This episode I drink a very unique Yiwu tea from Teas We Like. The tea is interesting for both its pedigree and its storage. It is decidedly old school and nothing like the boutique Yiwus that are often produced in more recent years. The tea (est. production 1999-2002) was seal stored in Taiwan which gives it a greener feel.
Rating: 6.3
This episode, Denny and I drink a raw pu’erh kindly sent to us by Darius. Thank you! The tea is a special opportunity to try something that has been dry-stored in the US (near Atlanta) for many years. It is a particularly interesting session because most of the Xizi Hao being circulated has been stored in Taiwan. We have also tried a TW stored version of this tea before and it is totally different.
Darius’ stored version is clean, punchy, and quite powerful. The tea tastes greener and rawer but it rewards in complexity and aroma.
This is a non-tea drinking episode that explores a topically related topic to tea. In this episode, I perform a series of very simple tests that explore the interaction between heat and a number of various factors.
I use a variety of different devices (small gaiwans, large gaiwans, yixing, larger pots) and measured temperature immediately, after a minute, and then after five minutes. These experiments were repeated a few times.
Topics explored include pre-heating, does yixing retain heat more, high pours, filling up half your vessel and how quickly you may want to reboil your kettle.
Thank you to Su for sending both this gift. This episode Denny and I drink a smooth, easy-drinking Dayeh (Big Leaf) Pu’erh from Su. It’s an extremely comfortable and likable tea.
Denny & I will be filming an AMA episode with your questions. Send them in!
I got into tea in 2012. One of the first things I did was read everything I could in the western tea scene. This included old forum posts, new forum posts, blogs like Marshaln, Half-Dipper and the Chadao Blogspot. One constant I found was the constant bemoaning the ever-rising price of pu’erh, as long as there’s been dialogue about it on the internet. It didn’t matter if the post was written in 2008 or 2012… Since 2012, the situation hasn’t exactly improved. The most dramatic rises have been in maocha and current year productions. The majority of the highest-priced tea being peddled from popular online sources definitely isn’t old vintage tea, it’s something made in 2018 (OK, maybe 2017)!! Notably not everything has gone up equally. Things like YQH Qizhong, while never cheap in the first place have been fairly stable in price even since my initial foray into pu’erh. For the value-minded, this has made some of these semi-aged teas the target for people like myself. (more…)
For episode 300, Denny and I bring on one of my favorite teas that I own, the 2006 Yangqing Hao Chawangshu. This is an especially thick and potent Yiwu tea. Thank you all for following us for 300 episodes!
This episode, Denny and I drink another Dancong from Cindy at WuyiOrigin. This one is everything you like from a greenish oolong. It is aromatic, floral and very tasty.
About a year ago, I used the Way Back Machine/Archive.org to go back and examine the prices at conception of tea from western vendors since 2011. This was a valuable exercise and produced some interesting findings on a range of things, from price fluctuation, to the specific market each vendor aims for, etc. Crunching the numbers also statistically confirmed what many have long known. Fresh/young pu’erh prices have gone up in price by a whole lot in this decade.. I decided to update that post with teas that were added since. I added 55 spring productions in total, 51 productions from 2018 and 4 from Chawangshop’s 2017 (they were slow to add them to their site in 2017). (more…)
This episode I drink a tea that I own quite a lot of, the 2013 Xiaguan Love Forever Paper Tong. This tea has become fairly popular in the specialized western pu’erh in the last couple years. Despite being pressed six years ago, the tea material is older (from 2003) making this a tea with significant age on it. The tea is also special to me as my wife and I were gifted a tong of this on our wedding day from the tea community.
The tea itself is quite strong, with a very dense taste and a long lasting mouthfeel. It is also not really like other Xiaguan teas as it was made by Feitai (FT) under the Xiaguan label. While it is semi-aged, this is a tea with a lot of potency to be aged in the future. In the video I also go over a bit of the history of this tea and talk a bit about the bamboo tong version, which is not as good.
Rating: 6.3