China Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Wojciech BońkowskiWojciech Bońkowski

2008 Haoya Keemun ‘Nonpareil’

Remembrance of tastes past

As for probably 99% of Europeans, my first taste of tea was black. In the late 1980s, nobody heard of green tea, and ‘oolong’ was a mediocre low-bracket disaster you better steered clear of. In the late 1980s in Poland, there were no teabags (at least I don’t remember them); tea was purchased in small cardboard boxes or loose brown paper bags. Generic geographical names were used – Assam, Ceylon, Madras – with little guarantee of authenticity but a broad consistency of taste: Assam was a very deeply coloured, heftily tannic brew while Georgian tea (very popular in Eastern Block countries) was of the lighter, fruitier, spicier kind. There was not tea connoisseurship; tea was a staple, and left an indelible aromatic imprint on my childhood memories of afternoon meetings of adults.

With the fall of Communism here in 1989, tea became a commodity governed by market forces. Standards fell as teabags came into fashion. There was so little interest in the watery brew they generated that I gave up tea altogether. It was only in 1996 or 1997 that I came back. By then, a couple of specialist tea merchants were operating in Warsaw. They had perhaps 75 varieties of loose leaf on offer. Today, I wouldn’t give a penny for that no-name TGFOP Assam sitting next to a strawberry-scented Gunpowder, but at the time it was a massive change.

‘Black’ (now sometimes defined as ‘red’ following the Chinese nomenclature) tea constituted 75% of my early tea consumption, and I had two favourites: Yunnan and Keemun. The former’s red-fruity, crisp taste on sunny days and the latter’s malty depths on rainy ones.

So it was a kind of sentimental journey to order the 2008 Haoya ‘A’ Keemun ‘Nonpareil’ from Dragon Tea House. This pricy tea ($24 / 100g) is the highest grade of black offered by this merchant (Haoya being a top grade of Keemun and A the highest quality of Haoya). Brewed in: gaiwan
Dosage: 3.5g / 150ml
Dry leaf: Very small – this is clearly a top grade. A uniform dark brown/black with a minor amount of golden tips. (Later a proportion of twig bits will be revealed in the wet leaf). Dry leaf aroma is that unmistakeable Keemun malty smoke spice. Tasting notes:
I experimented with brewing times during several sessions, going from 15s to 60–90s for the first brewings, and continuing pretty much at will. (Patience of this tea is average but three reasonable infusions can be obtained, though #1 is always best). Dark red-brown, this is not a particularly deep colour for black tea. Nose is quite distinctive and immediately brings memories of those inexpensive blended Keemun teas I was drinking as a student: little fruit, lots of maltiness and smoke, some heavier earthy notes. On the palate this again shows that Keemun’s comfortable malty oxidation and few ‘primary’ fruit notes, to use a vinous term. Not very tannic even when brewings are lengthy; finish is firm not drying. If this was a wine, it would be a Madiran or young Cahors with its chewy tannins and earthy fruit. Overall this is a good (perhaps very good) example of its appellation, but not a ‘wow’ tea and perhaps I expected more at this price.

Dancing in the snow

1999 Menghai #7532

21cm of snow this morning but business as usual (in Poland). © S.

Today brought some hilarious news. the mighty British Empire has been brought to its knees by 20 cm of snow. Transport halted, and even banks have remained closed (perhaps they should spend a few pennies from the billions of public help they’ve recently received on a couple of workers to de-snow).

Thank God the subpolar Polish civilisation has learned to cope. By British standards we would need to shut the entire country down from December till March.

Anyway, here’s a tea for my esteemed UK readers to warm up on while waiting for the bus service to resume. This 1999 Menghai Tea Factory #7352 raw puer was purchased from Jing Tea (a full bing costs a hefty $155, but thankfully 25g samples are available for the benefit of the savvy). First brewed in my miniature 50ml gaiwan (2.5g), then with 3.6g in 120ml Dahongpao pot, the following notes are a synthesis of the two.

Dry leaf: It is rare to see such impeccably separated leaves in a tea of this age: Jing Tea assure me the cake was not steamed, so I incur the pressing is loose. Leaves are small and partly fragmented, ranging from light to deep brown. They emit a very clean and apparently dry-stored scent of old wood.

