Official Pu of the day

[puyuan]

04 Youle Shan Autumn round cake - Has some maturing pu flavors. Herbs, a bit of fruit and wood....and a slight sour note. Chaqi is noticeable. Overall pretty good for an autumn cake.

I've enjoyed enough autumn tea to believe it's not necessarily inferior to spring tea, just different. Unless you are buying to age that is

There are some more stable differences/characteristics, like the aroma, but it's really just a matter of average. Spring tea is a fair bit more likely to be good, but both are heavily affected by weather and other factors. And that autumn tea ages poorly is just another fable convenue... One of CYH's most well regarded Yiwus, and they have no lack of those, is a fully autumnal 2007 tea. The thing is that the shaqing has to be tweaked for guhua tea a little so it gets done poorly quite often.

Speaking of which... First day of brewing 2006 Chenyuanhao Bore, 80% autumn, 20% spring Yiwu. Excellent storage in Shanghai and even better pricing.

Do you think pure autumn harvest could make it 20+ years? Perhaps with the right storage? I guess I don't personally consider 10 years as "aged"

Autumnal pickings are mixed in the antiques and in any number of teas from the factory era. As long as the tea had enough substance to begin with, sure.

[BW85]

04 Youle Shan Autumn round cake - Has some maturing pu flavors. Herbs, a bit of fruit and wood....and a slight sour note. Chaqi is noticeable. Overall pretty good for an autumn cake.

I've enjoyed enough autumn tea to believe it's not necessarily inferior to spring tea, just different. Unless you are buying to age that is

There are some more stable differences/characteristics, like the aroma, but it's really just a matter of average. Spring tea is a fair bit more likely to be good, but both are heavily affected by weather and other factors. And that autumn tea ages poorly is just another fable convenue... One of CYH's most well regarded Yiwus, and they have no lack of those, is a fully autumnal 2007 tea. The thing is that the shaqing has to be tweaked for guhua tea a little so it gets done poorly quite often.

Speaking of which... First day of brewing 2006 Chenyuanhao Bore, 80% autumn, 20% spring Yiwu. Excellent storage in Shanghai and even better pricing.

Do you think pure autumn harvest could make it 20+ years? Perhaps with the right storage? I guess I don't personally consider 10 years as "aged"

Autumnal pickings are mixed in the antiques and in any number of teas from the factory era. As long as the tea had enough substance to begin with, sure.

Of course autumn teas have been mixed into cakes for along time. from the begging I was referring to cakes composed solely of autumn material, not blended with spring.

[kyarazen]

Of course autumn teas have been mixed into cakes for along time. from the begging I was referring to cakes composed solely of autumn material, not blended with spring.

i was quite mindblown by a recent autumn tea that i was studying.. the leaves are tender and soft, the aromatics are fruity and floral, this suggests that proper autumn material selection/picking, with better processing can produce a reasonably nice tea. if i get to the post office i'll drop a little envelope with some to you

[Tead Off]

04 Youle Shan Autumn round cake - Has some maturing pu flavors. Herbs, a bit of fruit and wood....and a slight sour note. Chaqi is noticeable. Overall pretty good for an autumn cake.

I've enjoyed enough autumn tea to believe it's not necessarily inferior to spring tea, just different. Unless you are buying to age that is

There are some more stable differences/characteristics, like the aroma, but it's really just a matter of average. Spring tea is a fair bit more likely to be good, but both are heavily affected by weather and other factors. And that autumn tea ages poorly is just another fable convenue... One of CYH's most well regarded Yiwus, and they have no lack of those, is a fully autumnal 2007 tea. The thing is that the shaqing has to be tweaked for guhua tea a little so it gets done poorly quite often.

Speaking of which... First day of brewing 2006 Chenyuanhao Bore, 80% autumn, 20% spring Yiwu. Excellent storage in Shanghai and even better pricing.

Do you think pure autumn harvest could make it 20+ years? Perhaps with the right storage? I guess I don't personally consider 10 years as "aged"

I can't think of why it wouldn't age well if it is good quality tea. The Chinese, in general, have a bias against Autumn harvest. There are all kinds of stories they tell that have no basis. Mostly superstition. The price is always lower compared to Spring teas. Almost every other kind of tea, gaoshan oolong, TGY, Dancong, Himalayan teas, all have excellent and sought after late season harvests. Green teas are usually the exception. Since Shengcha is a form of green tea, this bias may originate from that. However, the processing of shengcha changes it into something that is not really green tea any longer through the fermentation process.

[puyuan]

Of course autumn teas have been mixed into cakes for along time. from the begging I was referring to cakes composed solely of autumn material, not blended with spring.

