Early 80's Da Ye

This tea (pictured R, below a thorny intruder!) can be had from Essence of Tea (formerly NadaCha) for a mere £750/350g bing. Even with the GBP taking a beating like it's taking right now, this tea's price is daunting. Luckily, it's also available by the gram, and for an achievable investment a pot's worth can be yours. I'm not here to ramble or moan about the price of teas--I feel that this goes on way too much on too many tea blogs for my tastes. When a certain level of quality is assured, price is far from the forefront of my mind as a factor of interest. Instead, knowing from plenty of experience that the quality of Essence of Tea's offerings has satisfied me many times (with only a few exceptions), this tea's price indicates that it's what Asian collectors (probably Taiwanese) view as "the good stuff" from its time period--this tea is a learning experience waiting to happen.

For me, the chance to ponder so many questions when tasting a tea like this is partly what makes it worth the price of admission: How does a $1000 aged cake taste? How should a pu-erh taste after almost 30 years of aging? More specifically, what does a Menghai 8582 recipe (this is supposedly an earlier prototype of that now famous recipe) taste after decades of aging? What kinds of characteristics in aged teas are sought out by collectors? When you're trying some of your first aged tea, the answers to these questions become the entire universe of your experience, but the more teas you try, the broader your knowledge becomes and the more you can start asking other questions: How is this different from other aged teas I've tried? How mature does it taste compared with contemporary productions? How much less mature does an 80's tea taste from a 70's tea? Is it more worth purchasing a tea of this price and maturity or a less expensive, less mature tea in hopes that it will reach a state similar to this tea? The list goes on and on. I have a very small amount of experience with teas like this, but I can imagine that even those with a host of experience with contemporary pu-erhs and beyond still have plenty of questions to probe with every tea they try.

5g in the pot and a quick rinse. With teas of which I own whole cakes, I may use 6 or more grams for a session, depending on how the tea is apt to behave. I'm a little worried that my decision to buy only 5g may result in a weak pot, but the ensuing session quickly disabuses me of that notion. Most of my experience with 8582 recipes older than 10 years has given me the impression of light, thinner sweetness--less of the directness and high notes that you'd find in an aged 7542, and maybe even a little less of a distinct character. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing--I'd be happy to have some of these aged 8582 cakes in my collection, but I can't say they'd be my favorites. This one is rather different, though, with a thicker mouthfeel, darker cup color and something of a bolder flavor. I probably shouldn't compare it too directly to other 8582's, since it's a prototype and it's made from wild trees instead of plantation bushes.

The tea's broad, sweet and cooling, but there's also a hint of something edgy--I can't tell if it's some vestiges of youth or just a facet of the tea's flavor. This is the point where I wish I had three or four pots' worth of this tea so I could decide whether or not that specific flavor is something I enjoy or dislike. Around the tenth infusion I'll be damned if I didn't taste--for a fleeting second--some sort of tropical fruitiness, something I'd never expect from a pu-erh. The surprisingly dark color of the liquor persists through probably about 15 infusions, at which time the flavor turns to that generic stewed-aged-pu-erh taste. Sweet, smooth and drinkable, but with very little of a distinct character left. I know a lot of people like to continue steeping the tea over and over at this point, but I prefer just 2 or 3 long steeps, maybe 20 minutes at the most, and call it a day--overnight steeped pu-erh just doesn't taste great the next day when it's at room temperature. Overall, this tea was quite enjoyable to drink. I've just written a lot here about studying and learning from aged pu-erhs, but ultimately I'm in it for the enjoyment and mellow buzz of drinking a good aged pu-erh. I'm not always ready to spend $20 on one pot of tea, but with the offerings from Essence of Tea I'm confident it'll be worth it. I always recommend that enthusiasts of young sheng pu-erh try at least a few old ones if they think they're collecting with the intention of fully aging tea--how can you decide a tea is good for aging if you don't know what good aged tea tastes like? I probably wouldn't start with a tea as expensive as this one, though. Something like the 1993 7542 will set you back about $5 for a pot, which seems to be a reasonable price for the pleasure and learning that can be had with a tea like that.


