lips, but every single last sphincter that is physiologically available at the time of consumption.  However, it's a nice bitter.  It's long, strong, and thoroughly absorbent.

In form and moving, how express and admirable: the sweetness is enduring and potent, like the irony of a reality-TV host being elected president of a third-world country somewhere out west.  It has the bittersweet tang that stays with you, like the economic consequences of half a country voting against its best interests to leave a large socioeconomic union of nations.

Which is to say, it's challenging.  If you like a challenge, then drink it today: let's make shengpu great again!
He quoth with irony, for the literal-reading folk amongst us.

Twenty Sixteen

I
drinking my coffee
before the interview
making it last

II

buying a ticket

to buckingham palace -

yes, a return please

III
the old lady's dog
watching the ambulance
drive away

IV

kneeling in chapel

before made my offering

were those lamps lit?

V
there goes a cupboard -
old kitchen burns quickly
in the garden stove

VI

surprise visit -

coming home early to

the armadillo

VII
school interview
holding his rubber duck
the three year old

VIII

the englishman lost

asking directions from

budapest pigeon

IX
returning home
cold and wet on my cheeks
dog dribble
(from a dream)

X

twelve boys

twelve waterpistols

father has the high ground

XI
before opera
the opening movement
waffles, beer, ice-cream

XII

dementia book

lists things he has forgotten

front cover - goldfish

XIIb
the open door
welcomes to Midnight Mass
my drunken self

Today's Agenda

Today's agenda: got the shengpu up in the Sentra.

Go to room 1-12, 

tell 'em Miss Lin sent ya.

Please make your brewings clean, rinse up in between.

Rule #1 about me: I am pathologically contrary. If you tell me that I have to like something, or, even worse, that it is cool to like something, then I will almost certainly dislike it, on principle.  This is not something over which I have conscious control.

So, when the (super-cute, "Mister Scruff") wrapper of "Poundcake" tells me that it says a lot about you if you not feeling us, then I am almost preternaturally indisposed to find the cake undrinkable.  Without intervention of any decision-making process, that's just how it is.

On the bright side, this cake ($50/200g) was green and fruity; Miss Lin described it as being "outlier Yiwu", which is accurate.  There is a hint of sourness at the back, which terrifies me, because it has a leafy green-brown flavour that tastes a lot like everything I try to avoid in shengpu.  The opening infusions were much better than the tannic later infusions.

"This is quite ordinary", notes my dear wife, as she offers an opinion in passing.  I silently rejoice, wondering if I might not be mad, after all.

Calm as possible, make the deal go through

$38/200g is, on the grand scale of modern tea, reasonably affordable.  I love the way that the wrapper says "Will this do?", as if Miss Lin ran out of time or ideas.  You couldn't say that about some of the 2016 cakes with their plush wrappers!

The leaves are rich, and dark, and spicy.  The pale yellow soup is thick, and comforting, and very sweet.  I appreciate the beefy, almost meaty, aftertaste.  The dry opening is so dry that I am half-expecting to find grapeskins mixed in there with the leaves.  It chugs on nicely, with the buttery scent of a clean wok'ing.

It is a solid little drinker, but the background has a hint of sourness that terrifies me; those of us in cooler climes ware the sourness like a werewolf fears silver.  "Nice, but not for me", I hurriedly conclude.

I got a hundred bricks, 14.5 a piece

Now this one - this one is a bad boy.  You know I saved the best until last, and it's absolutely true in this case.  I totally dig 200% the cheesy old wrapper that looks like a leftover from the 1950s.  This is real Communist space-race tea.  Admittedly it's from 2005, but the ambience is very "planned economy".

This is another White Whale, and old Captain Ahab knows total embargaination when he sees it.

Like the Whale, this is clean orange in its brew.  Like my purple-wrapper Dingxing (inexplicably prized from the hands of the dodgiest Taobao seller imaginable), it is sweet in its rustic Yiwu stylings.  Unlike either of those two, it has a complexity in its scent, with floral summer-flowers.  Hell, it even leaves an explicit cooling sensation in the nose.  The nose!

So good is this tea, that it even managed to see off the cold that I had incurred recently, after hitting some deadlines.  It cured the common cold, you read it here first.

The first half-dozen infusions are the best for this tea; while remaining clean, sweet and robust, it fades a little after that.  For $88/400g, I think it has earned to right to do so.  Complaining about this later infusions of this tea would be like complaining about the colour of the leather interior of a classic Jag that someone sold you for 10% market value.

The tongs, they are a-purchasin'.