Yangqing Hao - 2006 Chawangshu and 2004 Tejipin sheng puerh

There have been a lot of teas I have been wanting to write about for a while.  My indecision to pick one to write about has resulted in another long absence of any posts at all.  Then today I had one of those teas that struck me as quite amazing and I had to write some notes.  Today I had the 2006 Chawangshu raw puerh from the Taiwanese puerh boutique Yangqing Hao.

Yangqing Hao 2006 Chawangshu - Wrapper picture courtesy of my friend "Blerrp" who has split this massive 500g cake with several people, which is how I got my sample.

Like a lot of people in the west who are just now learning of Yangqing Hao, I first heard about it through TeaDB.  James, and guest contributor Grill, wrote some extensive and fairly scientific comparison notes and a report* that paint a nice profile of most of the Yangqing Hao offerings which span back to 2004.  I am also thankful for the efforts of a man named Emmett who coordinates group buys of Yangqing Hao teas to western customers since this tea is difficult to buy outside of Taiwan or China.   Emmett is not employed by Yangqing Hao nor is selling tea his full time job; he is a puerh enthusiast who recognized the high quality of Yang's teas and the limited availability of such quality teas in the western market and has been coordinating the group buys in an effort to help bring these teas to more people.

I have sampled about five different Yangqing Hao teas now and so far one consistent finding I notice is that the dry leaf aroma is very clean.  Although the area of Taiwan where these teas are stored is considered hot and humid, these teas seem to have a good balance; enough heat and humidity to allow an aged taste to start to develop within 10 years and clean enough to allow some "dry" characteristics to develop such as leather, honey, and apricot aromas.  Those are characteristics I love in semi-aged sheng.

The 2006 Chawangshu is from an area near Gua Feng Zhai.  This area is difficult to find on Google Maps, but if you find the Yunnan province of China and zoom in to the southern most prefecture, Xishuangbanna, and then look at the eastern part to find the Yiwu area of Mengla county, Chawangshu is here very close to the Laos border.

Chawangshu in southern Yunnan province of China, eastern Xishuangbann, Yiwu area.

The dry leaf shows a nice dark brown appearance and loose compression which allows the leaves to be separated with minimal breakage.  Upon hydration, the clean leathery aroma is still present and a layer of honey aroma emerges.

Yangqing Hao 2006 Chawangshu

I tasted the initial rinse of the leaves and found it to be a bit weak, so for my next infusion I added another couple seconds.  Even still the tea was not very strong.  I was beginning to have some doubts about this tea until the following infusion where I again added a couple more seconds and that is when it started to come out beautifully.  After having consumed a lot of younger raw puerh earlier this week I was still in flash-brew mode, but the age on this tea has rounded everything out and flash brewing is not necessary for getting the best extraction.  When brewed properly the liquor pours up a crystal clear vibrant orange color that almost glows in the cup.

Between mouthfeel, taste, aftertaste, and overall experience, this tea performs very well in all aspects and none of those areas are lacking or showing any significant flaws.  The mouthfeel is very thick, almost syrupy.  It's a tea you nearly feel the need to chew when you take a sip.  It has a coating effect and leaves a pleasant layer of taste behind on the mouth and tongue.  A  nice level of astringency creates a good active feeling on the sides of the tongue without being drying.

The clean leathery notes from the aroma come through in the taste accompanied by a slight earthy and talc/chalk taste, in a good way.  An herbal component of the flavor balances well with the sweet apricot fruitiness.  In the very late steeps it starts to get an interesting leafy flavor-- not like steamed spinach or fallen autumn leaves, but fresh tree leaves.

This leaf taste is interesting because of the tea age and level of fermentation and oxidation of these leaves.  The age taste dominated throughout the entire session until the end when I pushed the steeps hard which is when the fresher leaf taste appeared.  This perhaps is why I like sheng around the 10 year age so much because there's still a hint of youthful leaf that adds a bit of complexity.  Another interesting observation about the Chawangshu leaf is that the leaves and stems are very hearty and thick.  I believe this is possibly an indication of old arbor slower growing trees.