The leaves certainly live up to the cake's moniker and reputation as 8582 predecessor--they are big. A bit of prodding reveals that some of the used leaves are much softer, suppler and lighter brown than others, which is interesting. There's a lot of zealotry happening online these days about so-called questionable processing practices in today's pu-erhs--namely over-oxidation and "improper" kill-green--but teas like this seem to me to be a gentle reminder that a) pu-erh processing is a much larger and more complex subject than some of us would like to believe, and b) a lot of aged teas that are valued by Asian collectors and are also tasting pretty delicious exhibit evidence of some of the processing characteristics that are being decried as foul play. In situations like this, agnosticism seems to be the most prudent position, rather than setting yourself up for some serious foot-in-mouth action. To be fair, though, it's a lot easier to say a certain processing technique is "ok" when you're holding a delicious, obviously successfully-aged cake in your hands. What to buy, when you want to eventually have a tasty home-aged cake? Familiar dilemmas persist.

Old Favorites

It's that time of year again...as I've written before, Chinese greens have for me become almost solely a seasonal pleasure. Buy them fresh, drink them quickly and enjoy the experience when it's most intense. So this morning we enjoyed a tea I've been delighted to drink every year for the past four years--Xu Fu Long Ya from Teaspring (m'lady never seems to tire of hearing me ape the pronunciation sound clip offered on Teaspring's page for this one; any cheap laugh I can get).


It's nice to have old favorites to return to, especially when you never know what nuances are going to be prominent that you didn't pick up on last year. Likewise, my music choices lately have been in the comfort zone--something like 20 new albums that I haven't listened to yet, and what do I choose? The Band, which reigns supreme in terms of play count in my music library. So many layers...lately I've been most acutely appreciating Robbie Robertson's metamorphosis as songwriter--from the heavily Dylan-influenced Music from Big Pink, coming into his own as a slightly academic channeler of America's past on The Band, to Stage Fright, when the pretense of the first two albums' fictional characters gets all too real as he becomes the tragic chronicler of his bandmates' descent into the substance abuse and self-destruction. It's tough to watch (listen) as Richard Manuel's angelic voice shows more and more the effects of alcoholism, especially as he sings Robertson's ironic songs that detail the price of fame, trading his soul for musical ability and hollering "oh, you don't know the shape I'm in." And that's not even mentioning the parallel paths Danko and Helm were on, or Garth Hudson as the impassive sentinel, silently watching it all go down.

If only green tea were as multi-layered as The Band. That's not to say it isn't immensely enjoyable--limiting my consumption certainly makes me very excited for the new harvest every year--but I try not to expect too many facets out of those emerald spears. Xu Fu Long Ya falls into the "legume" category of Chinese greens--snow peas and beans are what fill my nostrils (not literally, of course, then it'd be pretty hard to breathe) when I crack the bag. The flavor does match the aroma pretty closely--the first infusion is my favorite for this year's tea--it's got all that legume flavor and just a hint of tart bitterness that quickly washes sweet. Since I don't keep a stock of Chinese greens year-round, my brewing skills are pretty feeble. By the time I figure a tea out, my 25g are all used up! This year's Long Ya seems to require longer infusions to maintain its characteristic flavor--otherwise things turn generically green. It does manage to produce more than five decent infusions even with a longer steep time, though, so it's just a matter of treating it properly. I know at least one tea correspondent to whom I've recommended this tea (hope you enjoy it B), but I'm always quick to recommend Teaspring for their selection (Long Ya and a number of others are teas I haven't seen anywhere else). Other faves I have to anticipate--Yang Yan Gou Qing's velvety mouthfeel, the modest legumey delights of Zhu Ye Qing, as well as Dong Ting Bi Luo Chun and Wu Niu Zao from Jing Tea Shop. It ain't easy being green.

