TeaChat

Today I tried a cake from 2003? again of which I have unfortunately lost the wrapper in a move.

When I bought it, it had a floral taste and it was gut wrenching strong, as in actual stomach cramps if I hadn't eaten enough before I drank it.

Now it has an tangerine like taste and an extremely powerful cha qi that instantly puts my mind into a meditative state, while still retaining quite a bit of astringency.

I've only experienced this kind of cha qi with much older cakes so far and mostly a lot more subdued.

I don't think the leafs are from an old tree, as they're rather small and there seems to be a lot more huangpian than in most cakes.

Here are some pictures of a chunk from this cake (sorry about the bad quality):

Money's on a Fengqing ChaChang product.

Huangpian? From the pic it seems to be mostly bud.

I swear I had a tea that looked exactly like this from Puerhshop. I can't remember the name either but I remember it had a large picture of a galleon on the wrapper.

Yeah, this is mostly buds, of the silver tips variety. I have a hard time imagining this to be very good at this age. When you say gut wrenching strong, do you mean really bitter?

gasninja wrote:Huangpian? From the pic it seems to be mostly bud.

Excuse me for chipping in. As "huangpian" 黃片 being mentioned. Just to show a link with some pics of huangpian (before being aged) as a reference. Sometime I do wonder what huangpian looks like before I saw those pictures.
http://www.hkteaforum.com/forum.php?mod ... a=page%3D1

If I look at of my cakes carefully, I could see a few huangpian in most of them.

Back to the original discussion ...

MarshalN wrote:Yeah, this is mostly buds, of the silver tips variety. I have a hard time imagining this to be very good at this age. When you say gut wrenching strong, do you mean really bitter?

The huangpian was a mixup.

The only very good thing about it is the "cha qi". The cake barely gives off any smell and the taste is nothing spectacular either. I stored it in a zip lock bag for about a year.

With "gut wrenching strong" I meant that it was strongly astringent when younger and still has quite some bite to it.

Everything you said before the "qi" part points to Hongcha pu. Reminds me of cakes like thiswhich are mostly buds and processed in a way that sends them to hongcha land

Tea Urchin sells a ripe bud cake, 2006 Lang he, here.

This is a very smooth, delicious, light, black puerh that is sure to please most drinkers. Compare the original photo in this thread with Tea Urchin's.

Tead Off wrote:Tea Urchin sells a ripe bud cake, 2006 Lang he, here.

This is a very smooth, delicious, light, black puerh that is sure to please most drinkers.

Those ripe bud cakes are a different story. They are much better than their raw counterpart. Chengducha's pic and the pic I linked above is a raw cake

These 'golden' style fermented puers tend to be very soft. The raw bud cakes tend to be sharp - or in CDC's case, gut wrenching

Ah, very true. I had forgotten that his was green, not black.

Tead Off wrote:Tea Urchin sells a ripe bud cake, 2006 Lang he, here.

This is a very smooth, delicious, light, black puerh that is sure to please most drinkers. Compare the original photo in this thread with Tea Urchin's.

The one in the link looks delicious and intriguing. Any idea of how to require that one?

MrEffendi wrote:

Tead Off wrote:Tea Urchin sells a ripe bud cake, 2006 Lang he, here.

This is a very smooth, delicious, light, black puerh that is sure to please most drinkers. Compare the original photo in this thread with Tea Urchin's.

The one in the link looks delicious and intriguing. Any idea of how to require that one?

www.teaurchin.com