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Famous Tea: 1999 BGT Blue/Black Ticket
I’ve never really considered doing: one post, one tea reviews on TeaDB. It’s the most standard type of tea blog and I don’t think I have much to add beyond what many of the blogging warriors have done so already. I’m also not great at waxing poetic in tasting descriptions nor do I have the…
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Early Yunnan Sourcing Production Aging Mini-Report & Some Pu’erh Thoughts
Many of the original pu’erh productions by western-facing vendor were in the 2009 or 2010 and principally done by Essence of Tea and Yunnan Sourcing. A lot has changed since then, and while there’s the odd production that has stayed somewhat consistent (i.e. YS Wuliang) both vendors are making from very different gardens and areas…
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Give me Guangdong or Give me Death. Factory Tea Report
Young pu and now factory tea. Aren’t you the guy that published that super-negative Xiaguan report. At least young pu’erh is popular in our western pu’erh community. Who the hell is talking about factory tea in the west? Other than the odd cake here or there, or a LP/Toby group buy most of our pu’erh drinkers…
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FOMO. 2016 Premium Young Tea Report
If you have been living in a cave with your pu’erh stash for the past 15 years and arejust reemerging to restock your stash, I have some news for you. You should’ve bought apple stock. And google. And loads of pu’erh. Young pu’erh is expensive now. There was a time not so long age when…
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Wistaria Pu’erh Mini-Report [April/May 2016]
Wistaria (website) is an iconic, Taipei teahouse. The building itself is nearly 100 years old and lived through its share of history. As a teahouse, Wistaria and it’s proprietor (Zhou Yu) have played an important role in the development of modern chayi (tea art) and tea culture in Taiwan. For tea folks or people traveling to Taiwan…
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Mature Pu’erh Report [March 2016]
I drank through these teas in March of 2016. The last mature report was about 16 months ago, but with my Taiwan trip approaching I figured it was about time to drink through my lingering pile of samples.. This report is a mix of teas I own, teas still available from western vendors, and other teas…
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The Box. Aged Oolong Report
The aged oolong market in the west leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the time the teas are usually significantly flawed (re-roasted/sour), overpriced, or more often than not both. A couple years ago, I was lucky enough to sample a number of aged oolongs from Tony of Origin Tea that were offered off-shelf. This…
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The Much Delayed Taiwan Oolongs Teas to Age Report
Better late than never, right? I announced this tea of the month about a year ago and have had samples sitting around forever. The original goal of this report was to find some decent oolongs to age for the future. The samples from Mountain Tea and Teahome, two vendors that each had a few inexpensive…
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HK Report
Big thanks to those that contributed knowledge and time to helping make this a successful trip. You know who you are! Hong Kong is a very different place than Taipei. Not having been to either, I naively expected a few more similarities. They’re both just big cities in east Asia, right? HK is dense, dense, dense,…
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Shopping for Tea in Taiwan
Forever alone.. Being a pu’erh addict in the west is a lonely endeavor and how we intake information and buy tea is in all likelihood very different than the average Asian pu-head. We’re often resigned to the tea table/closet all by our self. If we’re lucky we can get a good friend/significant other to come…