Sugar in the gourd

What an exciting couple of months it's been. Up until a couple of weeks ago I'd been slaving away at finishing the recording project I started in November. Toward the end things got quite busy--long hours recording, mixing and writing some notes about the lyrics for my facebook music page. In so many ways the process has been amazing--it's the first multiple-song project I've actually finished since 2005, it's been a great opportunity to catch up on the material I've written since 2006 in attempts to get more current, and it went well enough that I'm planning to do a bit more recording and release a full-length, professionally-produced CD later this summer. Between music, work, Mandarin class, running and enjoying the occasional gorgeous spring Seattle day in Discovery Park, I've had precious little time for gong fu tea. In some ways it's been great--I made it through April with nary a tea purchase to be had, which is always easier on the pocketbook. On a more personal level, it felt good to relax my tea obsession, which at times over the past three years has eclipsed my supposed 'passion' for music and become a sort of crutch, diverting my interest and energy while some health issues prevented me from being able to sing (long, long story). Diving deep into this project reminded me where my most intense fulfillment comes from--when bringing the recordings to fruition I honestly could barely have cared less about tea and the sessions I took were more out of necessity than true attention (can't work with drowsiness or a headache!). So, I'm glad to have achieved more balance in my interests--I celebrated the end of my project goals by polishing off the 50g of 1970's Guang Yun Gong pu-erh that I special-ordered from Jing Tea Shop in October. It was certainly aged to full maturity, but not as complex as the 60's Guang Yun Gong I've had from both Hou De and Nada Cha/Essence of Tea. The sessions were always very pleasant, relaxing and good drinking and brewing experience--after all, you can't really make claims or assumptions about the age-ability of young pu-erh if you haven't experienced mature aged pu-erh, right? I'm always happy to expand my minuscule portfolio of aged pu-erh experience with another tea, especially when I can get ahold of 9-10 sessions worth to understand the tea better.

In addition to the aforementioned activities, I also briefly vacationed in Barbados. Not a lot of tea drinkers in Barbados, although the lingering British colonial presence (now often in the form of lily-white or lobster-red tourists) undoubtedly means that there's some leaf on the island. My recent traveling MO has been to bring along my gourd and some yerba mate--it involves far fewer accoutrements than gong fu and allows me to enjoy a beverage that I rarely drink these days. I once spent a summer painting houses in Walla Walla, jacked up on mate listening to Captain Beefheart, Love and John Fahey, so mate's earthy sweet flavor and potent caffeine buzz always takes me back. I'd love to hear a Chinese or Taiwanese tea aficionado describe the qi of yerba mate--it's certainly not subtle when you drink out of a 2/3 full gourd.

Now I'm looking forward to the spring offerings--Dancong, Bi Luo Chun on the way from Jing Tea Shop, a few Chinese greens including a favorite--Xu Fu Long Ya--from Teaspring, and eventually a wee bit of Taiwanese gaoshan, Essence of Tea cakes, and some fresh yan cha...and that's just the fresh stuff! Hopefully I'll be back soon with some ideas I've had slowly brewing--it's been longer between posts than I'd prefer, but I'd rather post infrequently when I actually have something to say than just to keep up appearances. What have you been drinking lately?

A storage experiment

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I had a fun little time yesterday breaking up a couple cakes for storage in some recently-purchased yixing containers. Though I've heard from a number of online retailers that you can store pu-erh in yixing jars, it wasn't until recently that I heard a couple of really intriguing accounts about the specific effects that just a few months' storage in clay jars can have on pu-erh: the tea will become rounder, smoother, and a lot mellower in flavor, I'm told. Now that I think about it and have had another look, I have to give Bret at Tea Goober credit for mentioning this a long time ago--sometimes I have to hear things from a few sources before the skeptic in me can be persuaded, though. Plus, I hadn't actually had someone explain to me until recently the exact effects of yixing jar storage.

