Two generations of one special tea

chubby new yixing pot

I find myself drinking a LOT of tea lately.  Part of this is due to impatience.  If I sit down with a new sample and it doesn't impress me quickly I pull out one or two more to try.  But more often I'll find myself trying a new puerh and thinking, "Oh, this one reminds me of the X tea from Y factory" and so I'll pull that one off the shelf and do a side-by-side tasting.  It's actually been very educational and a great way to further develop the palate (not to mention helping me justify all this tea I'm collecting!).  

I want to write a bit about a taste-compare I did the other day with the 1996 Truly Simple Elegant and a tea that's marketed as the "2nd generation" of this renowned tea, the 2003 Green Snow Manor (or Hut, as I've also seen it advertised).  But first a bit about my new yixing purchase.  After simmering it in the TongQing Longma last week it smelled heavenly and I've been drinking more shu than I normally do in an effort to really break it in.  But I'm finding some annoyances with this new teapot.  It pours in spurts, and despite tipping it this way and that to try to empty it of tea after a steeping it's still left with a puddle of tea at the bottom of the pot.  The only explanation for this is the type of filter inside the pot.

New yixing on the left, my old stand-by on the right

It's a ball filter, and if you look closely you'll see that the filter holes are set a short distance away from the inside surface of the pot.  This would explain why I keep finding extra tea water in the bottom of my pot between steepings.  The matter of the flow of the pour is another issue.  My old teapot, with nine holes pierced into the actual body of the pot (on the right above) pours wonderfully.  When I tip it on it's side the tea flows out smoothly, taking about 7-8 seconds to pour, eventually slowing to a few drips.  To empty the pot fully I just give it a few shakes.  Very simple.  But this ball-filtered new pot is a bit different.  I can't just tip the pot sideways to pour like with my other one.  If I do I get lots of tea coming out from under the lid and the pour comes out in uneven spurts.  Instead, I have to be more careful with this one, only tipping it partially to start the pour and gradually rotating it to finish.  As a result, the total pour time is a bit longer, about 9-10 seconds.  I also wonder how much this slower pour has to do with the smaller holes.

So, onto the teas.  The 2003 Green Snow Manor (GSM) is said to be the 2nd generation of the Truly Simple Elegant, picked from the very same trees.  Although I don't know for sure, I'm guessing this means the trees weren't picked in the seven years between the manufacture of the two cakes, but I could be wrong.  One thing's for sure, the GSM's price is significantly inflated thanks to it's provenance.

I knew it wasn't completely fair to be comparing the two outright.  Not only is there a 7-year difference in age but the TSE has some unique characteristics that would be hard to repeat, like leaves from trees that hadn't picked for decades  So I wasn't expecting them to taste the same, but I was interested to see if I could detect how they were related.

Initial rinses and pours were predictable, with the GSM showing a more solid yellow soup compared to the orange-amber color of the TSE.  The aromas from the GSM were also more characteristic of it's youth, with bright fruit notes mixed with green hay.  The TSE, by comparison, was clearly aged.  Deep woods and leathers with very little fruit, although it also had an aroma I came to call "violet."  Not fruity and not quite floral, but deeply perfumed in a purple-ish sort of way (if that makes any sense).  As the steepings grew in number I kept trying to find hints of the TSE in the GSM, but couldn't locate any, and I just don't have enough knowledge of how puerh ages to know whether or not the GSM was just a younger version of the TSE that would someday grow more like it, or if it would never hope to match it.

GSM on the left, TSE right

As in previous tastings of the TSE, the tea was terrifically powerful.  While the tea is hot it tastes of pure clean water which might leave you wondering what the fuss is all about, but it quickly becomes apparent as the strength of this tea permeates your body, pulling salivation, bringing perspiration, perfuming the breath, not to mention the full-body qi.  As the tea soup cools though, it displays perfumed woody notes and a deep bitter quality (the good kind), as though you're tasting it from deep inside your body.  While there was no comparison between the TSE and GSM in terms of aroma or taste, I then tried to focus on this matter of 'feeling.'  But once again, there was simply no comparison.  I even tried to trick my mind at one point, trying to convince myself that the TSE had less strength and the GSM more strength, but there was no denying it.

In the end I learned only that these teas, despite their connection of source of leaves and processing, are two very different puerhs.  The TSE is clearly special and unique, but if I was served a variety of 2003 shengs, including the GSM, I would be hard pressed to pick it out of the crowd.