Yangqing Hao 2006 Chawangshu

The leather flavors continue in the aftertaste and the tea provides a wonderful delayed hui gan.  In the middle infusions the aftertaste becomes a bit menthol-like and has an nice cooling effect in the throat.  This contrasts to a slightly warming feeling that I get deeper down.  This is a great tea to enjoy slowly and calmly as it provides a relaxing experience.  There are no sudden dropoffs with this tea and it continues to provide a very generous amount of steeps all day long.  I easily ran my 1.7L kettle dry with this 5g session using an 85ml gaiwan.

Yangqing Hao 2006 Chawangshu

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To try to get a little more perspective on this tea I had a meal and then later in the day I decided to brew the 2004 Yangqing Hao Tejipin raw puerh.  The material for the Tejipin is also from the Yiwu area, though it is unclear exactly where, which is not a bad thing.  It's common to see a lot of teas that claim to be from one specific village or even one specific group of trees, but often a really great tea will be made from a blend of various places near an area or even among several different areas, and characteristics from each area can add various qualities to the overall brew.

Yangqing Hao 2004 Tejipin

The 2004 Tejipin dry leaf aroma is similar to the 2006 Changawangshu, but it is slightly more earthy.  Could this be due to an extra two years of age or is it a characteristic of the leaf?  The wet leaf aroma again is similar to Chawangshu, but the Tejipin leaf aroma has a bit more tartness to it.

The additional tartness follows into the taste as well.  Tejipin has some leather characteristics in the taste, but is a bit more earthy and slightly acidic.  Wood flavors are present, but not of the cedar variety that I prefer.  Despite the tartness, it does have a certain creamy characteristic to it too which keeps it balanced.

When comparing the mouthfeel of Tejipin to Chawangshu, the differences are quite apparent, but difficult to say if I prefer one over the other.  The Tejipin is creamier, and the Chawangshu is thicker.  The Chawangshu coats the entire mouth, but the Tejipin seems to coat more on the top of the tongue.  While the Chawangshu had noticeable activity on the sides of the tongue, it lacked much activity in the back of the throat; the Tejipin has a very active feel on the back of the tongue and in the throat but nowhere else.  It seems that the mouthfeel of these two teas are like two similar adjacent puzzle pieces that fit well together without much overlap, but each piece alone is large enough to show its own satisfying picture.

The energy found from drinking Tejipin is very deep reaching into the body, deeper so than the Chawangshu and has less of an upper cooling effect to balance the deeper warming nature of the tea.

Yangqing Hao 2004 Tejipin

One possibly significant difference I see between the Tejipin and the Chawangshu is the leaf characteristics.  The Tejipin seems to be comprised of smaller leaves and an abundance of small buds, which seemed to be less numerous in the Chawangshu.  Of course it's possible that these 5g sessions that I had today of each tea may not be representative of the entire composition of the cake, but a higher ratio of the Tejipin leaf just seems a to be taken from a bit younger parts of the tea plant, though I cannot conclude anything about the overall age of those tea trees.

After these very enjoyable sessions with these two Yangqing Hao teas today I wanted to get some notes and thoughts down and share them.  Though I do admit that with teas this good I would really do them more justice if I had several more sessions with them beyond this.  This write-up today is more of a first impressions summary.  Although both of these are wonderful, if I were shopping for a full cake and only buying one, I would buy the 2006 Chawangshu.  But so far I have found a few other Yangqing Hao offerings also very good, and I'm curious and hopeful to eventually try a few more.


*Part 2 of TeaDB's Yangqing Hao tasting report: https://teadb.org/the-cult-of-yang/

Link to Emmett's group guy page which lists several of Yangqing Hao's teas: http://www.yangqinghao.com/

White2Tea - 2015 Pin (Raw Puerh)

When White2Tea first shared a teaser image of the mao cha they were using for an upcoming sheng cake, I was quite confused by the apparent nei fei in the image.  The nei fei (a small inner label pressed into a puerh cake) had a reddish blob that appeared to be a pair of lips. But knowing that this is White2Tea, which never fails to amaze me with their unique style and creativity, I decided that this was probably not an optical illusion, and it was best to just accepted the high probability that I actually was seeing a mouth and hope the meaning of that would be clear later on.

I later learned that this new cake is named Pin, and the outer wrapper has not one but three colored blobs that are, without a doubt now, mouths.  I'm sure anyone with a good understanding of Chinese probably got a chuckle out of this, but the rest of us need some explanation from TwoDog.

