Behold the Beast of Bulang!!

What seems like an age ago and was only a year or so I received a shipment of sample Pu Erhs from The Essence of Tea owner, DC. The one stand out tea of that shipment was his 2009 Bulang, it was extremely bitter and challenging to drink. Unfortunately I was too late to grab myself a full bing as they had all been sold and my sample soon dwindled to nowt.

The beast returns though, in it's 2010 guise and this time I managed to snag myself a bing. Would it be as potent as last years? Well, with my parcel arriving in double time from DC, I launched myself upon it. Brewing 4.6 grams of leaf in a 100ml gaiwan I set about brewing this mighty tea once more. I consciously kept the steeping time shorter than 15 seconds and took my first sip.

Almost swearing, the soup was swallowed. This tea is an unadulterated assault of bitter lemon rind upon the palette! I cowered somewhat and reduced my second steep to just 10 seconds in an attempt to bring the beast upon some control. What followed was several rounds of myself locking horns with a formidable foe, again and again we clashed leaving me bewildering tea drunk and strongly moved by the chaqi. The huigan was most curious and quite unique, it felt like it wanted to express itself but was somehow shrouded.

Rather sheepishly I took the bing and set it into storage, I was soundly defeated. This tea fascinates me, it is several magnitudes more potent than anything else I have tried. I can only imagine how time will warp it's characteristics and ultimately tame the beast. I am really looking forward locking horns once again in a few months time.

Postcard Teas and the 100 year old Shui Xian

How nice it is to be able to blog again but why the absence? The truth is that I have been just too busy to sit down and enjoy my tea for months now. My life has become a non stop rollercoaster ride of work and study which has been exhausting and there is little light at the end of the tunnel. My medical studies have really come along and I feel like I am finally getting somewhere. Today though is a day of rest, I have fought off illness and long days to have this solitary day sitting at home, giving me the chance to just relax and drink some fine tea.

On my way to clinic in London's Harley Street I had a chance to pop by a place I had only ever visited on Sundays (when the doors are closed). Postcard Teas sits just off Oxford Street a couple of minutes walk from the Apple store. The shop feels more like an art gallery than a retail outlet with it's well thought out displays. There are many fine quality wares with equally fine quality prices too, not for the faint hearted.

The owner is a very approachable chap and we had a good natter about tea, the weather in China this year and touched bases on people we both knew from the tea world.

My time was short so I had to leave but I left feeling rather content and ready for my clinical challenges that waited for me. I also walked off with a couple of samples generously donated to me, 'You might as well just have these for free as you will like them and want more!'.

Both samples were from Wuyi Shan and today's tipple is a Shui Xian from 100 year old trees. I am an admitted numpty when it comes to yan cha, but I do remember having a chat with a good tea chum about these teas and he recommended that I gave Postcard Teas' yan cha a go. Instead of making notes as I drunk I decided to just sit back and enjoy myself. I wasn't let down by this tea either, it is most agreeable! It had all the usual yan cha goodness but the huigan really stood out as did the endurance of the leaf. This tea kept me captivated for a good hour (which is a long time for someone with the attention span of a small child!).

It's good to be back.

France 1 England 0

Not a football score I may add.

Here I am in the picturesque town of Biarritz as part of my work (a hard life it isn't). I had a couple of hours to spend looking around so I dropped by a café for a drink and some nibbles. Along came the menu and to my surprise I found this.

Ok, it wasn't the finest pu erh, in fact I wasn't really sure that it was pu erh at all really. It wasn't dark enough for a shu but certainly not green like sheng. The taste was pretty unspectacular but it kept me amused enough through my hangover. I didn't take a picture of the tea bag but it was a nice cotton affair instead of the more common, and rather pointless, plastic perforated bag that I regularly see in France.

Come on England, get your act together and be more serious about tea!

Xiaguan FT Exquisite Elegance 2008 (YS)

The spring has arrived and my hay fever mercifully isn't too bad today, so it's back to the blog I go.