The yixing jars come from Golden Teahouse. It's been a while since I've ordered from them, but they had the best prices I could find on smallish yixing canisters. As it turns out, they're actually pretty small. I didn't measure precisely, but they're probably only 300 ml at the most. It's not too big of a deal, though--it just means I don't have to invest as much tea to fill up the container! Also interestingly, although I ordered 2 of the same product, the jars have slightly different clay colors: one is more on the purple side and the other is redder.

To fill the jars I used the Zhong Cha Big Leaf 90's bing and the 90's unwrapped brick from my Skip4Tea purchase. The main reason I got all excited for this experiment is because the supposed effects of yixing storage are exactly what I want for these two teas--I don't consider either of them mature yet, and they both have enough harshness that they aren't especially pleasant to drink. If the jars can accelerate the aging in the short term and take the edge off the bitterness (and hopefully the smokiness, especially in the case of the brick), then these teas could become pretty good everyday pu-erhs without waiting several years. Since I'm not overly enamored with them, it won't break my heart if the experiment doesn't produce life-changing results. The really fun part is that I've still got plenty of each original cake left over, so comparison will be easy. I think 3 months is a reasonable time frame, so we'll check back then. Anybody out there have any experience with yixing pu-erh storage in the short term, or more interestingly, the long term?

If this works out well, I've got a few teas I'm more excited about that could use a little aging acceleration--it would be nice to have a few more teas in the rotation so I'm not drinking up the expensive stuff quite as fast! For now, the thing I'm most excited about isn't tea but--you guessed it--music. Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé has been bouncing around my brain, speakers and headphones the past week. I'm attending a performance at the Seattle Symphony tomorrow night and I don't think there's another piece of classical music I'd be more excited to hear live (ok, maybe Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, but Daphnis et Chloé is longer, and it's got a full choir for goodness' sake!). Ravel is often overshadowed by Debussy when it comes to the impressionist music movement of the early 1900's, but for my money it doesn't get any better than Ravel's ballet--that swelling crescendo and the whole Lent section has got to be 4 of the most gorgeous minutes in music history, as far as I'm concerned (my neck is tingling just thinking about it). It's a shame how many people could sing John Williams' Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Jurassic Park themes from memory but have never heard one of the pieces from which he has continuously borrowed so heavily in all its glory. *Ahem,* Tea! (Maybe I need to start another blog...)

As for the blossoms, it's hard to believe how early spring came this year in Seattle; probably about a month earlier. Reminds me of the almost laughably melodramatic "The Birds" from Peter Hammill's solo debut Fool's Mate. There was much better work to come...despite the fact this early spring brought blossoms too early for Chinese greens, the weather has at least remained nice enough that the blossoms have lingered awhile without being hailed off of their trees.

Big Fun with Three Liu An Teas

I've been on a real late 60's/early 70's Miles Davis kick lately--the spacey Big Fun was a perfect companion to the head trip I received from tasting three different Liu An teas this afternoon.

Liu An is a tea about which I have a lot of questions. You don't see it very often online, and I've seen it variously lumped in with green tea, pu-erh tea and black (hei) tea (i.e. Liu Bao). I've heard it's pan-fired like green tea, but I've also heard it's cooked like Liu Bao or shu pu-erh. Since it's nowhere near as popular as pu-erh, there's very little consolidated information to be had. In cases like this, it's usually best to learn what you can with your mouth (and other senses, of course).

I got ahold of 3 Liu An samples--none is purported to be less that 10 years old. Starting on the left we have a 1999 Liu An from Yunnan Sourcing, a 1995 Sun Yi Shun Liu An from Hou De (this tea has been sold out for a very long time; I received a sample in a recent tea swap), and a 1980's Sun Yi Shun Liu An from Essence of Tea.