White2Tea - 2015 Pin sheng puerh 200g cake

According to TwoDog, the Chinese word for "mouth" is "kou" and represented by the chinese radical 口.  If you have three of these radicals in a triangle configuration, you get 品, the word "pin."  The word "pin" is Chinese for "to savor" and he further explains that it could be applied to a drink, such as tea, to mean, "drinking with intent." Further he explains that the phrase "pin cha" (品茶) "literally means 'to taste tea.'"  This wrapper has even deeper meaning than that though.  The triangle theme is also represented in the red/pink background which is actually a triangle when the wrapper is unfolded.  The three mouths or three points/sides/angles of the triangle represent the tea material used to make Pin, which is a blend of Lincang material from 2013, 2014, and 2015.

Aww, the nei fei got flipped over during pressing.

Blended Lincang material from 2013, 2014, and 2015. 

The 200g cake as a whole shows a beautiful mosaic of colors.  This is partially due to the fuzzy white buds mixed with the fuller leaves, but is also likely a result of the blended material of different ages.  The older material was stored by TwoDog in Menghai to mellow out a bit in contrast to the young 2015 material.  The compression is a good "medium" -- not so loose that it can be pulled apart by hand, but loose enough that a tea pick can separate it without doing too much damage.

White2Tea - 2015 Pin sheng puerh

I wasn't entirely sure the best way to brew this tea and I'm still experimenting, but so far I have been using water around 200 degrees F which I sometimes use for younger raw puerh.  Of course this one also has components from 2014 and 2013, so going with water right off a boil might not be too risky.  I have stuck with my usual 5g per 80ml gaiwan for now and started my first few infusions around three to five seconds or so.

White2Tea - 2015 Pin sheng puerh

Maybe it’s because I just got over a mild cold and can breathe better today than any day this past week, but the wet leaf aroma of this tea is very strong, and although it does have a “young raw puerh” aroma, it seems much deeper than some, likely due to the older material also used.  Imagine autumn leaves coated in dark honey-- that may sound strange, but an aroma like that in a tea is amazing.

The honey colored clear liquor is very viscous and has a thick mouthfeel-- it is one of those teas that you almost feel the need to chew while drinking it.  The sides of the tongue feel some mild astringency at first, and then a couple minutes later the entire mouth feels a subtle tingly sensation.  It's suiting that a tea with three mouths on the wrapper would have such an active mouthfeel.

The overall taste of Pin is very well balanced.  It has a general herb-like flavor similar to oregano accompanied by grassy and hay notes, and early on it also has a hint of clean smoke which seems to fade in the middle and late infusions.  After the first three or so infusions the flavors become even more balanced and stay very consistent with each subsequent infusion.  These middle infusions bring out a pleasant sweetness that contrasts well with the young sheng bitter bite.  This is again one of those teas where I lost count of how many infusions I got out of it, but my 1.7L electric kettle was giving me a "Low H2O" warning before I was finished.   Well balanced flavors and many consistent infusions seems to be a great indicator of high quality material.

Beautiful deep olive green leaf color.  I broke this selection from a tighter part of the cake but was still able to leave many leaves mostly intact.

Beyond the taste is a wonderful aftertaste which further indicates the high quality of material used to make Pin.  The aftertaste first retains the hint of smoke and herbal characteristics found earlier, but then blossoms into a nice tea perfume hui gan that lingers in the mouth for several minutes.  I should also mention that the cha qi from this tea was quite noticeable when I drank it.  This is certainly a great tea to drink with intent and savor, and I'm very curious to see how this one will taste many years down the road.  

Pin was released in November to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the White2Tea monthly tea club, but is also for sale in the White2Tea 2015 raw puerh lineup; sample sizes also available.  More details can be found here: http://www.white2tea.com/tea-shop/2015-pin/

A Perfect Day with Whispering Sunshine (2015) from Crimson Lotus Tea

I'm not too picky when it comes to describing nice weather.  I want comfortable temperatures, no storms, and comfortable levels of humidity.  I do get picky though when describing the weather on a perfect day, which includes temperatures in the low 70's or upper 60's, low humidity, a gentle breeze, and generally blue skies but with just enough clouds to keep it interesting and give some intermittent shade.   These are stereotypical spring or fall days in my opinion.  In Kentucky we truly do experience all four seasons, though I often wish spring and fall would last longer than they do; if we do happen to get a perfect day, then I want to make sure I fully enjoy it.

