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| Are you cutting back?I'm just curious about this. Everybody knows that we're in the middle of a financial meltdown, with the credit markets in chaos and LIBOR rates that are through the roof, banks (or in the case of Iceland, countries) that are nearly insolvent and fear gripping everybody from Asia to South America.
Now, tea was an essential in a Chinese household, but much less so for an American or a European one. So my question to you is -- are you cutting back on tea consumption/purchases? How about teaware, which is, obviously, much less of an essential good. Or is it more or less the same as before?
Just wondering as a former student of economics if this sort of thing trickles down to tea consumption at all. | | |
| American Hao 2008One of the things we do when we blog is to talk about teas we've tried. I have been slowly drifting away from that, as I find less and less interest in dissecting a tea. The reasons are manifold, but mostly it's because my opinion is only that -- my opinion. You have to try a tea for yourself before it means anything. The same is probably true too for teapots, teaware, water, and all that other stuff. I might like something, but a big, big caveat that runs through the entire blog is -- just because I like it doesn't mean you'll like it.
Sometimes though, it turns into a bit of a service. Jim at Puerhshop recently contacted me and offered to send me a sample of his new tea. The tradeoff, of course, is that I'll talk about it. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll talk about it positively, but I'll talk about it. If it's something that I think is worth looking into and letting other people know about, I will be happy to do so.
The tea in question is his "American Hao" or Meiguo Hao. The name might sound slightly unfortunate -- it is a mix of the Chinese usage of "Hao" as a trademark name, and the obvious connotation that this is done by somebody from the US of A. Interestingly enough, the wrapper on the cake does not say anything like it -- instead, it says "Mengsa Yuanyexiang" with the date 2008, April 20th stamped on it. Mengsa Yuanyexiang evokes the name of the now slightly famous (or infamous) cake that has been sold through a number of channels and which made some people a pretty penny when it got famous. These days you can find all sorts of cakes named Yuanyexiang... Supposedly, the 200g and 400g versions are the same thing, just different sized cakes.
The name of a tea of course doesn't really say much of anything, especially those of you who are more experienced with puerh and know that what's on the label rarely, if ever, matches anything within the wrapper. How does the tea hold up?
The tea is a somewhat typpical looking young puerh, green with some tips, not too broken. When it hits the warm pot it smells a bit like a green tea would, but I've found that to be quite typical these days of puerh made. The first thing I noticed is that it brews cloudy -- I tried the tea three times, using the whole sample Jim sent me, and it has brewed cloudy every time. Cloudiness is not, in and of itself, a problem. From what I have learned, it might imply issues with humidity and should clear up with some time resting.
The first time I brewed the tea, I made it a bit too strong, and the tea turned a little sour and too bitter. The next two times I adjusted, and I think overall, the tea is a bit understated -- nothing too fancy, nothing too interesting, and nothing too obviously bad either. There were ome signs of activity, but it's not too pronounced. It did, however, make my stomach ache a little, but that's almost par for the course these days. It might be slightly on the green side of things, but again, that seems to be more common than ever. You can tell I don't drink much young puerh anymore. My stuff have been sitting in a box waiting to age.
I think this is, personally, not my type of tea, but then, lots of young puerh are not my kind of tea, so that's really not saying much. I do think it might be something worth a try, given its price point and interest factor. | | |
| Progression through a cupI've been largely confined to drinking grandpa style these days, and almost always it's my aged baozhong that's the tea of choice. The key to doing this right is to keep at least a little tea left (and not empty out the cup) and refill -- otherwise the cup gets too weak, and it's game over.
Interesting notes that comes out are -- raisins. A lot of it. It smells the strongest when I am just starting out -- the tea smells like a box of raisins that just got opened. After a while, it descends into a more generic "tea" taste and will remain that way for the rest of the day -- endless refills, and the tea still delivers a nice cup. You just have to wait a little longer.
Great for when you are too preoccupied to do a proper round of tea. | | |
| BiluochunOn the rocky cliff of the Jade Snail Peak of the East Mountain in Dongting, there are a few wild tea trees. Every year, locals would carry bamboo baskets to pick the leaves for daily use, and have done so for decades with nothing uncommon. One year during the Kangxi period, they went again at the usual time, but this year there were more leaves than usual, and the bamboo baskets were overfilled, so they had to carry some leaves in their arms. The leaves, because of the body heat, started to emit a strong aroma, and the tea pickers all said "xia sha ren aroma". "Xia sha ren" is the local dialect of the Wu region, and so the tea came to be named as such.* Thereafter, every year when it was time to harvest the tea, the locals all take a bath and go en masse, and instead of carrying them in bamboo baskets, they carry it by bare hands in their bosom. A local called Zhu Yuanzheng was especially skilled in the ways of making this tea, and tea coming from his family is renowed as particularly good, selling for 3 taels of silver per jin. In 1699, when the imperial tour arrived at Lake Tai, (an official) Song bought this tea as a tribute. The emperor Kangxi thought the name is not very elegant, and thus changed it to Biluochun (Jade Snail Spring). Thereafter, local officials always bought it as tribute, and people who sell it often use fake tea to fill as real. After Yuanzheng died, the method of making the tea was lost and even the real Biluochun was no longer as good.
* Xi sha ren almost literally means "very frightening -- to the point of death"
The above story is taken from an early 18th century text -- some random jottings of a scholar who was talking about various subjects. A few interesting tidbits for the tea drinkers among us -- the fact that biluochun was, in fact, slightly pre-fermented before kill green, that the trees were wild, that it was really quite expensive (3 taels of silver was a lot of money) and that there was already fake tea running around back in 1700.
Food for thought. | | |
| Busy...I've been rather busy trying to pretend to write, so things like blogging and, really, drinking tea the usual way, has taken a bit of a back seat.
That doesn't mean I'm not drinking tea -- plenty of it, in fact. I've been downing my aged baozhongs in a mug, which has all the benefits of an easy to brew tea that will never get bitter, while having none of the problems of, say, a black that will make my head hurt.
Now all I need is a tea that will make me work faster.... | | |
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