I'm trying a next tea from a Chawang Shop order, this one from Laos, one of the main reasons I wanted to order from them. I really liked another from Myanmar I tried awhile back and saw this that I had missed. I'll let them describe what it is:
2014 Laos Ban Payasi Raw Puerh Cake 200g
Phôngsali is a province of Laos, bordering Yiwu, Yunnan. It is located high in the mountains, approximately 450–1,800 metres above sea level. Phôngsali is well know as ancient tea caravan in the past, is also one of the important origin of yunnan puer tea in history. In recent years, with the ancient tea market continued to heat up, more and more people set their sights on the border tea that come from unknown villages in Myanmar or Laos.
The ancient tea trees resources in mountain area are extremely rich, but the local tea making techniques are poor. Laos pu'er tea is seldom seen on the market. Many raw materials are bought by Yunnan tea makers and sold as more expensive Yiwu tea...
Ban Payasi is another village, deep in the mountain. This place has many ancient trees and 50-100 years old tea trees.
...If compare with other two cakes from Ban Komaen, the character of taste is quite different. Tea soup is light yellow with light herbal scent, this tea has unique cool feeling in mouth. Bitter-sweet and powerful, great tea for long term storage !
...Production date : Early March 2014, pressed 19.3.2014
Harvest Area : Ban Payasi, Phongsaly, Lao
It's interesting hearing that, comparing it to what 8 years of relatively dry storage have changed about it. The review notes tell that story.
I don't think I've ran across any Laos sheng that seemed overly bitter to me, so I'm not so sure about their impression of a starting point. I've tried at least a dozen versions so far, I'm sure, so it's not an endless sample set, but that's a bit, probably from some different areas there.
Review:
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this round was light but color is washed out in all these photos, for setting being bright |
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the leaves slightly wetted, still a bit green |
First infusion: warm range indicates that this is partly aged (fermented), as one would expect after 8 years. It would be much more fermented if it had spent that time here; it will be interesting seeing the difference in transition form, to a limited extent. Not knowing the starting point that can only go so far.
This is light, so early for breaking down a flavor list, but it's pleasant so far. Warm tones include mineral undertones, and soft floral range. It's hard to pin down the warmer range, as spice or something else, which will be easier across more rounds, based on stronger infusions. I'll skip ahead to the next one then.
Second infusion: a little strong, even for brewing for about 10 seconds; it's started now. It's in an interesting place, for green tones still standing out, and warm tones also entering in. The greener range links to pronounced and aromatic floral range, which hasn't diminished much in relation to how old this tea is (seemingly; maybe it was much stronger, but the typical range only varies so much). A warmer tone is woody and also aromatic, towards cedar. Warm mineral tones support both. Astringency is pretty limited; it has a light edge to it, but it's more a dryness, a type of feel that doesn't include much bite. Sweetness is nice; it supports the rest too.
The determining factor for how someone likes this tea--at this stage--would be that dryness, which seems to connect with the woody range. That may be related to what people describe as a sourness entering in when teas are stored quite dry. It's not sour, so in a sense that would be wrong, but the woody range might be an output from the relatively dry conditions, since dry-stored sheng can tend to include that. At the same time that it picked up some character some might not like it also retained a lot of floral range that would've faded and transitioned over 8 years stored wetter. This is "green" enough that it has fermented about as much as sheng would tend to over 3 to 4 years here.
Third infusion: the vegetal range transitions some in this; lighter and fresher floral tone has linked with a plant-stem sort of input. To a limited extent the warmer wood tone has faded, so it's as if that replaced it. Warm mineral stays in place, like the scent of Utah slick-rock.
How could a mineral range taste be carried in a smell? Hard to say; the way that we end up tasting in practice seems a bit complicated. It seems that what we link through association can be interpreted as something it's really not. That reminds me of a recent interesting input about astringency tying to taste range, through that kind of expectation connection; maybe I'll cite that after the tasting review part.
Fourth infusion: sweetness seems to stand out even more; odd that would transition. Aftertaste range is also picking up, the same kind of lingering sweetness that usually accompanies a much higher level of bitterness, but without that. There's some bitterness in this, but a low enough level I've not even mentioned the concept yet. Maybe bitterness ramped up some too. It's odd that the character shifted that much in that way, for sweetness, some bitterness, and aftertaste to all jump a few rounds in. Brewing it slightly stronger could cause that effect but timing was really limited for that round, under 10 seconds.
So how do I like it? It's different, at an unusual place for fermentation transition. I like it, but it might have made more sense to drink this as a younger tea to experience more intense floral range, along with more astringency and bitterness, or as a more aged tea, letting those warmer range tones really develop. It's right in the middle. It hasn't "gone quiet" as people describe for teen years sheng pu'er versions; maybe that's still ahead for it.
Fifth infusion: not so different; I'll take a round off and describe it more on the next.
Sixth infusion: the floral tones are rich in an unusual way; they seem to be picking up depth. They're a bit warm, like rose and lavender, but it's more about how they come across than specific flavors. Wuyi Yancha oolongs of a good quality level pick up a perfume-like aromatic quality, a little towards liqueur in how it comes across, and this is a little like that. In a slightly different form and context this would seem artificial, like something added to the tea.
It can't be that for a few reasons; one of them is that it would show up first if so, and rinse out fast, not occur as something that develops across infusions. And this tea just isn't anything like that; it's above average quality, "off-area," plain sheng. There was no "plantation tea" to be sourced in Laos in 2014, and not much of it there now. Wild origin claims are much more believable when that's essentially all that's growing in an area.