What really prompted this comparison (besides the fact that I haven't really reviewed any teas on here for a while) is that I recently received the '99 sample and, after trying it once or twice thought, "this is pretty good, it seems nearly as aged-tasting as the '80's tea from Essence of Tea." The only way to really know for sure is to try them all.

Of the three teas, the '99 example is the exception in most ways--the leaf profile appears larger than the other two, it's not really compressed (though that's probably just from being broken up for sampling), and the flavor and aroma are distinct from the other two teas. After a quick rinse I smelled the leaves--a rather crayon-y wet clay smell--I decided to give another rinse! A bit more of a tea smell this time, but still that strange earthy clay note, which I don't remember from the other times I've tried this tea. A few rather long steeps later (I only used 3g since I was doing a handful of teas) and I've got the impressions I need--tartness, a receding hint of grass cut too soon after the rain, a wee bit of bitterness, and a touch of musty storage taste. Not bad, and certainly a hell of a lot tastier than the youngest Liu An (2004) I've tried, which I would consider totally undrinkable. After about the second sip I was already feeling the qi all over my face, washing back and forth across my eyes. Two more teas to go, yikes!

The '95 example's appearance evidences a bit more humidity in the storage--a frosty coating on the leaves, and a pleasant (to me!) musty aroma. The aged Liu An teas I've tried remind me of very specific basements from my life--I think the strength of this sense/memory connection is part of what makes me return to these teas almost compulsively. The flavor of the '95 is pretty different--actually more bitterness, with more of a storage taste and with a thicker mouthfeel and much darker, richer liquor. This tea tastes like it needs more time in the same way that a 15 year-old pu-erh does when the bitterness is one of the only youthful characteristics left. Enjoyable--when I use up the last 5 grams I think I'll be giving shorter steeps which should bring out more sweetness and a very pleasant all-around session. This tea tastes a lot more aged than the '99, but actually not a ton younger than the '80's tea, aside from the bitterness.

I've had several sessions with the '80's Liu An from Nada Cha/Essence of Tea, and I've enjoyed every one of them. If not for that tea, my Liu An impressions would have ended with the 2004 tea I tried. The storage taste is reminiscent of the '95 tea but different, perhaps because of more age or perhaps because of the particulars of where they were stored. The bitterness is actually present still if the brew sits, but it's less assertive than the younger tea. Body is great, and the tea gets sweeter in the ensuing brews--almost as good as an aged pu-erh, but definitely different. Eventually it gives up the same kind of sweet stewed taste that comes from long steeps of aged sheng pu-erh. I wonder how much of the similarity between the '95 and the '80's teas comes from the fact that they're both Sun Yi Shun Liu An, whereas the younger tea is not.


A gander at the wet leaves does little to alleviate questions about the processing of Liu An--the '99 looks like a mix of "cooked" and raw leaves, the '95 looks quite uncooked, and the '80's looks either mixed, storage-darkened or (likely) both. Interesting--after dumping out the '95 leaves I was just certain that the '99's processing meant it could never turn out like the two older teas, but then the '80's tea looks cooked and tastes more like the '95. At $26.10/450g basket, the '99 isn't a very expensive gamble so I think I'll be seeing what happens with at least one basket. I'd be interested to know the original price of the '95 Hou De tea for the purposes of value hypotheses. The '80's tea is expensive, but less so than its sheng pu-erh contemporaries, and I think a better value than some. To return to the original impetus for this comparison, I have to conclude that the '99 tea really isn't close to being in the same league aging-wise as the '80's tea, or even the '95 tea. A candidate for aging, perhaps, but not a fully mature tea.

By the time I finished with the '80's tea my head was swimming so much I decided to sit down for a few minutes and just relax--I haven't been so qi drunk in quite a while. Luckily a bit of food settled things down. Drinking aged tea can feel so different! If you've tried aged sheng but not Liu An I recommend sampling the '80's tea for a similar but distinct experience. Time to try and find some other Liu An teas to try.

