1990 raw Fang Zhuan

1990 raw Fang Zhuan (square brick) from the Menghai region

From Teamasters

Featuring : A nice new teapot!

This is the first big chunk of aged pu I have yet owned - I think I'm allowed to say 1990 is aged without being shouted down too much.

This is what Stéphane has to say about it:
"1990 raw Fang Zhuan (square brick) from the Menghai region (not the factory). This brick contains leaves of all grades. It reminded me very much the smell of tree leaves in the fall, when they are still moist and dry on the ground in misty, foggy woods. It has some fresh taste as well and a strong qi. The mix of grades creates a tea that feels very broad and difficult to grasp. That's why I say there is fog in the forest."

I have had maybe ten sessions with this tea since I acquired it and took the pic you see above. I'm still not exactly sure what it's all about which corresponds nicely with Stéphane and his talk of fog in the forest.

It is an enjoyable and warming tea, that much I am sure of.

The 17 odd years of storage have imparted a shu like quality to the brew. It reminds me of the best bits of good quality compost, in a good way, which again may not be too far from the forest floor that Stéphane recalls. . There is almost nothing in the way of bitterness or astringency detectable. I do not have a great deal of experience with pu-erh but I would hazard a guess that this was not stored in the Sahara.

Considering this fang zhuan was bought for less than some 2007 beengs are selling for I am very happy with my purchase and it is infinity more drinkable than any sheng I have from the past few years, especially in these winter months. I suspect this is not a masterclass in 1990's sheng but it certainly is a tea glad I'm bought, I say bought as opposed to invested. Since I own very little pu-erh more than a few years old it also increases my pu-erh street cred to have a sizable chunk of 17 yr old sheng, not bad eh.

Yunnan Pu Er Cha Zhuan 2000 CNNP

This 2000 cooked brick was a sample sneaked into my last order from Stéphane at Teamasters. It was a good sized sample, the pic below shows the chunk minus my first attack.

First of all I'd like to copy and paste from Teamasters, hoping that Stéphane will not mind too much, as I'd like to keep this blog as a repository of information and not just a reminder of my brain farts:

"This Yunnan Pu Er Cha Zhuan was made in the year 2000. It contains cooked pu er leaves of grade 5. After 5 years of rest, it starts to be drinkable, says my pu er importer. We tasted it together on the very same day and I found it still has a very strong camphor taste (but without the freshness). The taste of fermentation is still very much there, which I don't find very pleasant. But the astringency is completely gone. It is very round and becomes mellow. I guess it will improve as it ages further, but can also already be drunk now in a large teapot. The low price makes it also quite attractive to start with cooked puer."

The most notable thing about this tea was the aroma from the moment the water hit the gaiwan. It was not so much that the aroma was far better or more pleasing than other teas, it was the fact that it seemed to engulf the room and my olfactory factory within seconds. I'm not a huge fan of shu pu but this really raised my expectations. The olfactory assault was very pleasant if not hugely interestingThe tea itself I found very comforting to drink. More akin to drinking a rick, sweet milky chai than the red wine experience I usually associate with shu. I did not encounter many off tastes or scents but to be honest I wasn't really paying too much attention. This is a tea to be enjoyed and gulped not, i suspect, over analysed.

Drinking this has nudged me one step closer to investing in a cheap yixing for shu. If it rounds and smooths something like this even more then it could be worth a few dollars over at Yunnan Sourcing. I get the feeling the small, white gaiwan is a little clinical for this kind of tea.

Anyway, I'm a little further along the road of appreciating shu which could potentially make my tea habit just a little more affordable.

Cheers Stéphane.

