2010 Tulin (Nan Jian) Wuliangshan sheng pu'er brick

 

Trying another of a Chawang Shop order, with maybe two more teas to go from that.  It's this:

2010 Tulin Wuliangshan Organic Raw Puerh Brick 100g

This raw puerh brick is made of 2010 spring material from Wuliang mountain. Wuliang mountain is one of high mountains in Yunnan. Selected large-leaves and sun-dried material come from organic tea gardens. The same material were used both inside and outside this brick.

Brewed tea is aromatic, sparkish and yellow. Balanced, powerful with great floral sweet aftertaste.

I've liked a Tulin tuocha version that I keep buying in a local Chinatown shop, and that sounds interesting.  Again the dry storage issue will come up; this will be well-preserved for a 2010 tea.  It doesn't sound like it necessarily needed 15 years of moderate pace aging to be in a good range, so it might be fine now.  Or the usual could occur, that it has great potential for mellowing and shifting a few more years of mellowing here in hotter and wetter environment.  I would guess that this is about as fermented as it would be after 3 years of storage here, just getting started, but we'll see.

One might wonder how moderate cost factors in; this had been listed for $10, now out of stock.  I wouldn't expect it to be much worse based on that low pricing, as if it could only stay in their stock if it had been limited in quality in some way, or that Chawang Shop per gram pricing corresponds to their interpretation of tea quality.  It's probably just that they don't raise pricing that much year to year, which is for the best for a consumer.

Review:

First infusion:  color is a dark gold, so at least this has aged past the brighter yellow stage.  For this being 12 years old that limited degree of fermentation is amazing, or at least it would be if I hadn't experienced it in other versions, two fairly recently.  For many people that's a worst-case outcome, but I'm still sorting out if this is better or worse than it would be if it was much younger but stored wetter.  Maybe not so different, at least as far as total outcome is concerned, in the sense of added up positives and negatives.  I think the outcome is probably quite different though, a lot of small variations in what changed.

Interesting!  There's a lot going on.  A warm honey-like range stands out, and some floral tone, with a rich cured hay depth, and a warmer structure that's harder to place.  Mineral range would be a normal interpretation, and there is that too, at least.  There's an odd, warm, rich smell that a softball gives off, similar to that of a baseball, the smell of leather and cork (I think?)--it's like that.  It's odd saying that this tastes like drinking a baseball; it's more that it reminds me of that.  I guess then I'm saying that it reminds me of leather, that one range.

It would be easy to interpret that as saying that it's bad, sour, towards musty, in relation to the leather, cured hay, and cork description, but it's quite clean and pleasant.  There's a way that an aged Yiwu can gain a lot of depth and then sort of fade across a lot of range, a smooth richness that those can pick up, between floral range and something else, like cured, light wood, or some light spice.  This is like that, in relation to that depth, but the edge that remains is something else.  I interpret it as positive, because it gives the sweeter, lighter, and richer range some real punch, but it's just outside a range of what one would normally describe as astringency.  

Tons of honey comes across in the aroma, the kind of experience you get from smelling the empty cup, and that is one layer in the drinking experience.  It's really that complexity and the way it all integrates that's positive about the experience.

Second infusion:  this wasn't brewed long, not over 10 seconds, but I'd already had the impression that it was brewing fast, and this is intense.  It works "brewed strong," because the astringency is moderate, and bitterness has mostly faded, to the extent it included that.  Richer floral range picks up a lot, even a bit towards lavender.  Some of the deeper tone seems like warmer floral range, maybe chrysanthemum as a base, with some sunflowers filling in richer and sweeter tones (or what I'd imagine those to smell like; I don't have much reference to go on).  It tastes like bee's wax as a result of that input, if that helps, a flavor I find really appealing.  Feel effect and aftertaste experience are both pronounced and pleasant.

Now that I've considered that a vendor like White 2 Tea or Mei Leaf could market this under a bee's wax theme, it tastes so much like it.  "Bee's Knees Semi-aged Sheng," or something like that.  It's odd talking about this astringency level when it's not exactly in a conventional astringency range, more a fullness to feel that includes some drier range.  People would be divided on loving this or disliking it, I think.  If someone expected sheng to be either bright, intense, sweet, bitter and astringent floral range when young or warmer, deeper, complex, heavy and rich, dried fruit / camphor / aged input range when older this wouldn't fit either paradigm.  It's just something else.  I'll try a round brewed lighter, pulling timing back closer to 5 seconds, and see how that changes an aspect list.