Tasting notes:
20s: A medium brown colour. Nose echoes the dry leaves: a discretly woody scent with minor tobacco and wet earth. Calm but very clean and quite deep, this is a model of old tea elegance. A touch of dryness on the end, not very dynamic but surely not mature or frail.
30s: Deeper brown. Good clean elegant aroma of wood and earth. This is now more powerful, with a bit of bitterish ku appearing on end, adding some zest and length. Power and content.
40s: Same as before but a bit darker and more consistent in colour.
60s: Still going strong. Flavours of old wood and mushrooms, really very clean with (almost) not a hint of wet shicang storage. Integrated but present bitterness, long gan finish.
60s: Less exciting now (perhaps brewed too short): a decent woody nose but palate a bit hollow and with minor sourness now coming up.
2m: Back to good shape, there is a minor post-bitterness on the finish, quite some elegance (this tea’s hallmark) and intensity, a very good balance to the semi-aged character.
As often with older teas, it is the coda – brewings #6 to #10 perhaps – that proves the most pleasant, with a light body and an echo of past glory.

In short, this is an outstanding tea. It shows very good complexity but still has quite a bit of grip to continue improving for another few years. Its aged character – old wood, mushrooms, wet earth, smoke – is balanced by good freshness and considerable finesse; it never becomes heavy or dirty. How sad to see it out of my purchasing range.

First brewing (20 seconds in clay pot).

More green tea: two Guapians

Fancy melon in your tea?

Another French tea blog entry on another famous Chinese green tea gave me an impulse to review it here, too. Guapian (colonial translation Melon Slice) bears two similarities with Houkui (see yesterday’s entry). It too comes from the province of Anhui, but from the western, higher-perched county of Lu’an instead of Taiping. And it too is made of large leaves which by other Chinese green tea standards, would be considered ‘lower-grade’.

2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea

Two similarly priced examples ($22 and $25 per 100g, respectively): 2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea (hereafter ‘A’) and 2008 Supreme Liu An Guapian from Dragon Tea House (‘B’). Both were brewed in gaiwan with 4g / 120ml with 40s (80C), 25s (85C), 40s, 1m.

2008 Supreme Liu An Guapian from Dragon Tea House

Dry leaf:
A: Average sized dark green leaves, like miniature rolled cigars.
B: Large dark green leaves with a pleasant, fruity aroma (melon is in fact not a bad descriptor), pretty complex.

Tasting notes:
A: Lid and cup aroma has three main notes: mild pea, dried hay, and a fruity note akin to melon. Medium bodied for a green tea, with absolutely no astringency. Not very crisp. Really enjoyable, with a good balance of fruity and vegetal elements. In later brewings aroma is more green-spicy, palate smooth with good length, not very distinctive or complex. This seems pretty forgiving of water temperature: no bitterness on the horizon.

Brewing #1 of 2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea

B: Starts with a very minor melon note on the nose, then receding into a more hayey green tea generic register. Good intensity and character throughout the first brewing, ending on a chewy, strangely meaty (chicken came to mind) flavour. No astringency but that elusive and welcome ‘presence’ on the finish. Brewing #2 has a bit less precision, finish is still balanced and unbitter when water is cooled down a bit. Brewing #3: Still good, it takes another 1m brewing to really recede into aromatic anonymousness, though surely not blandness (still some grip on end). Good tea here.

Overall:
Two very competent (if not cheap) examples of this famous tea. Unlike small-leaf teas such as Maofeng or Biluochun, this packs in quite some power and solid flavour, but shows a fruitier, fresher profile than the more nutty, beany Houkui that I reviewed yesterday.

Spent leaves of 2008 Liu An Guapian AA from Jing Tea

Two Taiping Houkuis

A large leaf feast

A recent post on another (excellent, BTW) blog triggered the following comparative session of two Houkui teas.

Houkui is one of the most renowned green teas of China. It comes from the center-eastern province of Anhui, also home to Guapian (another famous green) and Keemun (China’s premier black tea). The best Houkui is reputed to come from the district of Taiping. So Taiping Houkui can be considered a ‘tea appellation’ similar to e.g. Brunello di Montalcino or Saar Riesling. Literally, the name is translated as Monkey King (several other Chinese teas were once allegedly picked by monkeys).

