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.

Nothing to do in Llandudno

The North Welsh coast in February, nothing to drink but pots of PG Tips and fighting off seagulls the size of velociraptors.

2007 Pu Jing Hao Yi Wu (Sampan Tea)

Reams of smoke and heavy, heavy tobacco are what this tea is about. It's like drinking a dark potent oak casked whisky and the red grape huigan aftertaste is fills the mouth especially around the lower palette.

At first I found this tea to be rather too much but I have grown to enjoy it when I want a dense and rewarding session. Sometimes when you revisit a tea it seems to offer nothing, all the attributes you remember don't show up but this tea has never failed. It's quite a brute, and I like that.

Just a quick review, I have herbal formulas to commit to memory. Pictures courtesy of my Hipstamatic vintage camera, take the colours with a pinch of salt!

2009 Zhi Ming Du Lao Ban Zhang (Chinese Kung Fu Tea Art)

Yes, another week and another Ban Zhang tea, it's been a re-occuring theme of mine recently and I'm not done yet. I purchased this tea following a rather glowing review by Adam on his Sip Tip blog and it sounded rather too good to miss out on. It has come at a cost though as it's the most expensive Ban Zhang I have I believe coming in at £23 ($36) per bing but the bing itself is only 100 grams.

I enjoy bludgening the cuteness out of the tiny bing and am left with two fascinating layers that really display the fine spindly nature of the leaf (no pictures I'm afraid he says cursing his Olympus).

The rinsed leaf has a somewhat vegetal aroma to it, shades of Japan. The first infusion is light and green with a good vibrancy on the tongue and is absent from any obvious bitterness. Nothing too captivating here yet.

The second infusion is more potent and thick which retains the vibrancy on the tongue tip and also has a curious numbing of the rear tongue as the huigan issues forth. It certainly fills the mouth with flavours and watering reactions, superbly complex!

By now I'm more relaxed and enjoying this tea's lingering, multi faceted huigan. I would compare it with Yunnan Sourcing's chun qing as both give similar experiences but, memory allowing, I'd give the edge to the zhi ming du as it's complex without going overboard with the perfumed sweetness. One must bear in mind though that it's almost double the price!

I'm glad I've tried this tea and that I've got 95 grams left over for future visits. Yes, it was expensive but I have spent a lot more on yancha in the past. I just wish it had a bit more bitter kick to it.