We recently had one of these perfect days, and the timing could not be any better because my Crimson Lotus Tea order has just arrived with their 2015 teas.  On this perfect day I knew exactly what tea I wanted to brew.  Though based on nothing more than a non-scientific gut feeling (since I had not tried any of these new teas yet), I knew that the perfect tea for this perfect day would be Whispering Sunshine.

Crimson Lotus sourced the material for Whispering Sunshine in person earlier this year and pressed it in China before returning home to Seattle.  They report that the leaves were harvested by hand in Bai Ying Shan (Lincang) and hand processed into mao cha by tea producers in the He Tao village.  Crimson Lotus chose the name for this tea because of Bai Ying Shan's high elevation which exceeds 2000 meters; so high that the "tea trees were close enough to hear the gentle voice of the Sun."

On this perfect day I found a long extension cord (despite discouragement from the kettle manufacturer) so I could set up a nice gongfu session outside on the patio.  The birch tree in the yard provided some cool shade yet the gentle breeze moved through the branches just enough to allow a few rays of warm sunshine to float down to the ground and dance across the tea table.  I couldn't think of a more perfect way to admire this tea.

The compression of this sheng puerh cake appears pretty light from the outside, but upon further picking it seems to be more dense than first though.  This may be a good balance of being loose enough to pick apart without doing too much damage yet tight enough to help lock in some of the fresh aroma, though after an initial rinse it still may be helpful to tease apart some of the tighter leaf clusters to help with more consistent brewing.

I have brewed this more than once by the time of editing this writing, and I found that using water around 200F/93C degrees results in almost no bitterness, though near boiling will give it a bite that some people prefer.  I also found that if you want low bitterness yet strong body, adding an extra gram or two of leaf than usual in addition to using 200F water works out great.

Whispering Sunshine brews up a yellow liquor that is slightly cloudy due to leaf fuzz, and if the light catches it just right it can give off a pleasant warm golden glow.  The mouthfeel is soft yet thick enough to coat the mouth with lots of flavor.

Although the initial taste has a hint of smoke from the wood-fire processing, the tea overall is extremely clean and fresh tasting.  The amount of leaf used will make a difference, but Whispering Sunshine has a very light and delicate flavor.  It has some vegetal characteristics, however not that of bitter leafy vegetables but that of green beans fresh from the garden and sweet peas.  This is beginning to sound like the flavor profile of a green tea, and the first thing I thought of when drinking Whispering Sunshine was that it reminds me of fresh Huang Shan Mao Feng green tea, with a floral aftertaste and honey sweetness similar to a high mountain oolong and a hui gan you would expect from a high quality puerh.  As the tea cools it reveals a subtle petroleum taste like that of a Riesling white wine, and at one point the freshness and cleanliness of this tea simply made me think of clean linens hanging on a line outside to dry in the afternoon sun.

There are some puerhs that are hard to judge (at least for me) when they are this young because they could be fairly bitter and strong and are hopefully going to improve after years of age, and then there are others which are extremely good right away and may be best consumed now rather than later.  To me, Whispering Sunshine has a perfect "drink me now" flavor, and I imagine that I will probably end up drinking through the entire 200g cake before having a chance to see how it will do over time.

Is this the perfect tea for a perfect day?  I believe the tea alone has the ideal flavor profile for a perfect spring or fall day, so yes, it must be, but all the additional information that Crimson Lotus has shared about this tea is really what solidifies the distinction.  If you have been following Crimson Lotus through their various social media accounts, you know that they gave weekly if not daily updates about their travels throughout China earlier this year.  I may never get a chance to visit Lincang, but I am very thankful that Crimson Lotus shared photos and stories while they stayed in places such as the the He Tao village.  The more we can learn about the tea that we drink, the better we can understand the cha qi held within its leaves.

When I sit on my patio and drink Whispering Sunshine on a perfect day I feel the calm Kentucky breeze on my face, but when I close my eyes I imagine myself standing on the steep northern slopes of the Bai Ying mountain.  The rustling leaves I hear may be my birch tree behind me or my maple trees that were planted about 20 years ago when my house was built, but maybe I'm hearing the leaves of ancient tea trees that have been growing in a remote forest long before I or anyone I know was alive.  Is cha qi simply the energy we get from caffeine and theanine, or is it the energy represented as experiences that ancient trees have accumulated over centuries of growth while watching the world change around them?  Perhaps a part of cha qi is simply an acknowledgement that energy has been transferred to us through the consumption of the tea; an energy that was transferred to the leaves themselves through chloroform, photosynthesis, and rays of whispering sunshine.