Hot or not?

Today was a great day--two tea packages arrived, one from Hou De and one from Jing Tea Shop. Packages from China are always nerve wracking, and I usually spend several days expectantly looking out the window for the postman before the package is actually delivered. This one didn't arrive as quickly as some, but today my wait was mercifully cut short.

There are a few items worth mentioning between the two boxes, but I'll start with this little miscreant. After my last delightful Jing Tea Shop purchase, not only did I shrug off the vestiges of my "too cool for more teapots" attitude, it seems my mental disorder was only exacerbated. I asked SEb at Jing if he could find me a decent duanni pot, and this is what he came up with, along with a nice little story:

Yesterday, I went to visit a good friend who is a Yixing national craft master and I found that he has made a xiao pin of one of his latest series of 3 teapots for which he was recognized, they even printed stamps with them. It is a 100ml, made of good duan ni, pours really well and has very nice details. It will be good for black tea, especially cooked pu erh.

I almost always go for traditional, unadorned pot shapes, and it's been quite a while since I've had a bamboo pot in the collection. At first look, I really wasn't sure what to make of it--the leaf details, spout and handle are familiar from other bamboo pots, but the body shape is totally out there--the large body section resembles a separate pot that is tilted backward (in the picture below you can kind of see that the weird outside shape is totally evidenced on the inner surface as well).



Now that the pot is in-hand, I'm still not sure what I think about the aesthetics. The clay is nice and tender, though, and rather high-fired as well, so I don't doubt it'll make some tasty tea. I'm also excited to see how the bright yellow clay seasons--in just a month's time my two newer pots have shown dramatic changes from seasoning, and this one's probably even more porous. I've shown pictures of the pot to a number of tea-drinking and non-tea-drinking friends and opinions have been split on the imperfect shape--probably the best reaction was from my girlfriend. I don't remember the exact phrasing, but the word "poop" was a key descriptor.

So, I'd like to propose a simple survey on the aesthetics of this pot--hot or not?

Domestic Partnerships

I've been living in sin for over two years....with Wuyi yan cha. A quick glance at my yixing ware will make it abundantly clear--there's no other tea I drink as often or as much of. When I first set out to try and "understand" yan cha/yen cha, one of the first things I learned was that you've really got to pack the pot to make a good one. We're talking a 1/2 to 2/3 full pot, or about a gram for every 10 ml of water, at least for my tastes. Straight off, yan cha became a daily morning tea for me--you can't put that much tea in pot and expect it not to be really strong, and the afternoon tends to be the time I prefer lighter teas for stimulating relaxation, rather than an ass-kicking reveille.

One of my favorite parts about spending so much time with a tea genre is that you start to learn things that you never would have if you were only drinking it every three or four days. For instance, steeped-out yan cha has a pretty distinct flavor. Packing the pot helps delay this, of course, but if you're going all the way with a tea session it's going to happen eventually. At first, I'd lose my interest in a tea as soon as the insipid flavor would start to creep in. After a year or so, though, I figured out that there's usually several more good steeps left in a tea after it tastes insipid for even a minute-long steep; you just have to increase your steeping time by much larger increments, which can be hard to get used to, since packing the pot necessitates extremely short infusions at the beginning. Additionally, if you let the tea cool off a bit in the cup, the insipid flavor quiets down and the tea's flavor notes subtly make themselves known. Whereas before I probably would have tossed a pot's leaves after a couple insipid steeps (maybe thinking they're "not meant to be drank"), I'd now say I actually enjoy the later, lighter steeps as a tasty part of the tea session's evolution and an opportunity to catch a range of flavors that actually isn't present in the beginning.