Third infusion:  lighter, for being brewed faster.  Flavor intensity loses nothing; at a quick flash infusion this would still be quite strong.

What I've said worked better for describing what I like about the tea, now maybe I can fill in what others could see as more negative than I tend to, beyond just expecting something else, or not loving the general range.  That dry edge could be interpreted as connecting with a woodiness, or even with a touch of mustiness, although I don't see it that way related to the second.  This had to be more challenging when new, of course, and the astringency has only faded quite a bit and changed form, it's not gone.  Often I'll describe an aspect like that as similar to biting a plant stem, or tree bud.  You couldn't really experience positive feel and flavor in this range without some type of feel like that though.

Fourth infusion:  shifting a little, but it's hard to describe how.  Intense floral range still stands out, and a lot of bee's wax warm depth beyond that, with that dry edge filling out feel.  This most definitely doesn't seem anything like a low cost tuocha tea, punchy and intense, hopefully aging to be quite pleasant once all that settles out 15 years later, more where the Tulin version I've drank a bit of was.  This tea is better than it should be, related to my expectations.

Fifth infusion:  more of the same, which is good.  That floral intensity is crazy.  I suppose feel is cleaning up, not that it was off before.  The dry edge is moving more into a sappy / resinous range, which always had been part of it, I just didn't get around to expressing it that way.

Sixth infusion:  I was just thinking about a Tea Forum post about teas being flavored, about how this much floral could be interpreted as from an additive.  It seems too clean though, and too persistent, not rinsing off a bit.  And it's a 2010, sealed package (no guarantee there), super inexpensive tea, from a producer known for making solid and consistent but moderate quality tea versions.  It seems like they just used pretty good material for this.

Seventh infusion:  intensity is finally dropping so that a fast infusion (under 10 seconds) finally starts to come across as a bit light.  I like it this way, since flavor intensity is fine and aftertaste range is quite intense and pleasant.  Feel is rich now with no dry edge.  I'll try a 15 second + time and see how that goes.

Eighth infusion:  really nice this way, losing intensity but with longer time bumping that back to normal.  The list of aspects I've described shift in proportion but it's not worth going through how.

Ninth infusion:  bitterness is ramping up, as the balance of what extracts shifts with longer brewing times.  There was always some bitterness, I've just not typed out that inclusion because it's so moderate, in relation to sheng experience in general.  For a 12 year old sheng it's relatively bitter, but compared to most in the 3 to 4 year old range (not stored so dry) it's still pretty low.  I didn't mention sweetness either, even though that was pronounced, because I was focused more on floral and warm range being interesting and novel.  If I re-wrote these notes in a new tasting I'd probably include it all in a different order, and maybe stretch it out to 2000 words, if I tried to describe everything.  Better not to.

Conclusions:

My own impression is surely already clear, that I really liked it, but I wanted to find out more about this, how it was "supposed to be" in some sense, or what others thought of it.  

I found a Yunnan Sourcing listing for a 2012 version of this, theirs selling for $11.50 (over 10% more, but in terms of cost difference not much at all).  Comments about it from others who bought it mention smokiness; this might've included that too, and it just dropped out over the dozen years of aging.  Those review comments were from 2018-2020, so not so old or new compared to the 2012 to 2022 current age of that version, but towards more recent.

This 2008 Nan Jian "iron cake" (listed by Yunnan Sourcing) sounds interesting too, and still reasonable, $60 for a 400 gram version, sourced from Wuliangshan and Lincang.  Aged in Guangdong, that one says; that might offset the effect of high compression cakes aging slower, but it could probably still use another decade to transition further.  Or it might be like this, at an interesting in-between state, pleasant without entering a more fully aged range.  My friend Ralph reviewed a variation of that in his Daily Tealagraph Instagram page, but it was the 912 version (which is now sold out), and that was 902.  His notes make it clear that aging input was a significant factor, perhaps part of a transition process that's not finished yet:

The deep fruity raisin notes are obvious with some hay and tobacco notes.  Bitterness joins while sipping the first cups. A very deep and intense aroma, although it stays very clean and kind of simple at the same time like factory teas usually do. It features some mushroom flavor as well, not so different to bitter mushroom tea like reishi (ling tsi) or Chaga.

Later steeps bring out an additional flowery camphor aroma that joins the fruitiness and a "chewing gum" flavor that I can only rarely find in some 15 year old factory cakes...

