Re: Good quality Yancha
Posted: Nov 29th, '11, 15:38
Nice to know that a tea merchant can unload his older stock by giving it a "high roast" and the use of good marketing.
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Now you are really stepping on my toe. Wh&Yel.wh&yel-apprentice wrote: TC'er "Tim/Toki" sells traditional high roasted Wuyi @TheMandarinRoom/TeaGallery , and yet insinuates that 'real' experienced tea drinkers will want less high-roasted, which masks the true tea flavors. Implies that if you like higher roasted wuyi (which are very close in color/flavors to black/red teas with deep copper/orange/red color infusions) you are ignorant/inexperienced >>> I believe Herb_Master likes high roasted teas...eye of the beholder.
Please note: I am Not /TeaGallery either!Tead Off wrote:In one of the other Dancong threads, Tim pointed out the higher level DC's are not roasted. This can be verified by the look and color of the wet leaves after brewing.BioHorn wrote:wh&yel-apprentice wrote:Oni wrote: it should be kept under 10 seconds for first 4 brews, and it lasts a long time 10 + or even more brews
If find, roasting levels + oxidation levels make a big difference in perception---no matter where the tea comes from.
As a fanatically demanding fruit taster, probably one of the most severely selective on the planet, I don't find "peachy" or "apricot" fruity aromas in any of the DC's I tried so far, which includes more than a dozen or so that Imen brewed for me at her old Tea Habitat store.
Oni wrote:I generally brew Dancong with short timing, like after a short wash for 20 seconds, 10 seconds, 20, 30 and so on, I use around 6 grams to 120 ml gaiwan. I have a Chao Zhou teapot too. I need a CZ tea kettle, and I am well equipped for Dancong.
I find these to be interesting observations. I agree with the changes with roasting levels. However I do find many Phoenix DC's have either a floral flavor or a stone fruit aroma. These include some of Imen's private stash. You are fortunate to have had it brewed by her. I would love to have that experience. For most I usually use 5-6 grams in a 110 ml pot with short brew times.
Hojo wrote when I bought some of his tea and reminded me many times to brew in a porcelain gaiwan. (Nice he is so responsive and passionate.) Still have yet to brew it.
A bit off-topic,Oni wrote:and taiwanese oolongs, from those one can get a pretty decent quality for an affordable price...
Try Houde, that is good stuff, I do not know how they get better than these.bagua7 wrote:A bit off-topic,Oni wrote:and taiwanese oolongs, from those one can get a pretty decent quality for an affordable price...
Sorry Oni, but not from the vendors that cater to the Western market. You are yet to try the real deal, for this very reason I have decided to go back to Taiwan and buy the stuff there directly myself.
Even expensive tea is affordable, compared to other luxuries. A good, enjoyable bottle of wine at $7-8 is a challenge. Still harder to find is a $15 bottle of wine which makes you pay attention and say "woah."verus wrote:This topic makes me want to get a packet of cheap teabags from the supermarket...and enjoy a nice cuppa for a great price.
Look, if you think you can drink the best of the best of teas on a regular basis, the stuff that only a few kgs per year are made of by the most acclaimed tea experts, you might need to become a millionaire businessman first. It's like someone who enjoys wine saying they only want to drink Chateau Petrus, which goes for thousands of dollars per bottle.
There's plenty of good tea that's affordable. Save the expensive stuff for a special occasion.
I don't think it's fair to compare similar volumes of wine and tea. Most reasonable wine enthusiasts wouldn't down an entire bottle of wine in one night by themselves, but it's not all that unreasonable to drink a couple liters of tea in the same time period.tingjunkie wrote:Even expensive tea is affordable, compared to other luxuries. A good, enjoyable bottle of wine at $7-8 is a challenge. Still harder to find is a $15 bottle of wine which makes you pay attention and say "woah."
So, imagine spending $1/g on a"woah" level yancha, and using 12g in a 120ml pot. I can guarantee you will get over 8 infusions (more than the 750ml found in a wine bottle) and still spend 20% less than a mediocre wine.
