Category Archives: Making Puer tea

Ban Pen 2012 Early Spring Mao Cha

Toward the end of last year, we set up a small place in Ban Pen to make tea – chu zhi suo 初制所 . This is some of the maocha we made there.

The tea has a light qingwei and a delicate bitterness that are balanced by sweet floral notes. The broth feels very smooth with a nice houyun – a fine sweetness that materialises in the throat. Below are the leaves and broth after the second steeping.

Decent shengjin and a pleasing retro-olfactory floral aroma that floats up from somewhere in the back of the throat and persists on the back of the palate and in the nose, calling me back repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to identify the fragrance which is quite familiar, but I still put a name to it.

Here the leaves have opened after about 4-5 steepings.

The broth from the fourth steeping. All the pictures are of teas that are steeped in a gaiwan and decanted without using a strainer.

Making Rain

China’s rain making programme is well documented. Substantial amounts are spent annually on rainmaking technology and its implementation. But Xishuangbanna is mostly still as dry as a bone. A couple of nights ago there was a quite sudden clap of thunder, and it rained briefly, which it seems was ‘man made’, but whatever the potential risks of such endeavors, the effect was quite desultory.

The first flush of tea has finished and pretty much everybody is waiting to see what happens next. By this time last year, despite a dry start to the spring, we had had substantial amounts of rain, but this year, in Jinghong there has been not a drop.

I was up in Hekai for a few days last week, and there it rained a little every night, but Nan Nuo Shan has only seen a little of that. The general consensus is that this year’s tea’s flavour is a little better than last year, but often with a little more astringency. In some teas, the bitterness is more pronounced. We’ll have to wait for another week or so to see what the second flush of tea produces.

See here for some more reading on Chinese weather making

Water, Storage – and the importance thereof

This recent blog posting by discipleoftheleaf on one of our teas – Bulang Peak 2010 seems to bring home, apart from the fine palate and descriptive skills of the author, the importance of good tea storage, and the quality of water used for steeping.

Each time we send out tea, we continue to emphasise the importance of giving tea time to acclimatise to a new environment – in my experience, this typically takes around 3 weeks. So it makes sense, if the tea has arrived from anywhere with a climate that is different from one’s own, to wait at least a couple of weeks before even bothering to try it. There is always a handful of people who can’t wait, or don’t think it matters. But it does. And I think this is particularly true of more nuanced teas.

The importance of water quality is also fundamental. There is an essential choice to be made; find teas that suit your water, or find water to suit your tea.

There’s not much point in using water with significant amounts of dissolved solids, and along with that, probably quite high alkalinity on a complex, fragrant, nuanced tea. If one is set on water with a higher pH, better to seek out teas that work with that kind of water. Younger teas seem more fickle than older Puers which, with age, are more robust and tolerant of a wider range of conditions.

Tea Moments – Drinking Tea with Lao Feng. Bang Wai 2011

HM had gone to Menghai to organise some pressings the other day when our neighbour Lao Feng, dropped by. He somehow seems to me like a kindred spirit and I enjoy drinking tea with him.

He came in, and having said he didn’t mind what tea we drank, I found a cake of Bang Wai on the shelf that I didn’t remember ever tasting (in fact I’m pretty sure now I never tried it). We made a number of 150gram cakes last spring from a range of tea mountains: He Kai, Jing Mai, Naka, Luo Shui Dong, Ding Jia Zhai, Mang Zhi, Bing Dao, Xi gui, Bang Wai, Ban Ma. All in small quantities. At most we had a set or two of each: 10 or 20 Kg.

The Bang Wai tea looks good, though there’s nothing particularly notable from the outwards appearance of the leaves.

Bang Wai 250 gram cake from Spring 2012

The broth is exceptionally clean. Early steepings produced a pale yellow broth with virtually no astringency and a hint of bitterness that lingered on the upper palate. Later steepings produced a pleasing rich gold broth.

Bang Wai 2011 Spring sheng Puerh broth

The tea has lost any ??? ‘qing chou wei‘ that it had and has yet to develop any noticeable ?? ‘chen wei’. Initial impressions are of tobacco and old books, hints of leather.

By the end of the first couple of steepings, I could feel a warmth creeping up my occiput and face. The tea feels quite penetrating and both Lao Feng and I begin to feel the effects in the palms of our hands: a warmth and energy that makes the skin slightly moist. I can also feel it around my upper arms and shoulders.

Sharing tea experiences with Lao Feng is enjoyable, not least because he is very interested in the energetics of tea. Not from a scientific, Newtonian perspective, but from an experiential one. We concur that one sign of a good tea is how much it penetrates energetically. He comments that ‘some teas are powerful as they enter, and some powerful as they come out.’ It’s certainly so with this tea. The rukou had no clear sweetness or xiang qi – but there is a powerful, floral sweetness that floats up through the throat from somewhere deeper inside and penetrates the nasal cavity.