Houkui has a very special and spectacular appearance. While most top-quality green tea from China is made from very small leaves and buds (following the assumption that the youngest leaves yield the best tea), Houkui has huge leaves. They often reach 5 cm in length (and are said to exceed 15 cm before drying); this is due to the used tea varietal, not a lower grade of tea (in fact, the first two tender leaves are used, sometimes with a bud). They are rolled into a flat blade style, a bit like Longjing, but are greener, and show a distinctive chequered pattern left by the woven cloths used for rolling the leaves. For an excellent summary of Houkui, see here.

The following are tasting notes from a side-by-side brewing (3g of leaf for approx. 85ml water) of two Houkuis. The Taiping Houkui (hereafter ‘A’) was purchased from a Polish internet teashop, eHerbata, and cost the equivalent of 15 € per 100g. The second tea, 2008 Supreme Houkui (‘B’), is from Dragon Tea House ($26 / 100g).

Dry leaf:
A: Typical chequered leaf, greenish but also a fair bit of light brown: honestly doesn’t look like the freshest 2008 harvest. Aroma is quite distinctive: button mushrooms, followed by a thicker, almost chocolatey impression.

Taiping Houkui from eHerbata.

B: An obviously high leaf quality, mostly dark green on colour, long, with relatively little damage to leaves. Aroma is a quite intense impression of cooked spinach, plus some chestnutty notes reminiscent of Longjing (the latter aroma reinforced by warming leaves).

2008 Supreme Houkui from Dragon Tea House.

Tasting notes (brewings of 60s @ 80C, 45s @ 85C, 90s @ 85C):
A: Lid aroma is unremarkable, dusty and chewy. Also a mildly unappetizing brownish colour. I get a bit of metallic character on palate but not bad, with a good moment of vegetal-grassy intensity (vaguely reminiscent of lower-grade sencha). Quite some grip on end, this tea tends to become very bitter if infused too long; be careful! Becoming rather bland by infusion #2, still with decent thickness and balance of flavour but undistinctive. #3 is OK but with almost no fruit left, and hollow at mid-palate. Leaves are mostly fragmented, there is little intact leaf, but a bit of twig.
B: Good lid aroma, nutty and chestnutty with good density. Clean yellow-greenish colour. A pleasant, ‘elegant’ nose, with a vegetal spectrum: snap peas, asparagus, hay, and a balanced, mildly chlorophile-bitterish finish. Increasingly beany flavour with time. Later brewings are notably less precise and complex now, with a more muted finish but still very satisfying, with good flavour. Anything beyond brewing #3 is rather bland and neutral but not unpleasant. Sources often indicate an ‘orchid’ note in the Houkui bouquet, but I found none here.

Overall:
A: Rather fragile, not terribly fresh, easily overbrewed but if handled carefully this gives a fairly elegant, vegetal, light-bodied but clean tea. A good 3 more steepings.
B: Classy tea here, and worth the highish price. A distinctive flavour profile, clean, good patience. Recommended.

Brewing #3; tea A on left, B on right. Colour is almost identical by now but A is a little browner.

An aside note on water temperature. In the above-quoted entry from La Galette de Thé, Philippe mentions pouring cold water on the leaves first, then adding the balance of boiling water in order to reach the desired 70–80C. I find this method highly unsatisfying. In my experiments, cold water invariably resulted in green teas tasting ‘watery’, vague and unintense, without the texture and sprightliness I expect from the best qualities. I much prefer to pour boiling water in a reserve pot and wait two or three minutes for the water to cool down, or pour from one empty (cool) pot into another and then on the tea. I find this an easy way to obtain water at 75–80C.

2008 Meng Ding Huangya

What is yellow tea? Not so obvious, apparently.

2007 Xizihao ‘8582’

A remembrance of the good old times when Xizihao tea cost only $30 (now more usually $100) per cake. A solid performer, ready to drink now.

Two lesser-known teas from Anxi

Tie Guan Yin challengers

Tie Guan Yin, from the Anxi district in China’s eastern province of Fujian, is one of the classic Chinese teas. But Fujian’s distinctive style of green (very lightly oxidised), rolled-leaf oolong can be produced with tea cultivars other than tie guan yin. Here I look at two such teas.

