Viet Sun Tả Củ Tỷ and Giàng Pằng Autumn 2023 sheng (pu'er)

 

photo lighting isn't dialed in where I'm trying the teas just now

I'm reviewing Tả Củ Tỷ and Giàng Pằng Autumn 2023 sheng pu'er-style teas from Vietnam, from Viet Sun.  There are plenty of earlier Viet Sun reviews of different tea types posted earlier; these were sent by Steve (the owner) as samples when I reordered a good bit more of a black tea that I loved (this one; a new version should be available for this year before too long).

Tả Củ Tỷ Autumn 2023, $36 for 200 grams, (equivalent to $64 per 357 gram cake)

This tea was made in early September from a mixture of medium, older and ancient trees growing in a few different gardens around the area. One of the most interesting parts of this tea is the varied terroir inputs. Some of the raw material was collected from higher elevation rocky/ boulder field gardens and some from lower elevation more clay-rich soil gardens.

This tea brews up quickly into a clear green-golden soup. The flavor is punchy with vegetal mossy and deep forest floral notes. Bitterness and astringency are moderate with a quick floral sweet huigan that develops after the first cup.

I like brewing it at 90-100C for short and then longer steeps.

I believe this is a good candidate for aging as the raw material is good and its aggressive edge should round out nicely after a couple of years.

Picking Standard: 1 bud, 2-3 leaves

Region: Tả Củ Tỷ, Lào Cai

Elevation: 1000-1300m

Giàng Pằng Autumn 2023, $38 for 200 grams, so $68 for 357 grams worth ($68)

This tea was made from ancient trees growing at about 1400m. It brews up slowly into a rich, hazy golden, green soup. Heavily sweet and floral with a melon fruit range and vegetal forest/ almost leathery notes. Low-medium bitterness and astringency. Rich huigan that builds after a few steeps and energizing qi.

Due to being an early season tea, we decided to go with a younger/ buddier pick to minimize huangpian. Expect a more fragrance/ flavor heavy tea this season.

Picking Standard: 1 bud, 2 leaves

Region: Giàng Pằng, Yên Bái

Elevation: 1400m

Review:

Tả Củ Tỷ Autumn 2023:  that's really nice.  The flavor is richer, warmer, and more complex than I would've expected, not the typical pronounced bitterness, vague floral, and underlying mineral a lot of pretty good sheng mostly covers.  

Mineral is warmer, onto almost a metal range, or at least like a mineral-intensive well water effect.  Bitterness is there but secondary to the mineral range, which isn't underlying.  Other flavor is harder to break down.  It reminds me of the scent of a damp forest in spring, but that's not a flavor list.  One part is earthy, like a damp fallen log or mushroom, and another is sweet, a little towards dried fruit, and some could be a spice note.  I'll keep going with breakdown next round.

Giàng Pằng Autumn 2023:  absolutely different, but with a similar effect.  Bitterness is pronounced but not dominant, and mineral stands out in an unusual form, and form of expression.  Sweetness leans towards citrus, and there is more of a vegetal spice input in this, less warm and rich earthy range.  I suppose floral stands out more in this, but that fruit and light spice range is stronger.

Both of those I brewed for longer than usual to skip the part about them being too light to identify, and as a result both were a bit strong, more so than optimum.  At least the initial progression is on track.  I didn't separate the large chunks as much as I normally would, not for a clear purpose, just not so clear this morning, and skipped that step.  Of course you don't want to tear and shred the leaves but it does work to twist them apart without breaking them, the part I didn't do.  

Both samples looked great; I could've done more justice to that taking a better picture of those too.  I've been really busy here (in Honolulu) for about a month, and I overdid it yesterday with a long run (12 km) and walking the better part of that far doing local errands, then cooking and cleaning at home.  Our apartment here is tiny and crowded and my mind feels crowded as well.  All of these are ok problems to have; I don't mind at all.

Tả Củ Tỷ, round 2:  lighter, a more conventional infusion strength.  Bitterness has picked up quite a bit; that's no surprise.  The warm tone, sweetness, and unusual mineral range are all quite pleasant.  This isn't all that oxidized, seemingly, but limited association with black tea range might be pleasant for many, that tone being this warm.  Thickness of feel really picks up, and aftertaste.

I'm still not having luck with flavor list style breakdown.  There's almost a Chinese medicinal herb quality to this, complex and diverse, with parts warm in tone, like unusual dried bark spice, or maybe even mushroom.  It's not mushroomy, tasting like fungus, so maybe that part is more like ginseng, a root spice with a hard to describe flavor range.  It's hard to justify why I'm saying this is warm in tone; it just is.  It tastes a little like dried fruit but that's a secondary and integrated component at most.  There's just a subtle warmth to it, less subtle in the mineral range.

Giàng Pằng:  fruit really picked up in this, and also bitterness.  I brewed these fast, around 10 seconds or so, counting all the pour times, but they're still too strong.  As usual I've used too much leaf material; if I complete that step on autopilot it ends up like this, probably using 7 or 8 grams.  For drinking a lot of one tea with breakfast that's fine, but I won't get as far in review rounds for doing that.  And moderating infusion strength relates to using flash infusions, instead of adjusting brewing timing.

The flavor is lighter and brighter in this.  Again it seems more floral to me, but part is something else, a little citrusy, maybe along the line of lemongrass as much as true citrus, but I could see this as tasting like lemon (dried peel more than the fruit, I think).  It's intense.  I love that effect, of a strong sheng really hitting hard, but people accustomed to other tea types might not.  The feel effect on my mind is hitting hard already, for wrapping up drinking four infusions worth, which really could've been 8, brewed much lighter.