I don't love the term "border tea," but I suppose it kind of works. It trivializes an entire region as being distinctive for being near and somewhat similar to Yunnan, when really all those South East Asian areas are just what they are, not defined by China or the Chinese tea tradition in any way, without that being externally applied. It's probably the case that Yunnan plants and tea processing did make its way into Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar, perhaps even peaking at a time of greater influence 300 or 400 years ago. But still, beyond the present dominance of Chinese tea production, ongoing borrowing of processing knowledge, and that sort of lost history there isn't so much connection. Tea has been in Laos for hundreds of years, and we really don't know what form local production and consumption took 100 years ago. Inputs like terroir made this tea what it is, along with plant genetics, processing inputs, and so on.
We ran through discussion of all this, related to modern sources and forms, in a meetup discussion with "Mr. Mopar" recently. Most Laos and Vietnam sheng has been shipped to China to be mixed with and sold as Yunnan sheng, which people can interpret differently, however they like. I added that vendor citation after writing that; it's pretty well known, not just speculation.
As I see it the demand for Chinese teas are much higher, so it's simply about the Chinese market extending sourcing of very similar material, which in many cases would be better than equivalent mass-produced, mono-culture farmed, low elevation Yunnan production. Local Laos processing would be inconsistent; we talked a little about what people like my friend Anna, of Kinnari Tea, have been doing in an NGO project to bring tea processing experts in to conduct training, including William of Farmerleaf, a familiar figure in tea circles. His videos on that experience are here and here, with the second really cool for being filmed on-site there in rural Laos.
It's interesting that it's hard to see an image of Anna, or to catch a voice or video talk of her describing that process. She avoids that sort of coverage. But is she Google-proof? Here is a video of her talking about Laos teas, the context and specific versions, back in 2016, but of course she's not actually in the video, her appearance. She did a great voice interview / seminar talk on the Farmerleaf Discord server last year, and I've seen another video version that was similar awhile back, but Google doesn't turn up anything like that. If you see a seminar notice with her included watch it; she's great, a real asset to that country.
The more general point, which I won't do justice to here, is that Laos tea is relatively undeveloped compared to status in China, but it's not as if it's a range that follows suit and just happens to be just across a border. I've tried some exceptional and novel Laos teas, including a wild black tea version with a mint aspect that was unlike anything else I've ever encountered (from Anna). That was like Taiwanese Ruby / Red Jade / #18 but with a spearmint mint input instead of that harsher menthol range typical of those.
Sixth infusion: I'll probably leave off the notes here; to me it's not as interesting hearing about the second half dozen infusions. For whatever reason I see them as transitioning a lot less than they are described to in Mattcha's blog posts, mostly just some tapering off. And this round isn't so different than the last, so there isn't much to add. That perfume-like heavy floral range is nice, so strange that it joins a much less pronounced warm tone range, and that it hung in there at this intensity for so many years. To me that's dry storage for you; it preserves the tea, enabling minimal aging transformation, in forms that aren't necessarily more positive or negative than a more conventional humidity range.
Later rounds: of course it was far from finished. A pronounced citrus aspect really stood out to me in those later rounds; either I had just missed noticing it before or else transition really seemed to bring it out. It's odd that kind of thing evolved so late like that, but I could see how pronounced sweetness and floral range might shift in such a way. You don't think of citrus as likely to be a primary theme in 8 year old semi-aged pu'er, but then this was low in fermentation level.
Conclusions:
I've been considering if dryer conditions and slower fermentation transition process might not be positive for some types of teas. I really don't think this was bitter and intense to start in the same way Menghai teas often tend to be, but of course I didn't actually try it. It would be nice to find a trustworthy review of the exact same tea, from years back, and as luck has it Google mentions such a thing:
2014 Chawangpu Ban Payasi (Northern Teaist 2017 review)
(sourced through What-Cha, identified as from Chawang Shop; strange)
The rinse had a smoky, floral aroma, all heavily perfumed hothouse flowers, with a papery kind of note that reminded me of newsprint somehow.
The early steeps showed a medium body that straddled the border between milky and creamy, with that flowery thing sat on top of the typical sheng woody, earthiness.
There was a wee astringent nip in there, too, the kind that tickles the roof of the mouth, but nothing more.
By the second steeping I’d started to sweat profusely in the whole upper body region, especially the back of my neck for some peculiar reason...
[section about qi cut out; there was more]
During the back-half of the session I got the feeling of bracken covered moorland on a hot summer’s day, and as the astringent note began to tail off it let a sugarsnap pea like sweetness through.
For that tea, the exact same one I reviewed, being 3 years old then, and not so bitter, astringent, or challenging, it seems like it didn't start out that way. This wasn't really a flavor list or feel intensive review, kind of saying a little about a lot of scope, but a general impression comes across.
I've read reviews by that guy before, and we've spoken, with his input on tea interest included in a random blog post exploration of tea culture in Sweden awhile back. He seems fairly balanced and reliable. His writing and approach reminds me a bit of Mattcha's Blog, which I consider to be high praise, since to me that's one of the better tea blogs.
All in all I really liked this tea, the style, and even where it's at for softening and picking up depth due to aging transition, without giving up much of the bright floral intensity. It helps that I probably would've liked this the first year it was made, so it being relatively preserved works out. I'm not sure if any negative change occurred related to the storage being dry, or if this would've been better transitioned to a similar level over 3 or 4 years stored here (or 2; this wasn't very far along). Liking the tea is the main point, and that part worked out.
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