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Jie Zheng left, Qiaomu Huang right, in all photos |
Reviewing two more aged sheng pu'er versions from Moychay, from a set they contributed for review. Really I see this as more discussion of aging effect research than advocating them as a source, but it can work as both. I recently wrote about storage inputs affecting sheng fermentation rates and outcome, here, and this is more along the same line, based on considering two 2007 examples.
Buying tea from within Russia doesn't seem all that workable now but there's a Moychay shop outlet based in Amsterdam that works around that. It seems both of those are listed in the Amsterdam page so I'll cite descriptions from there this time, instead of their main site. It's funny noting how the listed costs for both are in the opposite order in relation to my preference for the two; that can happen.
Jie Zheng Sheng Cha Bing (2007), 345 g., €22,00 / 50g
345-grams teacake of medium density easily separates into twisted brown leaves, buds and thin cuttings...
The bouquet of the ready-made tea is mature, woody-and-fruity, with notes of spicy herbs and autumn leaves. The aroma is deep and warm, complex, woody-and-fruity. The taste is full-bodied and mellow, pleasantly astringent, sweetish, with fruity sourness, nuances of spices and a long, refreshing finish...
“Jie Zheng Sheng Cha Bing” is an excellent example of aged sheng pu-erh with a multifaceted taste and a meditative effect.
Qiao Mu Huang Sheng Cha Bing (2007), 335 g., €13,50 / 50g
Sheng Puerh from Changning Mentong Yinshan Factory. The shoots from the tea trees of Yinshan Mountain (Baoshan County) of the 2007 harvest were used as raw materials.
335-grams teacake of medium density easily separates into twisted brown leaves, buds and thin cuttings...
The bouquet of the ready-made tea is mature, woody-herbaceous, with earthy, balsamic and fruity hints. The aroma is complex, fruity-balsamic. The taste is rich and mellow, silky, sweetish, with woody astringency, fruity sourness and lingering finish.
“Qiaomu Huang Sheng Cha Bing” is аn excellent sample of aged tea with a multifaceted taste and mild tonic effect.
I'll say more about how I perceive quality level and match to preference, and fermentation level as an input, in conclusions that follow the review notes. These will help make sense of why I like a version that costs less in this case.
Review:
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Jie Zheng left; it's already clear that fermentation level is lower |
Jie Zheng: significantly less fermented than the other version, apparent in brewed liquid color; this won't be a comparison of similar versions, even without tea style, other aspects, and quality level factoring in. This is interesting for combining vegetal and mineral range, not an uncommon theme for sheng pu'er fermented to this level, from an intense aspect set starting point. It hasn't really turned the corner related to aging and fermentation moving on to warmer and deeper range; it's a change in progress. Some cement-oriented mineral range seems promising in relation to shifting to something else within a couple of infusions, and other clean flavor range seems to show through "behind" that. But the next round will be about that transitioning forward, and not there yet.
Qiaomu Huang: that's something quite different, warmer and deeper musty range, so close to what Liu Bao tends to express that one might guess that's what this is. Again heavy and sweet mineral and earthy elements combine with less than ideal fermentation effects in a way that promises this tea will be much better in two more rounds, once it has had a chance to develop. I'll say a little about the next round too but the real review will probably start on the third round for these. It would be prudent to throw away the second half of this round's tea in order to get further in a sequence, but I never did like the idea of wasting tea like that.
Jie Zheng, second infusion: cleaning up right on schedule. A warm spice depth kicks in, with hints of dried fruit to follow. Vegetal range gave way to warmer tones faster than I expected a related transition to occur. I'll do a flavor list description next round. Feel is even developing fast, picking up a thicker sapiness.
Quiaomu Huang: now leaning towards the range most people probably tend to like in Liu Bao, that warm molasses sweetness, coupled with a slate range mineral layer. This hints at a much heavier dried fruit range, towards Chinese date versus the other more light fruit, or even vegetal. Aftertaste is really pronounced, which will be more pleasant once a heavier fermentation range, towards char, clears off even more. Feel is not astringent in any more typical sense, heavy with fullness and a bit of dry edge.
