I'm trying another tea from Anna, the owner of Kinnari Tea (of Laos), passed on by her in a visit here two months ago (with an earlier write-up of other Laos sheng versions here). I'm not getting behind in trying teas, I'm staying behind. I looked through what I had from her and there's a Moonlight White, one of my favorite types. Somehow I felt like experiencing this one more today based on immediate inclination though, a huang pian version. I don't think she sells this tea, to clarify that related to a "Kinnari Tea" reference; it's my impression that in this case she just passed on a sample of something interesting she had ran across.
I've botched her tea description before by reading the writing wrong so I'll cite the picture along with saying what it is:
I'm reading that as Nyot Ou Nammanoy Huang Pian, produced in October of 2017. According to Maps Yot Ou is a district in Laos North-West of Phongsaly (likely an odd difference in transliteration), and I'd expext that other name to be a local village, although it is conceivable that it's a reference to something else.
Somehow it's not surprising that Maps doesn't know the names of local villages in Northern Laos yet. Pulling that up in a search brings up a video by William of Farmerleaf about visiting that area, on a development initiative I've said more about in the past, here. That first post I mentioned (reviewing another tea from Anna) talks through that connection, about an NGO initiative there related to improving options for local tea production, covered in this other reference link. To me that's a fascinating subject, and both William's take on it and that other organization's reference information is well worth checking out.
Review
The initial flavor is interesting, and novel. It's soft, in a different range than conventional sheng, which is to be expected; that's kind of the point. Huang pian is yellow leaf tea, older leaf versions that had yellowed, also called "farmer's tea" due to being sorted out in processing and drank by farmers instead of being sold (due to not being regarded as a standard version the tea, not because it's better). It's sweet, and a bit earthy, like a very mild wood or tree bark tone, even a bit towards cork, but not in a way that is musty or sour. It's not really fully infused yet on this first round so I'll pass on a longer description on the next one.
On the next round intensity ramps way up, the underlying mineral tone and the rest that I'd already described, mild wood, tree bark, and a touch of cork. There's a little spice in there too, probably; transition may draw that out to be more noticeable. The main flavor is tree-bark, along the lines of birch or aspen tree bark, a thin paper-type version of one. Pine bark has a much different scent, towards the needles, but just as close to the wood, with the bark a bit earthier than either. Other hardwood tree bark is much warmer and more aromatic, closer to how a fermented version of cinnamon might come across (which is itself a type of tree bark: Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum).
One might wonder why I would know so much about tree bark. I split a lot of firewood in my childhood, and even did some commercial logging at one point. It was a hands-on labor-intensive rural sort of childhood. I remember my sister once getting partly rolled under a full sized tree trunk we were moving around when she was probably around 6 or 7, which would've made me 8 or 9. At least I wasn't the one using the chainsaw. We cut and split a lot more firewood for use in a fireplace and wood-burner than that, the theme that comes up in Abraham Lincoln's childhood.
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wild turkeys in the PA woods at my parent's house |
Some might interpret this as me saying that my life was a bit rougher than it should have been, but I don't mean that. Some other work I helped with went a bit overboard, construction work, building maintenance, and car restoration, but all of it made me who I am today. Nothing I ever do is as hard as building a house at 13, not even getting through a difficult engineering program, or taking up unfamiliar work in a foreign country. Back to the tea theme though.
The mineral range in this version is interesting; it comes across as a heavy type of rock and also as metal. Bark, rock, and metal probably doesn't sound good as a description (although I'd imagine there are people who think it does), but it really works. It's about the flavors balancing well together, in addition to each one being "clean" in effect and positive. A little too much metal or the wrong effect from tree bark would make a tea seem undrinkable, but in the right balance it can be very nice, as this version is.
It's not all that close to other more conventional forms of pu'er, to use a comparison to help place it. The overall effect is probably closer to a hei cha, to a mild and sweet version of a Hunan Fu brick tea, but the flavors aren't a perfect match for that. It's tempting to express a related general description, to say that Hunan Fu brick teas follow some general pattern for aspects, but I've not tried so many that even the initial comparison is clearly justified. Here's a review of version with golden flowers, and a review of a version without, as an initial start on that.
On the next infusion (the third) the metal / mineral picks up in relation to the tree bark / wood, but otherwise it's similar. There's a catchy way in which the aftertaste stays along the center of your tongue; it's an effect you get from drinking from a natural spring or artesian well when the water is heavy with minerals. Probably tied to certain minerals, as much as proportion, but I have no idea what those would be.