I've been waiting a while for a new tea and upon my door came two examples of Xiaguan raw pu erhs, the first I'll tackle today. Certainly 'Exquisite Elegance' is a grand name but can the tea come up with the goods?

I haven't drunk much Xiaguan in the past but from what I have read the compression is tight and this tea doesn't do anything to disprove that myth. The majority of the sample came out of the foil bag in one large chunk! I wimped out of trying to prize a five gram lump and stuck to brewing up the loose leaf left over which came in handsomely to 5.1 grams.

Fitting with the volcanic activity that has brought the skies to a halt over the last week I am brewing this tea with Volvic water that filters through volcanic soil. The pot's aroma has tobacco, legume and dark winter berries coming up from the noticeably small leaf. The soup itself comes across not as potent as the aroma might of suggested but has a slight sweetness to it that grabs the sides of the tongue and builds up.

You know, it's just so nice to concentrate on tea again. My life has been a hubbub of activity recently and doesn't seem like it's going to slow down. It's my fault really with work, fatherhood, my degree and a diploma in Chinese herbal medicine too for good measure. Tea gives me a chance to slow down though and focus on a single aspect for just a moment though. What a joyous and useful hobby drinking tea is in modern life.

The second infusion hasn't changed much, no bitterness and a smooth quality, it coats the tongue nicely, a little bit numbing. The huigan builds slowly and I notice myself rolling my tongue around in the mouth a lot, God knows what I look like to any passers by my window. Along comes the third infusion, more bitter now but still lacking a bit of oomph, oh dear. It seems like like this tea just doesn't have enough in it to captivate my senses and the brief break from the outside world starts to fade in tandem.

On with the study and the pot becomes a side show.

Ten minutes later....

Well, as soon as I had posted my last entry there was a knock at the door and my two month wait for the Xiaguan was over. Now that's timing!

Guess I will blog again on my return from work...

Tea, tea all around but not a drop to drink...

I have been unusually quiet on the blog since the start of last month. The reason for this is quite simple, I just don't have any new tea to review I'm afraid. It's not that I haven't ordered any, in fact, I have been waiting almost two months for one shipment of Xiaguan samples to arrive (something which happens quite often when shipping from China). I also have a considerable collection of tea now and I am busy making my way through my tea mountain before stocking up on new teas. I'm also waiting out for Nadacha to stock it's 2010 bings of which I wish to buy a couple of each I think.

As I'm typing this I am happily finishing off my '93 7542, very nice it is too!

2007 Mengku Lao Ban Zhang mini brick (YS)

The story of this tea brick is as repetitive as a Hollywood blockbuster, an expedition travels to Ban Zhang and picks leaves off old trees that were cut back in the Cultural Revolution. As if I haven't heard that one before!

The brick itself is quite 'cute', small in size and very light in the hand. There is a warning that the bricks might not reach the 100 gram mark due to inconsistent pressing, mine came in at 81 grams, a long way short of the century!

The pressing is indeed very light and it was easy to pry off a nice chunk for my pot without too much bludgeoning, something I am quite guilty of in the past

After the rinse the pot still produced a strong legume aroma with a slightly smokey background. It was more reminiscent of a 2008 or 2009 tea. The soup was still yellow and thin, the initial flavour was exactly how I expected it to be, not too potent and still quite fresh.

The lack of potency caused me to adjust my brewing times longer to try to extract more character. This improved things bringing out some more bitterness, a little lemon rind and some apricot tones to the huigan aftertaste. It troubles me though that I have to really beat the flavours out of the leaf. In my mind a good tea will happily give you it's complexities and retain a nice energetic feeling to it. By brewing longer you might produce more layers to a tea but they still seem rather dull in the mouth.

Well, it didn't cost a lot, about £8 for the brick so that'll work out at around about 50p per session, the price of a Twix. This brick will most definitely be moved into my everyday tea group, and it's not going to be at the front of that queue either.