Jie Zheng, third infusion: there it is, a much cleaner, well established character. It still includes plenty of vegetal range, but the scope also covers much warmer and deeper tone. For someone only interested in relatively fully fermentation transitioned sheng this isn't there yet. It had plenty of intensity to work with to stay this strong at this level of changeover, I'm just not sure how pleasant the final result will be, and have mixed feelings about the experience at this point.
"Vegetal" here is closer to tree-fungus than something like kale, but it's not completely off that kale range. Warm sweetness counters that well, balancing it, and adding more depth to appreciate. Feel is fine, not thin, just not pronounced, with aftertaste experience moderate, not a heavier effect as for the other tea.
Quiaomu Huang: richness and deeper flavors keep picking up; this might be really nice in two more infusions, if it could keep changing like that. There wasn't so much mustiness to clear up but the effect of aged Liu Bao versus more typical well-aged sheng aspect range isn't something everyone would seek out.
Jie Zheng, 4th infusion: still improving; that's a good sign. It's interesting how vegetal range, which I see as tied to this not being well-transitioned by fermentation yet, is balanced against a warmer range that is setting in. It's clean in effect, both parts, and not unpleasant, I just think it will be better in a couple years once that balance tips further. In the end I suppose this tastes a good bit like leather to me, with that really the middle ground between the tree fungus / kale / greener wood range and the deeper spice / warm mineral / dried fruit. There's a way that low quality sheng can produce interesting but simple (not complex) flavor range, coupled with a thin feel and almost no aftertaste effect, and this isn't like that, but feel and aftertaste range are still more moderate than in some other versions.
Qiaomu Huang: this is settling into a more familiar aged furniture sort of range, towards aromatic oils and dark woods, not uncommon for aged sheng. Sweetness level works well to balance that, and a thicker feel and stronger aftertaste than the other tea set it apart as a different kind of experience. I could relate to someone judging this as better tea, especially at this round, after some rougher edged mineral transitioned away quickly earlier on. It's not that simple, since these are at two different places in their aging transition cycles, but I can't imagine the other version will pick up extra depth as it changes further. It could be going through a quieter phase of transitions, an in-between state, and that's how I just described it in the last notes. It's too much to say "I don't expect" it to gain that depth, since I'm only in an early stage in sorting through patterns in sheng transition over aging time, but aside from that being more a random guess than informed input that's it.
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moving tasting indoors shows how lighting level difference changes a lot |
Jie Zheng, 5th infusion: hints of spice and vegetal range are shifting to combine as a different spice range aspect, more towards root spice. It's better; that's a cool kind of transition pattern, that it keeps seeming more pleasant. I don't necessarily hate vegetal range in tea but this is nicer.
Qiaomu Huang: a perfume-like sort of depth picks up. Again this is a really familiar range for well-aged tea, once you get past a few infusions of clearing through mustiness or other heavy mineral input. There's still a little of a basement scent tone, which I was saying reminded me of how Liu Bao tends to often come across, in between rich, warm dried fruit and spice and cement block smell.
Jie Zheng, 6th infusion: feel seemed to thicken a bit, or at least change; that's different. Flavor intensity seems to be dropping off some, and this is already moving on to be like milder aged sheng can be, where you can tell there's a lot to the experience but intense flavors aren't part of that. I'll go a little longer on timing next round and see what that identifies.
Qiaomu Huang: the last round description still works. Aftertaste is a stronger part of the experience than I've been going on about, how all that trails, but it's still not so different.
7th infusion, and general conclusions: I let both brew longer next round and not so much changed. Aspects interpretation shifts, what comes across most, with varying infusion strength, but the teas didn't seem to change much beyond that. A mineral effect ramped up a lot in the first, the Jie Zheng, related to brewing it longer (towards 30 seconds; earlier rounds had all been fast, none much over 10 seconds). In both, I guess, but two different kinds of mineral effects, with aftertaste increasing a lot for both, just two different aftertaste effects.
Conclusions:
I liked the teas; I think that can get lost in trying to list out interpreted aspects in such detail. The more fermented one seems like slightly better tea to me, perhaps mostly because it's at a stage that works a lot better in relation to my tea preferences.