I'm using goji berries that were soaking to clear my palate between rounds.  For wispy light rounds clearing the flavor would be a mistake, not necessary or helpful, but these are a bit strong.  I would recommend eating goji berries daily for health effect, offsetting aging impact and helping with eye and skin health, but then what do I know. 

Tả Củ Tỷ, round 3:   finally light enough to be in a normal infusion strength range, using more of a true flash infusion.  I can relate to strong brewed sheng but it's not ideal for review interpretation.  

Fruit range seems to show up more brewed this way.  There is still bitterness, warm mineral, and vague earthy tones, but a yellow watermelon sort of fruit aspect enters in.  If there is floral range it's on the warm and rich side, but if so it's a bit vague, easy to interpret as something else instead.  

The feel is really nice, full and smooth.  Neither of these has seemed astringent and harsh, as younger sheng can be, but they both give up no intensity at all.  Sweetness and bitterness balance really well.

Giàng Pằng:  bitterness is much more pronounced in this.  It's like that dandelion flower or stem effect; strong, with a corresponding flavor matched to it.  Bright and light floral range stands out more, and what I'm interpreting as a light fruit aspect, which could as easily be regarded as related spice.  It all balances well, but the bitterness isn't for people who aren't already on that page.  

That pairing of a specific type of bitterness and heavy floral towards fruit flavor should be quite familiar from some Yunnan version examples.  The vegetal edge, which I've described here as like flower stem, may not be as common.  I reviewed a version not so far off this that I bought in a Bangkok shop last year, somewhat bitter, sweet, and floral, from a location I don't think I ever mentioned or knew related to it being written in Thai on the label.

TCT, GP, #4:  probably a good round to skip notes; both are not so different, and as usual this runs long, and become repetitive.  10 cups of these is a lot though, so the next round might be the last for notes.

TCT #5:  this is transitioning nicely, even if I'm not going to be able to communicate that clearly in a changing flavor list.  It balances better and better.  To me it's nice that the bitterness is so moderate (relatively speaking; this is bitter as straight aspirin compared to any oolong, and the other more so), and that the sweetness offsets it.  It seems to evolve more towards a warm floral tone, which is rich and full enough that it also reminds me of fruit range.  Oddly the complexity of flavor range makes it hard to separate out 2 or 3 inputs that are causing those effects.  There's a lot going on, which could seem to come across as integrated and uniform, but when you try to describe it it's quite complex.

GP:  this warms in tone a bit, drifting closer to the other.  Bitterness is still more pronounced, but that eases up.  Floral tone is even more pronounced than for the other version.  It would be nice to specify a flower type, but that always has been a limitation for me, remembering how a couple of dozen different flowers smell for baseline reference.  There's one aspect that I've experienced in Yunnan sheng that's catchy, maybe a set of flavors that tend to relate to each other in a certain way, a honey sweetness, combined with a citrus effect, and certain floral range.  It's like a naturally matching set.  

Round 6:  The TCT version is better than ever, pleasant and not challenging at all brewed lightly.  Floral and fruit tones really pop, with fullness and depth supporting those.  A bitter edge hangs in there for the other, the GP version, which lingers as bitterness and residual sweetness, even brewed lightly.  It's pleasant.  For people avoiding bitterness it would be too much, for sure, but for those who love that pairing of bitterness and trailing sweetness it's just the thing.

For combined tasting you can't separate which has the stronger body feel or heady buzz effect but these were clearly strong teas.

Conclusions / comparison to vendor descriptions: 

It will be interesting to go back and check on Steve's interpretation of these and see how he placed them (since I add those after taking notes, during editing).  I feel like my descriptions aren't all that clear or descriptive.

The Viet Sun sales page descriptions work, with a couple of differences in interpretation.  For the Ta Cu Ty "The flavor is punchy with vegetal mossy and deep forest floral notes" really works well; that early warmer and earthier flavor was hard to capture, but reference to moss and deep forest floral goes there, even if it's really about two different themes emerging early and later, per my interpretation.  

Bitterness seemed more pronounced to me for the Giang Pang is described, but "heavily sweet and floral with a melon fruit range and vegetal forest/ almost leathery notes" kind of matches.  There is one part that can be taken as challenging, here referred to as vegetal and almost leathery, which I've compared to plant stem taste input.  The rest balances that nicely, making it seem less like a negative inclusion and more of an integrated set.

It's hard for me to guess about aging potential for these, mentioned in relation to describing the Ta Cu Ty version as aggressive.  Both might be even better after a year or two of settling, but I'm not sure how they would change as moderately transitioned versions (6-8 years), or as fully aged (15-20).  A related comment and tangent about intensity might help place that.

For as intense and aggressive as these have been I would expect the next 3 or 4 rounds to be as good or perhaps better than the earlier experience.  That doesn't relate to high bitterness or astringency, oddly, just overall intensity.  Fall teas are know for being a bit less intense than spring versions, one limitation of the type range, but that's not how these worked out.  

There's a decent chance that the trees weren't challenged by harvesting a substantial amount of summer material to make black tea, as can occur with plantation or somewhat natural growth versions in more developed areas, enabling them to continue to produce leaves naturally high in compounds relating to flavor.  But then again what do I know.

Comparing these to the Son La version I've drank half a cake of over the last year parts of the range is consistent and familiar, even if aspects and style vary quite a bit.  I really like that tea; something about it I can connect with.  Both of these could match it in terms of intensity, in two different senses, but the way those aspects balance is so nice for me.

those old-style buildings are common in lots of local schools