Link to Crimson Lotus Tea: http://crimsonlotustea.com
Link to Whispering Sunshine.

2005 Manzhuan Raw Puerh - Xiangming Factory

2005 Manzhuan Raw Puerh - Xiangming Factory

(note:  This is a re-hosting of my review of this tea which I wrote in March 2015 on Reddit /r/tea)

I picked up this aged raw pu-erh from White 2 Tea (unfortunately it is out of stock now).  This was pretty much a blind buy, but I had heard good things about this one from TeaDB.org and decided to get it.  I’m not able to read the information on the wrapper, but White2Tea says:

Manzhuan mountain is near Xiangming, located west of Yiwu. The label reads “Manzhuan Early Spring” and was pressed at Xiangming Longxing factory, near Xikong, in April of 2005.

2005 Manzhuan Raw Puer - Xiangming Factory

The 357g cake appears to have good quality leaves that are not tightly compressed which makes it fairly easy to break up without doing too much damage.  I was originally not going to say anything about the aroma of the dry leaves, but one interesting note that came to mind from them is a hint of watermelon.  Not a strong artificial watermelon, but the nice subtle watermelon aroma that I get when I’m eating actual watermelon.

Setup: I ended up using about 7g per roughly 120ml and that worked great.

My first infusion was about 10 seconds with water right off a boil and subsequent infusions were around 15-45 seconds then longer as it tapered off.  It seems like it would be very difficult to over steep this tea.  I felt that I could be very relaxed in the time between pouring the water in the pot and pouring the tea into the cup and always get a proper tasting brew.

The liquor is a nice light to medium orange color and very clear.   The wet leaves and tea have a really nice sweet aroma of butterscotch and apricot with distant floral notes and only very slight clay-like earthy notes, which may have been enhanced by the clay pot itself.

The mouthfeel of this tea is very viscous.  At first I did not detect any astringency at all, but then began to notice a hint of it-- it’s the type of astringency that is actually welcomed and seems to awaken the taste buds a bit without being dominant.

The taste of the first one or two infusions is reminiscent of freshly fallen autumn leaves, and I imagine that drinking this at that time of year would greatly enhance the flavor.  A slight hint of smoke is present, but I hesitated to mention it because this is not a smoky tea at all.  The third and fourth steeps started to show the most floral aspects of this tea.  The floral notes that were distant in the aroma come through strong in the taste here-- not as the tea hits the tongue though, but it seems to mature as a nice dominant aftertaste that lingers in the mouth for several minutes between sips.  This tea is also very sweet and reminds me of honey and apricot.  I lost count of how many infusions I did, but the same leaves provided me with tea all day long today, and the very late infusions had a hint of citrus fruits and orange zest.

One thing that impressed me is how mellow this tea is right from the start.  I find that some puerh are very bold and intense early on even with extremely quick infusions, and it’s not until the 4th or 5th steeping that they start to deliver a more balanced flavor profile.  This tea though seems to deliver a nice balanced flavor right away, and it stays that way throughout the subsequent steepings.  You may interpret this to mean that the tea doesn’t provide a huge range of complexity, but I personally think this is a nice property to have when considering a tea that I would want to drink often, even on a daily basis.

Overall this tea is extremely smooth and mellow and does not have anything that comes off as harsh, extreme, or unusual; perhaps it is the 10 years of age that has allowed this tea to be so mellow.  (When I drink aged teas I wish could go back in time and taste them when they were young to compare!)

I also want to point out what this tea is NOT.  Compared to some other puerh, this tea is not real earthy, it does not not conjure images of tobacco and barns, it is not real medicinal or have a strong camphor taste (only very slight), and it does not have an "antique" flavor or tree bark flavor-- I do enjoy all those flavors in puerh, but sometimes it is nice to have one on the opposite end of the spectrum with its strong floral and fruity notes.  That sweeter flavor profile combined with the ease at which it is to brew this tea would make this a perfect introductory puerh or a puerh for someone to try who has tried other puerh before and didn’t like it.

(Although this tea is currently sold out, I have since found some teas that are similar to this and I will post about that at a future date.)