But these high quality teas can often last for a couple of days. They even last for a couple of days when you are sharing with several other people. 120mls could be enough to split between 4 people, and its quite easy for 3-4 people to kill a single bottle of wine in a night ( if not more than a single bottle). I think its possibly one of the best comparisons out there. But then again in any type of product that has a variety of "grades" there are those who will only buy the least expensive, and then there are those that buy the most expensive. There are a whole lot more types of wine selling for over a thousand dollars a bottle, than there are tea's selling for over a thousand dollars for 25 grams.Poohblah wrote:I don't think it's fair to compare similar volumes of wine and tea. Most reasonable wine enthusiasts wouldn't down an entire bottle of wine in one night by themselves, but it's not all that unreasonable to drink a couple liters of tea in the same time period.tingjunkie wrote:Even expensive tea is affordable, compared to other luxuries. A good, enjoyable bottle of wine at $7-8 is a challenge. Still harder to find is a $15 bottle of wine which makes you pay attention and say "woah."
So, imagine spending $1/g on a"woah" level yancha, and using 12g in a 120ml pot. I can guarantee you will get over 8 infusions (more than the 750ml found in a wine bottle) and still spend 20% less than a mediocre wine.
I totally agree with tingjunkie, and "affordable luxury" is the term I'd usually use as well.Poohblah wrote: I don't think it's fair to compare similar volumes of wine and tea. Most reasonable wine enthusiasts wouldn't down an entire bottle of wine in one night by themselves, but it's not all that unreasonable to drink a couple liters of tea in the same time period.
I think you're correct, but I believe you interpreted my statement differently than how I intended it to be interpreted. My gripe was with this comparison:wyardley wrote:I totally agree with tingjunkie, and "affordable luxury" is the term I'd usually use as well.Poohblah wrote: I don't think it's fair to compare similar volumes of wine and tea. Most reasonable wine enthusiasts wouldn't down an entire bottle of wine in one night by themselves, but it's not all that unreasonable to drink a couple liters of tea in the same time period.
I usually won't drink a really expensive tea by myself either. But either way, even a moderately priced, recent vintage wine, from a well regarded area could be $200+, and wine doesn't keep for very long after opening. And if we're talking about really old wines, well... let's just say that the prices can increase quite a lot. With tea leaves, you have a lot of flexibility with how much you use at a given time, and you generally don't have to use all of the tea leaves you purchased within a 1-2 day period.
The analogy to wine doesn't totally match up, of course -- for one thing, when brewing tea, you probably have a few more variables under your control than with wine; with wine, you need to consider storage and drinking temperature, whether or not to decant, etc., but there aren't quite as many ways you can mess it up, assuming the wine itself is good. Also, I think people are less likely to drink tea with a meal, or to pair tea with food, whereas with wine, one often drinks it along with a meal.
I take issue with this because I don't think it's quite accurate to say that tea is cheaper than wine if you spend less on tea than on a the same volume of wine. Tea and wine, while they form nice analogies because they are indeed both affordable luxuries and so forth, are not consumed at comparable rates. Therefore, I don't think it's fair to say that good tea is cheaper than good wine if 750mL of good tea is cheaper than 750mL of good wine.tingjunkie wrote:So, imagine spending $1/g on a"woah" level yancha, and using 12g in a 120ml pot. I can guarantee you will get over 8 infusions (more than the 750ml found in a wine bottle) and still spend 20% less than a mediocre wine.
Psilocybin tea, perhaps...Tead Off wrote:How about tea to marijuana?
In Yunnan, they say, "everything is more profitable than tea". That "everything" includes coffee, rubber tree plantation, mining, hunting (or poaching), smuggling heroin... Not that tea is not profitable, but look at all the options!Tead Off wrote:Never understood the comparison of tea to wine. Tea to coffee comes closer. In fact, in Yunnan, many farmers are beginning to grow coffee instead of tea because it is more profitable. How about tea to marijuana?