Looking around further it's interesting reading comments about a 2010 version of the one I'm reviewing (sold by YS) on Steepster.  So this same tea I guess, just surely stored in a similar way, with room for slight variations in outcome.  None of the people commenting really liked it.  It sounds like they're not even describing the same tea:  smoky, hard to brew, challenging astringency, limited complexity, bitter, vegetal, sour.  

So what's that about?  Hard to be sure.  I'm sipping this right now; I know what's in the cup, and I'm not insecure about my own preference or judgment being atypical, even though everyone's take is going to be a little different.  There's not much for negatives in this.  That feel wouldn't be for everyone, but dryness coupled with sappy character and rich feel is fine, to me.  Flavor range is good; sweet, intensely floral, adding warm bee's wax for complexity, with some vegetal range, with just a hint of underlying mushroom, so light I'm only noticing it as flavors shift now.

We can't assume that the teas are identical, and they probably do vary a little, due to the storage inputs (especially that; only one review was recent, from half a year ago).  I don't want to move on to conclude that these four people could only appreciate limited range in tea (in sheng pu'er, really).  Other preference and context issues must be factoring in.  Every person mentioned low expectations related to low cost, in their notes; they may have went into this looking for what was wrong with the tea, versus what they might like.  

Not using a (standard to me) Gongfu brewing approach would give bad results for this, for example, Western brewing it.  First comment listing preparation notes mention this, from that most recent tasting:

Steep times: 45, 15, 15, 20, 45.  I drink the wash, hence why my first steep is so long. Brewed in a clay teapot. [using boiling point water, 5 grams per 100 ml]

This would be hard to drink brewed for 45 seconds, and 15 is still a bit long.  Their flavor aspect summary includes "bitter, hay, astringent, vegetal," and hay matches the best to my experience, with not listing floral range as inexplicable if their experience was the same as mine.  Which it wouldn't be, even using the same brick of tea, for brewing it completely differently.  Let's check a second review, from 4 years ago:

The risky buy of the month. It is the cheapest 100g-brick of puerh on Yunnansourcing.us and for a reason.

First, the good stuff: it smells good. The wet leaf has a complex, multi-faceted aroma that is very enjoyable. No fishy smell, no pure decay.

Now, the bad part: it needs at least 5 more years to develop because the acidic taste of the fermentation is there, ready to pounce and overpower everything else. Which is a shame, because there ARE a number of more subtle, interesting flavors. Unfortunately, the only way to bring them all on the scene together is to do super-short steeps of 5-10 secs, and avoid the boiling water. So, you end up “savoring” a weak puerh for a 2-3 steeps – after that regardless of your efforts the sourness pushes everything else in far corners of the palate...

Sourness?  It's not as unreasonable as the two different interpretations make it sound, theirs versus mine.  Concern or expectations of fishy or decayed range from an 8 year old, dry stored sheng is odd (related to the review being from 4 years old).  It's possible that they were mostly right, and for me drinking this 4 years later a lot of what they thought might drop out after 5 more years already did.  One of the other reviews was also from 4 years ago, and not completely different than that one, and the other from 7 years back, which would be a considerably less transitioned version of this tea.

They all emphasize the tea being chopped material, and it is, one going so far as to say they had trouble separating out some to brew.  Chopped material can be fine, but it is typical for more aging input to help with the astringency that results from that, the way different compounds are extracted as a result.  I'm probably drinking a much better version of this for getting to it 4 years later than those last two.

I suspect that I appreciate a broader range in sheng than all of them, that I can enjoy drinking a youngish Xiaguan or Dayi Jia Ji when I feel like it, one 5 years old or less, which would include a lot more astringency edge and bitterness than this, although for this version 7 years ago who knows.  It's not necessarily better to be open to different astringency and bitterness exposure, just a difference.  This isn't astringent though, compared to younger teas, most kinds that are within 2 or 3 years old.  

Just expecting that dry storage is going to preserve the tea might make a lot of difference; if I expected this to be transitioned to a more typical 12 year level of fermentation, under moderate humidity conditions, versus dry, I could be put off by it not being what I thought it would be.

I found this tea to be significantly better than I expected it to be, kind of the opposite of those other reviews.  I thought there would be more limited quality material concerns, that it would lack that sweetness and floral range, replaced by smokiness (which others did pick up, earlier, and in a differently stored version), or mushroom, odd mineral, etc.  It's not strange that there was no mustiness; I expected dry storage to not lead towards that result at all.  I didn't expect it to be anything like the 2008 Nan Jian version Ralph reviewed, which is considerably age-transitioned.