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.

Now with Extra Keng

I am packing for Beijing, and it is strange: England is current 9 degrees Celsius. I am wearing thick trousers, a waistcoat, and a jacket.   I almost wore gloves yesterday.  Snow is forecast for next week.

Meanwhile, Beijing is 32 degrees. Crazy.

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A cake provided generously by Keng, this is a Yangpinhao "Laobanzhang".

Needless to write, one has to be careful with "Laobanzhang".  Leaves from the village, by 2009, were (and remain) very expensive, and it is highly unlikely that a down-to-earth cake from Yangpinhao has much, if any, actual content deriving from the area that gives it its name.  Maybe the leaves came from Xinbanzhang, the neighbouring village, at best; maybe they came from the wider region surrounding the Banzhang area, perhaps more likely.

The large leaves of the cake, shown below, look very appealing to me, even as I sit at my desk and write about it in retrospect.  Some cakes demand to be picked up and brewed, and the images in this article give me such an impression.

Yangpinhao must be rather proud of this cake, because it contains something in the way of paraphernalia, as pictured below.  A certificate of tea inspection!  I hope that it passed the inspection...

We can rest easy; there is below recommended levels of all of your favourite toxins, according to this card.  Thank heavens for stamped certificates...

Rhubarb aside, the cake looks very pleasant indeed.

The compression is not-too-tight, not-too-loose, but just right.  I liberate leaves without damage.

The tea opens with a decent sweetness not entirely dissimilar to, would you believe it?, Laobanzhang.  Have the cheeky monkeys at Yangpinhao somehow pulled off the unlikely?  The familiar sweetness rapidly inflates into a large, stubborn (but enjoyable) kuwei [good bitterness], and it is here that we find the body of the tea, and the presumed majority of its leaves.

We must reel in the rhetoric, for this is, as we should expect from the brand, solid but not likely to change the world.  Yangpinhao makes no claim to such grandeur, however, and they seem to cut a good line between price and quality.  Trade-offs have been made, inevitably, but the result is quite respectable.

This tea is at the better end of "mainstream", and is commended by its solid huigan [returning sweetness], and the comforting sensations afforded by its caffeine / chaqi.  I can feel myself thawing.

Next time you're browsing Taobaowang, keep an eye open for Yangpinhao bargains.  You might be surprised at exactly how much strength you can get for a very reasonable price.  If you happen to live in Singapore, as does Keng, then strong-yet-simple examples like this are a very safe bet for longer-term storage.