I might clarify that three more rounds of notes would really tell more of a complete story, since these both were far from finished, and transitioning across rounds was a big part of the story of both. Drinking 14 cups of these teas is a lot at one time, back to that trade-off I mentioned in the early review about it possibly being better to throw some tea away. I could pick up where I left off a few hours later but I never do; it's a lot to take an hour out of my day to write the notes I did get to, especially since I finished some editing of another post at the same time.
So why did I like the "cheaper" tea more? A much lower priced version at that; the Qiaomu costs 90 euro per cake versus 150 for the other. It had to do with fermentation level. The Jie Zheng probably is costlier tea as a new version, so applying a standard mark-up left it costing 1 1/2 times as much. Then it's not easy at all to separate out initial tea aging potential and the input the actual storage conditions imparted on the teas.
The sales pages don't list where those both spent the last 15 years, and to an extent it doesn't matter, since it's the end effect that makes the difference, not the status or image of a location name like Taiwan or Hong Kong. Actually a comment on the Moychay page from Moychay staff says that the Qiaomu was stored in Menghai (with no such comment about the Jie Zheng, that I saw). A very well stored tea in a terrible climate location for storing tea will be far superior to a poorly managed tea that was in one of those places. Too much or too little air contact will essentially ruin sheng, for example, and that's not geographical location dependent.
What if I tried both again in another 4 or 5 years; would I expect results to vary, to like the Jie Zheng a lot more? That's really the part I'm still working on now, projecting ahead from experiencing a partly aged sheng pu'er version. Since this Jie Zheng is right in the middle of a transition from earlier fermentation range to the second stage of character, to warmer and deeper tones, that's even harder to say. I have more exposure to guessing based on the much rougher edged early versions, "factory teas," eg. noticing how Xiaguan and Dayi 7542 changes from early to medium to late stage fermentation range. Not enough for those that I can piece together a matrix of fermentation levels, likely storage inputs, and projected possible outcomes.
Another factor is that I don't drink tea based on feel effect (cha qi); if that were true I would have to review these individually. If anything I try to avoid too much of that by eating foods that counter it, and moderating dosage (normally; for reviews I go further). For many people this could be a sign of intermediate stage tea appreciation, not moving on to a final sensitivity and preference range, but then people tend to value their own story and preferences, to place themselves as valuing what is of most value, or in other contexts being the "good guy" when personal character interactions and conflicts occur. Maybe the Jie Zheng does impart a more pleasant feel effect; I don't know. Combining two inputs in comparison review is often not an ideal experience, but it's a price to be paid for reviewing other character in comparison.
I would buy and drink the Qiaomu if it came down to what I like best for where these stand now, even aside from the tea I liked more costing two thirds as much. Someone with different preferences could easily see that differently. Some of the aspects in the Qiaomu cake are similar to those found in moderate priced (comparable to the cost of this one), fully fermentation transitioned cakes I've bought in Chinatown, needing a few infusions to clear a less positive range, ending on aged furniture, earth tones, and relatively non-distinct dried fruit range. The Jie Zheng fermentation level is equivalent to a cake that spent less than a decade here; it essentially had to be stored in a cooler and drier place than Bangkok.
It's interesting looking through the main site comments to see how others place these teas (here and here). That kind of input only helps when you know how the others are interpreting tea in relation to your own preferences, but with any sort of baseline like that it can be quite informative. Of course I don't take that far enough to keep track of who said what; I'll need that memory capacity for remembering all sorts of other things, like where I put my glasses. A couple people did pick up on the similarity between the Qiaomu an aged Liu Bao, and one even criticized the fermentation level for being progressed too far, or too heavy related to input being too damp (I don't think they were clear about which), which I didn't have any problem with. That heavier Liu Bao related range mostly dropped out after three rounds, it seemed to me, so it was more an interesting novelty than a determining factor in the tea experience.
People always interpret flavor aspects quite differently, so that variance from what I've written and those reviews is normal enough. It was odd that the moderate fermentation level for the Jie Zheng wasn't really mentioned, beyond a page aspect indicator saying it included herbaceous range, which in this case was on the greener side (even vegetal, to me, in earlier rounds), just mixed with some warmer range too. You really have to take comments input with a grain of salt (and blogger reviews--these words); it's hard to get a sense of how much experience people are drawing on, or how good their judgment is.
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funny that they synchronize expressions |
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