Song Zhong Dan Cong

2007 Song Zhong Dan Cong from Teaspring.

Description from Teaspring:

'Song Zhong Dan Cong are harvested from old tea trees descended from the Song Dynasty specimen. These trees grow in the high mountains of Feng Huang Shan, about 1,000 metres above sea level, where the soil, sun light, clean air and water provide an ideal environment for it to grow. Song Zhong is the best of Dan Cong variety and is considered a treasure in Chao An county, where only close friends and relatives are served with a tea of this grade. Like Pu-erh tea, this tea improves with age.'

and:

'the dried leaves are very aromatic even before they are steeped. The tea has a distinct orchid-like sweet taste and a pleasing aroma. Delicious and refreshing.'

First off to say that I would really like to taste an aged variety of this tea, I have not come across any aged dancong in my tea adventures. The more I read the more it appears there are aged varieties of almost all teas, not counting old tea I don't like at the back of my cupboard.

One curious thing about this tea is that in later brewing, beyond 14/15, the tea does not give the usual weak, sweet water taste but a rather more unpleasant, faintly bitter, water. This does not really detract from the tea, as all the brews that count and more are fantastic, although it does seem a little strange.

I have experimented gaiwan & yixing brewing with lots & little amounts tea all giving pleasing but different results. Using a large amount of leaf means the first few brews need to be lighting fast and even then are a little bitter. I don't mind a little bitterness, some of my guests do.

This tea, along with the Meghma oolong have drawn by far the most interest from non tea friends - hopefully soon to be tea drinking and sharing friends.

The tea itself is of large, full, twisted leaf and perhaps appears more roasted than it it is. The liquor has the wonderful smack of lychee I come to expect from dancong but brings with it a beautiful sweetness of caramel that comes through in both the taste and aroma with great strength. It has enchanted a fellow tea head so much that he been regularly begging for 'just a few grams to take home'. Luckily I have some just arrived in from Teaspring, hopefully of the same caliber.


This is the finest dancong I have yet tasted and is still very affordable. The only trouble is that it will simply encourage me to spend even more on the genre. Although the tea has delighted me in many ways it has also given me a new standard from which to evaluate this class and given me a good hint as to what I can expect in the future.

In the mean time I will have fun experimenting with the new batch and explaining to my friend that if he wants any more I'll send him the link.

Xue Ya

This white tea was bought from Sencha, a Tea Lounge I stumbled across in Newcastle.

From the pack:

Xue Ya "first flush" Special White Tea

A very special white tea, high in antioxidants, unforgettably fragrant. The first pickings from the Sheng Li tea fields.

I understand this tea is from northern Fujian province and is grown at high altitudes.

The leaves are long and twisted. Many are coated in a white downy jacket.

The taste is reminiscent of Japanese greens with a certain fishy element to it. The liquor is surprisingly full bodied when compared to something like Bai mu Dan.

The durability of the leaves was also rather impressive, certainly much more tea for my money than I expected.

The tea was a nice departure from the rather heavy flavors in the Kashanganj snow bud kindly sent from TChing and also from the rather lacklustre performance of Jing's zheng he bai mu dan that have been dominating my white tea drinking recently. This is certainly a tea a will keep an eye open for whilst browsing.

The cost, at £7.50/50 grams, is a little higher that I would like to pay for such tea but considering it was bought in Newcastle city center and not ordered over the internet from the other side of the world, I will not take issue with the cost.

Whilst the Sencha Tea Lounge was no my ideal venue for tea I believe it may be exactly what is required to help this nation pay attention to the tea it is drinking. The lounge appears to based around the well established coffee shop blueprint, selling cakes, sandwiches and hot food. Hopefully the coffee shop feel will prove more welcoming than the apparently daunting Chinese tea house. The sencha and oolong I had in the lounge were both served in one of those plastic gung-fu cha devices, a kind of pimped up cafeteria, which I now know I'm not very keen on.

Anyway, a resounding cheer to the folks at Sencha. It brightened up my day to find a tea shop selling decent quality tea on a main st in a major UK city and even more impressive was the fact that the place always seemed reasonably busy. On close inspection many people were drinking coffee, perhaps coffee in a tea lounge will be the first step on the road to national great tea addiction.

