2006 Langhe Factory Sheng Puer Cake

I first heard of the Langhe tea factory (郎河茶廠) about five years ago from their advertisement in Art of Tea Magazine. The ad caught my attention because it seemed to me much simpler and humbler than those of most other full-paged puer factories/brands in the same issue. It shows an aerial view of the factory surrounded by green hills and trees and states: "Our factory is within thousands of acres of camphor forests with large-leaf tea interspersed everywhere. The blue roof and white walls are mirrored in the sky above, the factory but a part of the surrounding nature."

It was a few years later that I tasted my first cake from this factory (a 2002 sheng reviewed here).

On a recent Friday afternoon at work I decided to review a newer Langhe factory cake for this blog post. The cake, with a production date stamp of August 15, 2006, has a handsome purple wrapper and a bold green "郎河" seal in the middle.

I used the new teapot that Chris Shaw loaned me (profiled here). It was just about one-quarter full of dry leaf. After a quick, boiling hot rinse, I steeped my first infusion for about 10 seconds. The next 4 infusions all ranged about 10 to 20 seconds long, while infusions 5 through 8 saw increases from 1 to 2 minutes in length.

This is a potent and smoky sheng cake. It pours a clear, amber color and leaves an "icy-hot" tingle on my throat and tongue. All infusions have savory, herbaceous notes such as sage, rosemary and mint. Some infusions also have a pleasant sweetness that reminds me of flowers and raw honey. It has occasional, refreshing, good-bitterness but some infusions have too much smokiness.

Afterwards, my muscles feel mellow and loose as though I were drinking an older, riper tea. Also, my toes are not tapping and my hands are not fidgeting like they normally do after I drink a lot of young sheng puer. In my opinion... this cake is a real winner.

My solo session at Phoenix Tea:

Daddy-Daughter Tea Picnic

These last few days the weather here in Seattle has been amazing. Today, during my son's nap time, my daughter C and I went outside for a little tea picnic under the cherry trees. We spent a glorious, barefoot hour sipping Bai Mu Dan (白牡丹) and nibbling raisins and muffins. A gentle breeze stirred the wind-chime, while occasional blizzards of white cherry petals fell from above.

Bug's eye view.

C sips her tea.

Checking on the Tea Plants.

They appear to be happy.

Apple tree is in full bloom.

Cherry blossom snow.

High Mountain Tea Dogs at Rest

These three sleepy canines are named Xiao Hua (Little Flower), Lao Hua (Old Flower) and Lao Hu (Tiger)! They live at Small Swiss homestay and tea farm in Shihzhuo (石桌), Taiwan.

Tea Jelly Brick

Today I'm drinking an interesting cup of puer tea that Cinnabar and I currently have for sale at Phoenix Tea. It is called Cha Gao (茶膏), which can be translated as tea-gel, tea-jelly, or even, tea-ointment. It is a decoction made by condensing brewed puer tea until it is possible to form a hard brick.

The brick itself looks a little bit like obsidian and can be broken easily into glassy shards. To brew the tea I dissolved a few tiny shards into about 8 ounce of boiling water.

That's all the tea I used:

The resulting tea has a nice color and a curious earthy, mushroom-like, shu puer (熟普洱) aroma. This heady redolence is both alluring and intimidating.

I sip cautiously. To my relief the liquor is pleasant. It has a nice syrupy sweetness and a subtle plum note. For the amount of gel I used the the tea is medium bodied. Next time I'll add a few more tiny shards... but I'm sure it will get too intense if I used too much. The mushroom smell remained, but it didn't present itself in the mouth. Given the option I'd probably prefer a normal "leaf" tea but I do like the Tea Jelly Brick, and can see myself drinking it from time to time.

Sun Dried Buds

Lately, I've been enjoying a unique and delicious tea made entirely from the sun dried buds of wild camellia trees growing in Yunnan, China. These wild trees can be used to make puer tea but, as you can see, their buds look quite different from typical tea buds.

The best way to brew these buds, in my opinion, has been to put a heaping teaspoon into a glass or jar, pour in ~8 ounces of boiling hot water, and then wait until the clear liquor develops a slightly yellow tint. Sip the tea leisurely throughout the entire day and add more water whenever the volume dips below half full. Most of the buds will sink to the bottom after a few hours and it will not get bitter.

The flavor is spirited and herbaceous. I get notes of pine and sage with a little bit of fruitiness. The body is light and refreshing and the throat-feel is wonderful.

Cinnabar's and my tea shop, Phoenix Tea, has these buds for sale here on our website.

Broccoli

Yesterday I harvested a head of Broccoli that had over-wintered in a garden bed. It, and all its pretty yellow flowers, were so delicious and beautiful baked on a vegan pizza with white bean sauce for dinner.

Cupping Experiment - Broken Baozhong Leaves

Have you ever notice how the last few grams of tea in any tin or bag is usually a sad-looking mix of broken, dusty tea-crumbs? In my experience this is especially true with long twisted leaf teas such as Wenshan Baozhong (文山包種) or various Wuyi Mountain Cliff Teas (武夷山岩茶).

Case in point:

What you're looking at here was poured from the bottom of an extremely good bag of Winter 2011 Wenshan Baozhong. This broken melange weighed in at just about 8 grams. What would you do with this stuff? Drink it? Toss it? Sift it?

I'm a pretty frugal fellow so I'll use a colander to gently separate the dust from the larger leaves.

This time I'm left with ~6 grams of dust and ~2 grams of whole leaves.

Feeling curious, I decided to conduct a little tasting experiment. I set up three small tea bowls. In one I put 1 gram of large leaves, in another I put 1 gram of broken leaf dust, and in the third I put a mix of 1/2 gram dust and 1/2 gram leaves. Next I steeped each sample for 3 minutes with 120 ml of 180° F water.

Mix is at the top.
Unbroken is in the bottom left.
Dust only is in the bottom right.

This cupping was interesting. Surprisingly, I found myself liking the dust-only infusion (shown above with the brightest yellow color) the most. It was just as buttery as the whole leaf specimen but it had better mouth-feel. It wasn't bitter but I expect it would have been if I'd used boiling hot water.

The infusion made only from intact leaves was the sweetest and the most floral. I liked it quite a bit too. I'm betting it would have otherwise been better than the dust-cup but in this particular instance it was "under-leafed."

The mix was easily the worst of the three. Instead of tasting like the sum of its parts, as I would have guessed, the 50/50 mix of dust and whole leaves came out flat and stale tasting. The balance was off and it was hard to find any redeeming qualities in the liquor.

Like all such casual cupping experiments these results don't really mean anything in the larger scheme of things. It was really just an interesting diversion. That being said, it does inspire me to sift the "bottom of the bag/tin" leaves and crumbs more often.