I’ve been remembering again why I’ve been less than enthusiastic about keeping up a tea blog in the past. Writing up tasting notes for public viewing quickly gets monotonous for me. Besides, I’m not buying much new tea these days. Now and then I’ll see something tempting and make a purchase, but I’m done with buying newly pressed puerh and have been for a while. I suppose a lot of people read tea blogs like I once did, looking for recommendations on purchases to make. So what value does a tea blog like this have where most of what I’m drinking is no longer available for purchase or is priced way too high? I’m still not sure what to do with this space or what direction to take it in.
I’m continuing to pull teas from the shelves, diligently tasting them and jotting notes in my files and really enjoying the process of observing the changes over time. After reading about TeaDB's preferred storage option for puerh (placing cakes into Ziploc-sealed heavy mylar bags and tossing a Boveda pack in) I’m intrigued and have been playing around with it though I have my concerns about the sustainability for a collection the size of mine. Still, the ease of using reusable Ziploc mylar bags is tempting as it's far less fussy than my sealing method of the last eight or so years, not to mention the required maintenance of keeping the motorized humidifier filled and cleaned. But doing comparison tastings of sealed versus non-sealed teas continues to impress me as to the merits of some method of sealing.
There have been a few teas of note lately, the deeply enjoyable kind you keep thinking about days later. One of these was the 2000 Camphor Aroma sheng puerh that Essence of Tea was selling for a while. The name of this tea is perfect. I’ve had puerh with camphor notes before but none as pronounced as this one. There’s plenty to enjoy about this tea but the best part for me was the massive huigan that filled my mouth the rest of the day. It’s the strongest and most long-lasting huigan I’ve ever experienced. Loved it.
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| 2000 Camphor Aroma |
Another notable tea was the 2005 Chen-Guang-He Tang "Menghai Yieh Sheng" Limited Edition puerh, purchased from Hou De in 2013. I know precisely zero about Chinese words and translations. When I buy a tea I just copy down the name and description used by the vendor and this is how Hou De originally listed it, but the wrapper on the cake notes it a little differently as “Chen kang ho tang” and not “Chen-Guang-He Tang.” In either case, this tea is impressively solid and strong on nearly all fronts. If a tea could be said to have great structure, this is it. Interestingly, for as enjoyable as I found this one I felt very little qi with it. I think there’s a common perception that qi is a necessary component of a quality puerh. At least I used to think that. But here’s a tea I spent a long time drinking and look forward to enjoying again, even though I really felt no qi with it.
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| 2005 Chen-Guang-He Tang "Menghai Yieh Sheng" Limited Edition |
The last tea of note is a 1998 Fuhai cake I picked up from Tea Urchin a long time ago. It’s got all the things I love in an aged puerh in terms of aroma and taste with that extra icing on the cake (unintended pun there) of being full of energy and possessing a wonderfully relaxing and all-over diffuse body-centered qi. Definitely one of the better aged teas in my stash. Interestingly, the wrapper doesn’t have the characteristic ring of green leaves around the central character like other Fuhai cakes I’ve had. I’m not sure if this means anything. It’s one of those generic wrappers you see on older cakes but I’ll include a photo of the neifei below, just in case someone more knowledgeable than me can comment further on this. But no matter what or where this cake originated from, it’s a very good aged tea.
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| 1998 Fuhai (supposedly) |
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| '98 Fuhai neifei |