It makes you wonder what kind of intake of minerals a broad-type, consistently high volume tea drinker would take in, doesn't it? Some kinds of water alone can have elevated levels of some minerals, and for this beverage we are extracting what the plants intentionally extracted from the ground water and stored in the leaves as functional cells and compounds like chlorophyll. I'm not worried, more the opposite; I wonder what health benefits result from intake of the various compounds in teas, and from the minerals. I don't spend a lot of time considering or researching that but at a guess I'll be healthier for drinking a lot of tea. Or already am; I turned 50 a few months ago and it would be normal for me to look older at this age. It's not as if I've never appeared in a photo in this blog but I'll go back through my Photos back-up to show a picture as related background.
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probably not ideal for purpose; Bangkok has been smoggy lately |
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that works better; from two weeks ago |
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oddly that was the picture of them acting the least silly |
On the next infusion (fourth) vegetal range gains back some ground, but the character is shifting a little. It still contains some tree bark range, but green tree wood is ramping up, with more of what could be spice filling in. To me--and this aspect is faint enough that this is even more an interpretation than most descriptions, which are all at least partly that--the spice is closest to nutmeg. Nutmeg seems a complex-flavored spice to me, not one that expresses one simple flavor, in the same way cinnamon generally comes across (or at least to that extent; cinnamon has a lot going on too). It probably only relates to part of what nutmeg tastes like. I'll stop short of breaking nutmeg flavor into parts; although it's tempting to go there that would probably be incoherent.
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4th infusion; they tend to start to look the same |
On the next infusion (fifth) it could be my imagination but it seems like sweetness is picking up a little. It was at a normal level before, enough to provide a good balance for the rest of the range, just not so notable that I was going on about it. Usually the compounds that seem to come across as sweetness seem to infuse out earlier on, stronger over the first 3 or 4 infusions, so the effect is usually tapering off around the fifth infusion instead of ramping up. It's probably just a quirk related to what I'm noticing. It's roughly the same as the last infusion, and that one aspect is probably not really different.
I just brewed two infusions one right after the other, which reminds me of a point I made on another review (might as well make this blog repetitive); brewing temperature does change outcome, and waiting 10 minutes between infusions to allow the device and leaves to cool will change things. I was messing around for at least 15 minutes prior to the fifth infusion, and now at the sixth round this tea was brewed hotter.
It doesn't change much, throwing off that theory a little, but it is slightly different. Wood-tone along the line of sticks had been strongest in that last round (which I didn't get around to noting) and this is closer to including a touch of cinnamon now. That relates to the earlier-mentioned nutmeg; the two aren't that far apart. Really it's in between cinnamon and nutmeg for this round, so tied to it even closer than only mentioning cinnamon implies.
Conclusions / interpretation
This tea is far from spent but it does seem to be fading a little on the seventh infusion. Using longer infusion times, finally extending them to over 10 seconds, will adjust for that, although drinking two more on the light side would also work well. Changing parameters related to infusion time will change aspect balance a little; it brings on a natural transition in what you experience, along with some compounds already rinsing out more than others. This type of tea will probably be very pleasant out to very late rounds since the character was already in the range for where late-round brewing often goes (a bit woody, warm mineral, etc.), and that was already working out well.
It's a cool version of tea. In one sense it's simple and straightforward; it's not thin or lacking in aftertaste, but compared to really intense sheng it's not doing as much with those ranges. Flavors aren't necessarily intense, but they are unusual in the range they cover. Small shifts in aspects or just in the balance of aspects make the tea seem different, since it is somewhat subtle, and expresses mineral and vegetal range in a novel way. Per a different interpretation this could all just be regarded as "autumn leaf;" the character isn't so far from that, close enough that it also works as a description.
I'm not sure why this tea is like this. It's a 2017 huang pian; that's what I know from the label, beyond a source area description that doesn't ring a bell, surely a place in Northern Laos. It's says "10 / 2017" so this being an autumn harvest tea is a factor; those are more subtle, and likely different in character in standard ways that I'm not the best person to summarize. It's a compressed tea; that's not unusual at all for Yunnan sheng versions, but production in places like Laos (and Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar) doesn't always relate to using that last processing step, re-softening and pressing the maocha, designed as much to enable the tea to travel better (initially), and now for aging storage, more than for the limited changes in character doing that causes.
I'm not sure why it's so brown, but then I suppose that is probably normal for how huang pian (yellow leaf) versions age over a year + time-frame. Conventional sheng often starts out greener, or greenish-grey, more of a typical rock color, and then just darken, even over the first year, or especially then. I think what I'm seeing for conventional aging patterns may not be typical, since it's very hot and humid here in Bangkok. Sheng loses that new-sheng character fast, and an edgy young shu transitions to smoother and sweeter and complex in a different way fast too. Teas tucked away in storage aren't experiencing the daily heat related to swings in temperature quite as much as I am (it's 34 C out now, 93 F, and it's not even the hot season, and only noon).
It was a nice tea to try; something interesting and pleasant in a novel way.
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