TeaChat

Drinking the best shu from a place that specializes in pu erh (and happens to be on the next corner)! Nice balance of bitter, sour, sweet and salty with an herbal/plum flavor and thick soup. Really nice after getting some air at home.

Some 2006 Xi-Zhi Hao, Lao Ban Zhan from Hou De.
I bought a one ounce sample from Guang. The leaf was quite large, long and nicely metallically fuzzy. It had definitely gone beyond that young-sheng period, and the leaf had a certain degree of dryness that brought up the dried herbs radar.

I used about 7g in a 110 ml porcelain gaiwan.

The first brews were quite perfumy, with a bit of tobacco and light smoke rolled together. There was almost no astringency.

As I am arriving on brew 5-6, my hopes for a grand experience are not panning out. There are hints of nice things coming out of the soup, but they are highly muted. I think this cake has seen some tough times.

Before I pass judgement on this sample, I am going to throw the rest in the pumidor and see if some rehab will turn it around.

Guang and Irene have had some real stand outs. Their service has been great and sometimes beyond expected. That said, I have yet to find a vendor that bats 100.

BioHorn wrote:Some 2006 Xi-Zhi Hao, Lao Ban Zhan from Hou De.
I bought a one ounce sample from Guang. The leaf was quite large, long and nicely metallically fuzzy. It had definitely gone beyond that young-sheng period, and the leaf had a certain degree of dryness that brought up the dried herbs radar.

I used about 7g in a 110 ml porcelain gaiwan.

The first brews were quite perfumy, with a bit of tobacco and light smoke rolled together. There was almost no astringency.

As I am arriving on brew 5-6, my hopes for a grand experience are not panning out. There are hints of nice things coming out of the soup, but they are highly muted. I think this cake has seen some tough times.

Yea, this LBZ specimen was rather underwhelming for me.

BioHorn wrote: I used about 7g in a 110 ml porcelain gaiwan.

The first brews were quite perfumy, with a bit of tobacco and light smoke rolled together. There was almost no astringency.

As I am arriving on brew 5-6, my hopes for a grand experience are not panning out. There are hints of nice things coming out of the soup, but they are highly muted. I think this cake has seen some tough times.

Just out of curiosity, what were your infusion times for this pu?

1998 Guanyun Gong
Source: Yunnan Sourcing
From EDKRUEGER

Deep red color broth that is rather smooth. The first cup had a tinge of mustiness and wet-storage taste. 2nd cup onwards revealed its medicinal and herbal taste that remained dominant thereafter. Reminded me of the black herbal soup broth made out of potpourri of Chinese medicinal herbs that my mother used to make me drink. Potent. Pleasant sweet aftertaste after the bitter mouth-taste disappeared. I liked this tea.

Thank you, Ed.

2008 Yiwu Bamboo-aged puerh, a mellow favorite from Norbu. Tomorrow is moving day, so I need the mellowness to cope.

All your pots and pans, debunix?

*opens liqueur cabinet, selects something amber*

here, have a sip of the harder stuff. Do you have to move far?

Not far. I'm actually moving just 1 block, but its from renting a house to a house I bought....so I'm damning and plotting ways to bring tea and teawares into a nicer balance with the rest of the kitchen. Today we moved furniture, pots, pans, and more--but the cat and I have to wait for a few days to actually stay in the new house--still a lot of remodeling work finishing up.

dzrogers wrote:

BioHorn wrote: I used about 7g in a 110 ml porcelain gaiwan.

The first brews were quite perfumy, with a bit of tobacco and light smoke rolled together. There was almost no astringency.

As I am arriving on brew 5-6, my hopes for a grand experience are not panning out. There are hints of nice things coming out of the soup, but they are highly muted. I think this cake has seen some tough times.

Just out of curiosity, what were your infusion times for this pu?

I did a 15 rinse followed by a flash brew, second brew 3 seconds, then 5 and so on. It seemed light, so I began to push it more. This brought more flavor, but highlighted what seems to me to be less than ideal storage.

BioHorn wrote:

dzrogers wrote:

BioHorn wrote: I used about 7g in a 110 ml porcelain gaiwan.

