2003 Menghai "Yiya Yuancha"

It's a small world.  The tea-world is especially small, as I'm sure you know.  One of my teachums, ST, lives in Singapore.  "One of my friends is sending her daughter to law school at your university, and will be there next week", he wrote.

Days later, I find myself walking to the Lodge of my college to meet ST's friend and her daughter, recently arrived from Singapore.  Such a small world...

"We thought you were one of the students!" she said.  I take it as a compliment.  Before five minutes had passed, we were tucked up in the SCR drinking Assam.

ST had asked the two Singaporean ladies to pass on the above to me - and what a treat it is.  Thanks very much indeed!  This is a Menghai special production, with not a "Dayi" in sight.

It's also rather sizeable, as you can see from the comparison below with a standard Dayi.

The fresh scent of the tea gives away its "yinhao"-esque status, which you can see below.  The entire face of the cake is covered in tips, which run a little way into the cake, before turning into darker basis leaves.

Easily separated, it is a 50-50 blend of tips and darker leaves.

Sometimes, the darker leaves in yinhao blends are pre-oxidised, or "reddened", in the wulong manner.  Happily, that didn't happen here: the dark leaves are clean shengpu, which is quite unusual (and much preferred).  The freshness of the shengpu mixes well with the creaminess of the tips, and gives it a complexity that yinhao usually lacks.

The whole tea tastes rather like sweet pine, exactly as you'd hope a 6-year-old shengpu would taste.  While lighter than ordinary shengpu, due to the tips, it is exceedingly enjoyable.  Thanks to its enormous size, I don't see Lei and me finishing this in a hurry!

Thanks again to ST for the lovely gift, and welcome to his friend and daughter for the Michaelmas term.

College Choir

cold winter breeze
in the college choir
singing the wrong note

2001 Shuangjiang Mengku "Yuanyexiang" Revisited

Marvellous stuff, the thin-paper / dry-stored "YYX". Let's update my old notes by revisiting this old favourite: see you there.

2009 Guafengzhai Xiaobing

My good teachum GV has recently been in Hong Kong, where he has been (among his actual academic duties) drinking tea with another teachum of mine, and resident of the once-British trading port, KC. KC has some great tea.  KC has some really very great tea, in fact, and this is one of them: a small-scale production, made in the factory that presses Yichanghao cakes.

This is one of a few Guafengzhai [Gwa-fung-djai] cakes that I've had this year.  As you can see above in comparison with a standard Dayi (which are quite small), it's not a huge cake.  Below, a similar comparison with the denuded Guafengzhai.

This little fellow is firm and fruity.  The leaves, pictured below, are glossy and covered in down.

The perfectly yellow soup that you can see in the photograph below slowly turns orange in the air, as its highly active contents oxidise.  It has tons (and tons) of sweet, sugary scents in the aroma cup, and the flavour is big and bold: lots of sweet grass, butter, and a chunky huigan.  The yunxiang [after-aroma] is a highly complementary sweet tobacco.  It swells to dominate the mouth, and has an enduring sweetness that blows all of the cobwebs away at 4 a.m.

This is seriously enjoyable pu'er.

Plenty of kuwei [pleasant bitterness] remains in this cake, which is to its credit - and the credit of its producers.  Never fear a bit of kuwei, I say.  I'd rather have it bitter today and awesome tomorrow, than mildly enjoyable today and flat tomorrow.

I like a tea that is brave and honest enough to knock your socks off with its kuwei and yellow colour.  This tea contains both of those expressions of character, along with a marvellous complexity that will have me looking out for further examples from Guafengzhai.  (Remember, too, that the "alpha" cake in our recent tasting event was from the same village, which was my favourite of all five.)

Many thanks to KC for introducing Lei and me to these lovely little cakes.

Reading Haiku

reading haiku
I am surprised
by joyful tears