The other thing that's changed for me is the utilization of broken leaves. I'd originally attempt to cherry-pick only the hugest, most complete leaves when filling a pot, avoiding broken or smaller leaves in attempts to save the flavor. After a while I realized that the pots made from big whole leaves tended to come out lighter and more one-dimensional, evolving and finishing quickly. By including a range of leaf "conditions" into the pot, you get a pot of tea whose flavor 1) shows up immediately, because of the broken leaves, and 2) stays more balanced and even throughout the tea session--the small pieces give out their flavor faster, and they're adding "late session" notes to the whole leaves' "early session" notes after only a couple of infusions. Think of it as a form of single-tea blending. I've read a couple of methods online for how to "load" a yancha pot, crushing leaves at the bottom, adding broken pieces, then topping with whole leaves. While I personally wouldn't get quite that meticulous (I don't usually feel a need to crush the leaves myself), these methods certainly get at the principle of making a balanced pot of tea. I have a canister that I dump my "unusable" yan cha fragments into, to be later used for teapot-raising. I dipped into the canister recently to season my new pin zi ni pot and realized that quite a lot of the leaves in the mix were plenty large enough to be used in a pot of tea (by my present standards) but a couple of years ago they were just too small! These days it's mostly powder that goes into the can, unless there's just not enough left to make a decent pot of tea. If I like a tea enough, I'll even find myself brewing only the broken pieces at the bottom of the bag, though this often gets tricky with steeping times and gauging how much is appropriate for a pot.

Finally, and probably most predictably, my definition of what a "good" yan cha is has changed quite a bit. At first I endeavored to understand the trademark characteristics of the more well-known teas (Da Hong Pao, Tie Luo Han, Shui Jin Gui, etc.). After a couple years, though, I don't really feel confident in my ability to pick cultivars out of a blind tasting--I think processing and specifically roast level account the most for flavor differences, so now I mostly drink just for enjoyment. And roast level has become an important criterion--I was originally excited by "light roast" or "qing xiang" yan cha--they taste very different from both traditional yan cha and other oolong types. After drinking quite a few, though, I feel like light roast can limit the range of characteristics available to a yan cha (put more bluntly, light roast teas can eventually be boring). Today, my ideal yan cha is one that is ideally stored to rest for 1-5 years before the fire and tea taste are in harmony. More commonly available on the market (aside from explicitly "light roast" teas) are teas that are roasted just enough to achieve that sort of balance for near-immediate consumption. The problem is, if you don't consume the tea immediately, the resting in a canister or bag isn't good for it--what initially tasted complex and balanced can go flat in just a couple of months. Not a very happy tradeoff, methinks. I have stashed a few of these teas away to see what will happen with a good 10 years of storage, but my expectations aren't very high.

I liken this type of roasting to shu vs. aged sheng pu-erh. Shu offers an "instant gratification" solution to the demand for aged sheng, which takes time and patience. However, it's just not the same--to do something right, it sometimes takes a requisite amount of time, and if you cheat, the results aren't the same. Now shu pu-erh is an established tea type with plenty of fans, and maybe so also will "medium" roast yan cha. I drink these teas daily (non-stellar yan cha is way better than no yan cha), but none of them are as satisfying as a more traditionally-processed yan-cha--something dark, with a time-subdued roast and flowers or fruit in the finish--not up-front--and a thickness that only comes with traditional processing. Not necessarily something that takes 20 years to be drinkable, but a tea that includes rest as one of its processing steps. It's becoming more difficult to find examples of these teas online, and even if you find one it's not guaranteed to be great. I've long promised myself not to become one of those curmudgeons who's always talking about how "tea was better before," but when you see something you love start to become scarce, it can be hard not to feel a little bitter. I've actually almost run out of yan cha for the first time in a while, so it's on my mind--I've got a couple teas on the way that veer on the more traditional side, so I've got my fingers crossed for a few satisfying sessions.

So, that's my ever-changing live-in relationship with Wuyi yan cha. The tea blogs have been a bit quiet lately---anyone out there want to share the fruits of any epiphanies about a tea with which you've spent a long time in close quarters? Oh, and happy Chinese New Year!