The first brews were quite perfumy, with a bit of tobacco and light smoke rolled together. There was almost no astringency.

As I am arriving on brew 5-6, my hopes for a grand experience are not panning out. There are hints of nice things coming out of the soup, but they are highly muted. I think this cake has seen some tough times.

Just out of curiosity, what were your infusion times for this pu?

I did a 15 rinse followed by a flash brew, second brew 3 seconds, then 5 and so on. It seemed light, so I began to push it more. This brought more flavor, but highlighted what seems to me to be less than ideal storage.

It makes you wonder exactly how much of the teas life it spent sealed in the sample packaging.

gasninja wrote:

BioHorn wrote:

dzrogers wrote:

BioHorn wrote: I used about 7g in a 110 ml porcelain gaiwan.

The first brews were quite perfumy, with a bit of tobacco and light smoke rolled together. There was almost no astringency.

As I am arriving on brew 5-6, my hopes for a grand experience are not panning out. There are hints of nice things coming out of the soup, but they are highly muted. I think this cake has seen some tough times.

Just out of curiosity, what were your infusion times for this pu?

I did a 15 rinse followed by a flash brew, second brew 3 seconds, then 5 and so on. It seemed light, so I began to push it more. This brought more flavor, but highlighted what seems to me to be less than ideal storage.

It makes you wonder exactly how much of the teas life it spent sealed in the sample packaging.

I'd imagine they bag the samples as soon as the tea comes in, and they sit there until they are bought up.

So that would mean that the tea has spent most of its life sealed in an airtight bag.

What behavior, precisely, indicates poor storage?

Again, as I've noted elsewheres, LBZ does NOT evolve to amazing aged teas with deep depths and all. They age into teas that you'd appreciate somewhat similarly to Bingdao (AFAIK). Soft, sweet flavors, with subtle notes and good aromas. The best part being the way that original huge huigan ages into some pretty unique. And the qi, of course. One added complication is that the area is pretty genetically diverse, with at least four types of trees. I think for the '06, XZH really stuck to one type, when most people blended to produce a standard LBZ effect.

LBZ was a pretty good example for people arguing against the idea of single area puerhs. Blended, it was a critical part of pushing an essential livelyness and power to a number of late '90s and very early 2k teas. By itself, however, it's too strong (a big reason why a number of people in E Asia likes Kuzhushan JingGu teas is because those have a similar power in throat without knocking their bodies silly), it's fairly one dimensional without a whole lotta body to it, etc, etc, etc... That doesn't mean that the '97 Old Tree Round Cake doesn't win in tastes tests pretty regularly (and I've read that it's not stunning on top taste, either). Personally, I've grown to really like aged Banzhang area teas, taken for what it is. However, of the teas that I own now, the '05 Dayi Mengsong Peacock is the *only* tea that's obviously aging to any notion of a traditional aged tasting tea. The '03 Bulang Jing Pin, which I think is a Banzhang, almost is like that, but not quite.

One last thing to say...I suspect that the cake from which Biohorn got a sample of, was one of those that was sold out a long time ago, and resold to Houde. Which is one reason I wanted to know specifically the fault from the storage.

shah82 wrote: Again, as I've noted elsewheres, LBZ does NOT evolve to amazing aged teas with deep depths and all. They age into teas that you'd appreciate somewhat similarly to Bingdao (AFAIK).

So can you give us some examples of aged cakes (let's say, > 30 years) you've tried made of pure lao banzhang material?

No.

And I think I'd like to say this:

Puerh tea ain't going to be about 30yo tea. Nobody but hooked up people gets to drink any of that stuff that aren't leftovers. Only rich and secure people can afford to have a view of the hobby greater than about 10 years. Lastly, by the time a puerh tea gets older than 30 years old (with reasonable humidity), it starts losing any specific connection to where it's from.

This is why it's stupid to be antagonistic to Jinggu teas, or Mengku teas or whatever. The fact that they don't age well in the super-long term gets less and less important as fewer and fewer normal people consider aged (15y+) tea as part of their hobby.