Bang Wai leaves after 5 or 6 steepings

We become very still as we focus inward to better perceive/appreciate the process. Another friend comes by and quietly joins in. He too, quickly notices the effects this tea produces. He says he feels it first penetrates to the 丹田 ‘dan tian’ and then spreads out to the hands.

We recall a Chinese sage – no one can remember their name – who said about only drinking seven cups of tea. With this tea, it seems to be true. The experience is quite powerful and after 5 or six steeping we’re all happy to pause and enjoy the lingering sweetness and aroma that continues to float up in the throat for another 40 minutes or so.

Meng Song Ku Cha – Bitter Tea

Sinensis assamica var. Kucha – or in plain English, bitter tea, is a sub-variety of sinensis assamica that grows in the Meng Song area. For reasons which are doubtless obvious, it’s not the most sought after of Puer tea, but with a light touch when brewing it can be rather pleasant, with a distinct, lingering, but not overwhelming bitterness.

A friend just dropped by with a few handfuls. We plopped some in the gaiwan. It’s not the prettiest maocha you’ll ever see, but it’s totally honest, unadulterated.

With maybe 5-6 grams in the gaiwan and very quick steeping times, the bitterness does not become overpowering and there’s some decent flavour and fragrance.

The soup is clean – when sampling it’s good to use a gaiwan – not a pot – and no strainer. The broth has a pleasing colour with a hint of pale, almost pinky, gold.

See here for an earlier post about Meng Song: www.zhizhengtea.com/puerblog/stone/

Wan Gong and Bai Cha Yuan

HM has been recently spending a fair bit of time going up to Wan Gong where we found a little tea last year, and Bai Cha Yuan . Our hope this year is to build on last year and make some more tea from a couple of tea gardens up there.

Old tea trees that were cut back and then left untended

The trees in the photo are typical of a fair number of the trees in this remote area near Bai Cha Yuan – they are maybe about 200 years old but were cut back heavily many years ago and have subsequently been left untended for a long time.

HM and some tea farmers from the area have built a small makeshift ‘pondoki’ where we will make tea, as it is much too far from any more permanent tea making facilities.

A makeshift shelter

We have improvised two small woks for frying tea.

Two makeshift woks for frying tea in the field

A rather splendid view from near the top of the mountain.

A view from near the top of the mountain

2012 Lao Ban Zhang

Yesterday we received our first little bit of 2012 Lao Ban Zhang. A few kilos, brought in by our friend from Menghun.

Lao Ban Zhang 2012 mao cha

Quite nicely made, and with a very ‘chun’ – unadulterated, pure flavour. It seems like it could have used a little more drying time perhaps. The kuwei is pronounced, the huigan a little slow, materialising after a couple of minutes, but pleasing enough when it does show itself.

Mao cha and gaiwan

It has that slight smokiness which disappears after the first couple of steepings and that I’ve almost come to expect of Lao Ban Zhang. As someone said to me a couple of years ago, “If it’s not smokey, it’s not Lao Ban Zhang.”

It’s just been made, so we’ll give it a little time.

Lao Ban Zhang mao cha broth after four steepings

The leaves after four steepings look pretty good. A nice eveness to their appearance

2012 First Spring Tea

We recently started to get some samples of this year’s tea. A handful here and a kilo there. It’s still early. We had three samples of Lao Ban Zhang. One of them was not bad except there was a hint of ‘new wok’ in the flavour.

Peng Zhe from Xishuangbanna Tea Association also brought in some samples he had got from Liu Da Cha Shan area. One was also rather pleasant. Here’s a picture the aftermath of some late evening sampling.

We were also debating the rule of thumb, that one ought not to sample more than 3 teas in a day, but we pretty much all conceded that during Spring there is no way to abide by such logic – often sampling many more teas a day.

Puer Pick

The ultimate Puer tea knife. Made of agarwood by a friend in Guangxi. Turned, with a brass ferrule and steel pick. Something of a renaissance man (except he rides a Harley), he works in wood and clay, making tea trays and tea tools as well as ceramic water kettles.

Tea Heads

We’ve recently been going to Nan Chun Tea Factory in Menghai to get some work done. One day while we were there, HM discovered that they had previously made som ‘cha tou‘ or tea heads. This is basically a large ball – 1 or 2 kg – of tea. H.M managed to convince Nan Chun Cha Chang’s lao ban to personally make some cha tou out of some Nan Nuo Shan mao cha that we had left from this spring.

The weighed tea is steamed in the usual way and emptied into a cloth bag.

The tea is then rolled,

hammered,

and squeezed

into a near spherical shape

Nan Chun Tea Factory, Peng Lao Ban with a ‘tea head’

What you end up with is a pretty dense ball of tea – it could certainly do some damage if thrown in the wrong direction. (You’ve heard of Gunpowder tea – this is cannonball tea)

It has to be dried in a low temperature oven because, despite all the beating and squeezing, the moisture content in the centre is still relatively high so normal air drying would run the risk of the centre of the thing going mouldy.

The end result is rather pleasing – a solid lump of tea!

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Tea Tales from the South