Huang Jin Gui
Merchant: Jing Tea
Brewed in: gaiwan
Dosage: 3.5g / 50ml
Dry leaf: Typical Anxi rolled leaf, although a little smaller in size than e.g. TGY. Pleasant grassy, floral scent.

Tasting notes:
20s: This appears a little overbrewed, showing in a concentrated yellow-green colour, and some tannic astringency on the palate. Aroma is Anxi-floral with a bit more grassiness and grapefruit peel pungency than a typical TGY. An assertive tea, fullish on the palate while keeping the green drive of the nose. Good tea here, but I would double the amount of water for this amount of leaf.
20s with 130ml water: Colour more into greenish. Floral but a little subdued (some leaf burn?). Palate less astringent, assertive, full-flavoured. Good quality here.
30s: Strangely weaker and flatter now, without the expressive force of the above brewings. Good vegetal length. Subsequent brewings are gradually losing intensity, but overall pleasurable.
Definitely a re-purchase at this price ($9 / 100g).

Competition Grade Se Zhong–Mao Xie
Merchant: Jing Tea
Brewed in: gaiwan
Dosage: 4g/120ml
Dry leaf: A typical Anxi rolled leaf. Aroma is also typical: grassy, vegetal, but also highly floral and exotic-fruity. Nice.

Tasting notes:
25s: Lid aroma is again very floral (pink and white lilies came to mind). Idem but slightly less precise in cup. An elegant, fruity-floral tea, this seems less structured than the typical TGY.
30s: Lid aroma now more vegetal, less floral. Despite being less structured than many Anxi oolongs this is an assertive tea with very good ‘palate presence’.
40s: Much as brewing #2, good length, good personality, this has all to please. The open leaves seem thinner and less serrated than a TGY, and are almond-shaped; clearly this is another varietal:

60s: Similar to above, floral and fresh but palate a little fading now. Overall expression is still quite good.
60s: A delightful brewing, mild but flavourful.
3m: Still a vestige of the high-pitched flowery aroma and enough flavour on palate to be interesting. Which is not bad patience for a rolled oolong IME.
Overall this is firmly Anxi in style but a little less structured and sweeter than a TGY. Excellent tea. And at $12 per 100g, it is also brilliant value.

2008 Tie Guan Yin ‘Red Dot’

Tea overdose

I can’t give a very analytic description of this tea. I got a 20g pack from Alex Fraser of London’s Eastteas, one of my favourite tea merchants. (If I understood well, Alex has two qualities of Tie Guan Yin at the moment; the superior one is marked with a small red dot at the upper right-hand corner of the packs).

I then used half of the pack when exiled with a heavy flu at my parents’ house, being the only quality tea I had available. Then I put the remaining leaves into a canister which I forgot to label. Seeing how little there was left I put the whole lot in a gaiwan. That was quite an amount of leaf! The tea came out very concentrated but as the leaves expanded it was impossible to put the lid on.

Roughly 10g of dry leaf – too much for a gaiwan!

I decided to transfer the leaves into a ~300ml ceramic pot. All I can say is that this is not a ‘wow’ tea, and perhaps doesn’t deliver for its high price (IMHO, few expensive teas do), but it surely has a lot of presence and power. Nose is very clean, showing high grade material, although perhaps not as floral and narcotic as some other TGYs. A sign of quality, this is not easily overbrewed even with a lot of leaf (with some fragmented). There is a hint of structure but never bitterness. Throughout a good 12 infusions I bathed in this tea’s milky texture and leafy presence. No wonder it cured my flu in a day.

Two older teas from Yunnan Sourcing

Both were ordered as 25g samples (not whole cakes) from Yunnan Sourcing.

