Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

We've been moving house. Ware the tea-packing!

Veteran readers will recall our move of 2007 - being graduate students, we're nomadic. However, being (nearly) graduated means that this time our move is to more permanent digs. In the current economic climate, we consider ourselves fortunate to have been able to buy a house nearby, and it is reason to be thankful indeed.

On the down side, I now have a lawn that needs cutting.

Moving house was a great opportunity to take stock of the state of our tea collection, and I made several pleasant discoveries - including a pair of Changtai cakes that I don't recognise, nor recall ever seeing before. Mystery bingcha!

The contents of the box shown above made me smile, as it highlights the effect of the tea community in action. The green-and-white Changtai cake on the left was a gift from Phyll, Dictator of Mars, which remains one of my favourites. The Glenmorangie tube contains some lovely 1990s Red Blossom maocha, courtesy of the board of trustees of the Davelcorp Foundation. The wooden box contains various sweet maocha from the mighty TA, while the little blue-rimmed plastic container at the bottom contains 1960s Guangyungong from the eternally-generous Nada. Underneath Phyll's Changtai cake is the little Maison des Trois Thes "Mengkuxue" xiaobing, also from Nada. The red box, pictured centre, contains a smooth 14-year shupu from my wife's hometown, while the little shrink-wrapped purple packet above it is some SFTGFOP Nilgiri tea from my Nilgirian friend and colleague SS, brought back from a recent trip home to see his family. I was thrilled to discover that the Balvenie tube contains a secret supply of my favourite hongcha (Yunnan Sourcing's 2005 "Aged Just Enough" dianhong) from tea-tastrix CB!

My dear wife reads the Half-Dipper from time to time, so I had rather hoped she wouldn't see this photograph of exactly how large our tea collection has become.

Darling, did I tell you how lovely your hair looks this morning? *cough*

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Images added to 2005 Mengku Chengguan "Qingchengfeng".

2005 Mingxiang Yayuan - Hailanghao "Motian Yinhao"

Liquid wildflowers.

This is a cake kindly bought by proxy, by Nada. I didn't see this one on Nadacha, however.

You know by now how much I like Hailanghao, it being reliable and fairly priced. This cake is a chubby chappy.

"Motian" literally means "reach heaven", but is the word also used for "skyscraper". I do love the poetic nature of Chinese. "I work in a reach-heaven." It sounds almost tolerable.

"Yinhao" is "silver fur", referring to the young tip leaves, pictured below. This cake has a sufficient number of dark leaves in its blend to keep me happy - I'm not usually one for enjoying cakes made purely of buds, as they are a touch simplistic for all their creamy flavours.

Surprisingly enough, the aroma is complex - I have enjoyed this tea several times over the summer, and it is always the complex aroma of wildflowers that draws me back.

The honest, yellow brew is really very enjoyable - it mixes grassy, "meaty" Biluochun with honey and mushrooms, and wraps it up in a satisfying acidity that its pure-bud cousins lack.

Breathing out after a cup brings all those wildflowers back into the nose...

As the sessions wear on, I notice a tendency towards green roughness, which I usually associate with plantation leaves. At this stage, it pays to back off and not push too hard.

I've been drinking it all morning and afternoon, totalling over 20 infusions, and it still gives sweetness and those eternal wildflowers...

Thanks to Nada for identifying this friendly, enjoyable tea. It is one of the few yinhao teas that I have found appealing, primarily due to its blend of darker leaves.

Good old Hailanghao...

2006 Yongde "Ziyu Shengtai Gushu"

Autumn is becoming offensively beautiful. It's making it hard to get work done. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

I have a fairweather, on-and-off relationship with this tea. First of all, we need to unpick the (very informative) vendor description a wee bit...

This is sold as "2006 Yongde Organic Mangfei" at Yunnan Sourcing, and I apparently bought this for $18 back in Spring. The factory is indeed Yongde, and this is their "Zidu" [purple jade] brand - shown by the pseudo-classical logo at the top of the cake.

Down the left-hand side of the wrapper, the dreaded "shengtai gushu cha" [ecologically-grown, ancient-tree tea]. Though it sports the ubiquitous ATI organic logo, I remain healthily skeptical given the inexpensive nature of this cake. Though it could feasibly be shengtai, I strongly suspect that the gushu content of this cake is not unadjacent to zero.

The rather appalling (apologies!) photograph above attempts to show that this is a high-compression bing (but not too high), while the leaves are generally of a decent size. The blend contains both tips and huangpian [thin yellow leaves, often manually removed].

This cake is a bit of an enigma. I get a different tea each time I sit down with it. First time out, I loved it and bought a cake. On revisits, I have been less impressed - certainly thoughts of potentially buying more have been dispelled. I understand that Scott rather likes this one himself.

We have sticky fruitiness in both aroma and flavour, delivered in a yellow-orange soup. I usually term these "broad and low" characteristics: straw, beaniness, some mushroom. It rings nicely in the throat.

It does have a lot of crisp, clean energy - but it also brews up as rough as a Frenchman's stubble in later infusions, which is surely indication of its mostly-plantation status.

I don't recommend this tea - but it's a close call. The fruity aspects are appealing, and it has some decent punch delivered courtesy of some strong acidity in the finish, but it is ultimately simple and a bit rough.

I haven't come across any other Yongde Factory products, primarily because there are no samples available for them, and I refuse to consider buying blindly. The lack of samples reminds me a little of when film producers refuse to show a pre-release of their film to critics - I get the impression that the quality of the film is lower than usual, and a pre-sample might adversely affect the number of folk that went to see it in the cinema.

An interesting factoid from the Yunnan Sourcing product description: Yongde County is in Lincang, and is apparently where Xiaguan used to get their leaves. High mountains, tall trees, big sky. I think I'd like it in Yongde.

(Notes added to 2005 Mengku Chengguan "Qingchengfeng".)