Anxi Winter Huang Jin Gui

Anxi Winter Huang Jin Gui

Blurb from Seb & Jing:

Origin : Anxi County, Fu Jian Province

Season : Spring 2006

Weight : 100 grams (3.53 ounces)

Huang Jin Gui is known as golden osmanthus in English and it is well recognized with its typical high osmanthus touch fragrance. This Huang Jin Gui is made using leaves from the first harvest in spring 2006 in Xi Ping area, Anxi County. Because of its remarkable and elegant high aroma and also its affordable price, this oolong tea has become one of the most wanted oolong teas from the Anxi County. This Huang Jin Gui oolong tea offers a lovely clear yellow liquor, Jing Tea Shop is offering a heavier wood charcoal baked Huang Jin Gui to oolong tea lovers. Different from the lightly baked ones, this Huang Jin Gui shows a deeper and thinner fragrance and also longer lasted brewing times. This is particularly due to the fact that the tea was baked using wood charcoal.

The clear yellow liquor that is thick yet smooth and combined with complex fragrance of a bouquet of osmanthus. If you like high aromatic and elegance of oolong teas, this Huang Jin Gui will be a good choice.

Last of the batch, lots of leaf, large gaiwan to accommodate leaf.

Leaves are less meaty than TGY, they appear to have suffered in appearance from processing, frayed edges and holes in leaf abound.

Slight spiciness detected in gaiwan aroma.

I can taste the smooth buttery creaminess I look for in Anxi oolong but it's definitely thinner, not just in aroma as mentioned above but also in mouth feel, and that's me using a lot of leaf.

I've been drinking this in work, with a makeshift thermal cup as a gaiwan and a mug for drinking from, thinking it was reasonable enough for office use but a little time, decent water(Scottish filtered) and my trusty gong fu gear really does improve this tea.

It would make more sense to test this against some of my TGY with both in a gaiwan but something is whispering in my ear to brew it in the yixing pot I usually use only for TGY and see how it fairs.

Pre Ming Zhe Jiang Mao Jian

Pre Ming Zhe Jiang Mao Jian
Everyday tea
Spring 2006 Harvest
Date - 1st May '07



Source – Jingteashop

Cost - $3.99/100g

Amount used – lots maybe 8g

Method – Cooled boiled water in glass jug, brita maxtra filtered tap water

Dry leaf – drab dark green, small twisted leaf.

Aroma in glass – sweet, thick, not too fresh, very pleasant

No rinse

1st infusion – short as possible

Wet leaf smells seaweedy/ seaside perhaps even salty.

Liquor colour – nice mellow, yellowy green

Drinking – unobtrusive pleasing taste, nothing harsh or bitter to be found, certainly no salt.

2nd infusion, same brew time, much stronger with edge of bitterness, a nice 'wake up juice' if you like early morning lu cha. I can imagine this tea being a good base for flavoured green tea if such a thing didn't unsettle me.

3rd infusion, slightly longer, 15secs, less bitterness, I notice some brown leaves swimming around in the jug – can't really complain for the price. I can't imagine they affect the taste too much, it must be around 100-1.

12/13th infusion – completely forgot about the tea and must have left for over 5 mins. The brew was quite strong and a little astringent, showing I could have gotten another few good brews if I wasn't so careless, although still very drinkable – akin to underestimating the water temp for the first steep.

It's not the prettiest of leaf to watch in the glass although I've been rather greedy with the amount of leaf to give them much room for dancing.

Overall – does exactly what it says on the vacuum sealed foiled pack, Everyday green tea. And it really is. I took everyday to mean low quality that I wouldn't mind every once in a while( I shouldn't really assume this after drinking their everyday Yunnan Gold) or even using as a base from which to test exceptional teas and while the latter may be true this really is a tea that I will enjoy drinking frequently. I suspect it may be a good candidate for my version of 'grandad style' – a few leaves in a small gaiwan, topping up frequently, used when I am very pushed for time. I use the gaiwan as I'm to lazy to learn to use my teeth as a filter, maybe one when I'm really stuck.