1998 CNNP Green Wrapper Brick

The 1998 CNNP Green Wrapper brick is a tricky tea to brew. Leaves are small and compression is very tight. With 45s, 45s, 1m, 5m in gaiwan, I got a lightish yellow colour and disappointingly little intensity (aroma cup showed a generic caramel note, and nothing else, in a tea that admittedly is a decade old). Flavour is dominated by bitterness with little fruit. Another couple of sessions in various clay pots (with 20s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 60s, 90s and then at will) resulted in a semi-coloured tea (mostly moving from dark orange to medium amber), with a pleasant first infusion showing a middle-aged brown tobacco note, and an increasingly bitter ku drive through infusion #2–5 (I think due to the mashed leaf of which this is exclusively composed). Later (provided infusions are kept moderate at 60–90s) this reaches a good balance, with some minerality at mid-palate and less bitterness.
Overall I think this has some content, but is unbalanced. On the positive side, there is good patience: look at the darkish colour of the 6th infusion here:

With patience comes tannic power, of which this tea has exceedingly much. It takes a finer brewing technique than mine to balance it with properly intense fruit. Looking at the wet leaf, it is pretty much a mashed mess. There is hardly an intact leaf, and with this level of fragmentation (which BTW is typical of the late 1990s, I think) it is hardly surprising to find so much bitter tannins in the brew.

1998 CNNP Green Wrapper Brick, after 11 minutes total infusion

The second tea is the 2000 Yiwu from Long Yuan Hao factory. As tightly compressed as the above, the dry leaf is showing a little brown and evolved but leaf grade seems quite a bit higher than in the above, with some tips.

Brewed with 5g in 150ml Da Hong Pao pot. 10s: Light beige-apricot colour. A pleasant nose of wood and brown tobacco, with a degree of depth and complexity. Quite unbitter, with a typically middle-aged woodsy character on palate, and good length. Classy and quite clean (no shicang in sight) if not enormously expressive. 15s: Almost identical to above. 40s (pushing to see how much bitterness appears): Colour is still a little short of brown. Indeed a little bitterish on end, with good tobacco-scented length, crowning what is a good medium-bodied, well-construed tea with some mountain leaf content. Satisfying no doubt, with a cleaner, airier profile than many similarly aged cakes from major companies. Length, in fact, is superior. 1m, 2m: This has a lot of power, staying coloured, concentrated, flavourful and really quite bitter throughout these infusions.
The wet leaf confirms the comparison with the 1998s above: while still rather fragmented, this 2000 shows more high-grade intact leaf.

2000 Long Yuan Hao Yiwu, after 10 minutes total infusion

Interestingly, both teas seem rather young for their age, and very dry-stored. And for their age, they are rather fairly priced: $32 and $58 per bing, respectively.

1990s Loose Old Bush Yiwu

A truly wild tea

This tea was kindly included as a free sample in my last order from Tea Masters. Interestingly, it is not reviewed on their website, and so I have no information whatsoever as to its provenance – perhaps Stéphane can step in and enlighten us.

Brewed in: gaiwan

Dosage: 4g / 120ml

Dry leaf: Long twisted yancha-like leaves. Nothing very special to their appearance but a really unique smell: dirt, dirt, dirt, a bit of dust and dirty stones. I personally find this quite repulsive.

Tasting notes: 20s: Judging by the colour – a medium deep reddish-brown – and aroma this is rather from the end of the 1990s, surely showing younger (and probably drier-stored) than the 1989 Jiang Cheng or 1990 brick from Tea Masters. Aroma is calm and less repulsive than that of the dry leaf, earthy, a little beany. Palate is unaggressive, echoing the nose with a bit of wet earth and some bean-like chewiness. No ku apparent on the finish. Finish is quiet, energy rather calm, not particularly warming (and this was tasted during a wave of –20C temperatures here in Poland). Less dirt-driven in taste than my first attempt (un-TNed) in a clay pot.
30s: Minor shift in aroma, now stonier and dirtier, less earthy, a little more intense. This is really very elemental tea. Flavour is also a little more pungent. No sweetness, no vegetal or spicy notes, this tea is dominated by earth.

Later brewings of 1m, 1m, 2m are very enjoyable (if still aromatically rather challenging), with a calmer and lighter expression.

5m: This is now quite weak, and I finish the session.

Overall this is – for me – a striking tea. It is about the dirtiest- and earthiest-smelling sample I have ever had, but not in the meaning of wet storage (in fact it shows almost none). There is something quite wild and elemental about this, yet it also manages to show smooth and harmoniously aged. I would be curious to learn more about this one. At 68 € per 100g it is surely not cheap, but then there is the benefit of tasting an aged tea without having to order a whole 357 or 400g cake.