Sorry, I did not make myself clear. I was assuming both points, what I wanted to convey was that if autumn tea were to necessarily suffer any bad transformation (sourness, poor taste, staleness, blandness, lack of energy, any puckish taste) over a long period of time we would easily detect it in the brew, particularly so because it can be present in quite a big proportion in these blends. We'd still have the hypothesis of the compression with other leaves doing something to prevent that. Well, one just needs to take a look at all these aged maocha out there. They aren't stellar, due to the nature of their loose aging + original quality, but they can perfectly well make it past the 30 year mark, eh?

[puerhking]

Personally I've never had an autumn cake that bested my favorite spring cakes. Spring growth has a longer time to recover through the winter than autumn, hence the idea that it has more energy....more vigor.

[puyuan]

Personally I've never had an autumn cake that bested my favorite spring cakes. Spring growth has a longer time to recover through the winter than autumn, hence the idea that it has more energy....more vigor.

That's definitely true, but it's a matter of average, because spring crops can face adverse factors, just like autumn tea can have unusually good crops due to weather and the like. It doesn't happen often but an autumn tea can definitely beat its immediate spring siblings in richness. Immediate comparisons aside, they can be excellent on their own too... And with the current prices, more worthy of attention for that. I can say for sure that autumn 2012, due to lack of rain, yielded very good teas in specific places. I tried an excellent 2012 bohetang and own a very nice 2012 zhibeng tea.

I have no idea how or why, but winter sometimes turn out very good yields for puer too. They say "early spring". BHYJ in specific had a very impressive winter tea last year. Pricey, though.

[ethan]

2012 Yiwuzhengshang ripe: Not much use in reading my opinion on this because I don't "get" pu right. (no advice on preparation wanted--giving up) Out of about 20 that I have made at home, I loved 1; liked only a couple. When a guest of people who love & understand pu, it's been great.

I like this pu as an inoffensive change, but I don't taste "sweet", just a mild earthiness which I like a bit. What I like much more, is the thick body, often called "soup" here. Though not very tasty, it does feel good inside me. Its warm embrace on this cold morning is welcome.

I sincerely thank Poseidon for the sample of this pu. I get tempted to buy some pu but should avoid temptation. I will stop reading about it. At home, I'll stick to oolong & black tea & drink pu when a guest of someone who has mastery of pu.

[debunix]

I've been enjoying a lovely young loose autumn sheng that has been just lovely--will post a proper tasting shortly. No idea if it will age 20 years, but that doesn't matter because it will be drunk up long before then. It certainly doesn't seem inferior to the best of the spring shengs I've had.

[puyuan]

Inspired by our recent discussions, I brewed the Bore again. Man, scratch whatever I said last time. Yesterday's tea was probably a little sample I had mislabeled. I plucked a little leaf from my cake and brewed the actual thing earlier today. It was stored very dry, and unusually so. The tea is very green and has something of roasted oolong to it, and I don't think it's due to rounian like "oolongfied" puers. I can either simulate it's original store and see where it leads in some 15 years or experiment with keeping it in my usual natural storage. Let's see.

Having my expectations defied by this weird session, I decided to try another CYH Yiwu that was stored in Guangzhou, from 2007 spring, a supposedly nice production I had never seen named anywhere.

It was an even weirder surprise. The dry leaves look very oxidized but also very clean. I was expecting an elegant, sweet, energetic Yiwu guafengzhai-ish tea. The brew does taste clean, but way older than 7 seven years, and has quite a bit of camphor. Because of the surprise factor, I was disappointed at first, but it won me over quickly as I adjusted to what it really was. The material used is good and because of the "accelerated" and nice aging this tea is very worth its price. It will taste like a 20+ year tea in no time, just not what I'd expect from its area of origin. There's already some aged psychoactivity (which I suspect was absent from the young tea). I know the storage was wet and all, but I have to wonder if they used aged maocha to press this guy?

[Zacherywolf7]

I am drinking the Essence of Tea yun yun. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Here are mine.

The leafs smell pretty smoky/meaty, one of the greenest young puerhs I've ever smelled. But the flash steep produced a beautiful flavor. Maybe I haven't had enough puerh, especially older, because every young Puerh i've had that is high quality I really do enjoy. They are thick, lots of sweetness and usually pretty interesting.

As a sidenote I also had a Wuyi ShiuXian that I blogged about earlier.

[bonescwa]

The smoky/meaty taste is something I didn't mind when I started drinking puerh, but I am finding that I really hate it, it is present almost uniformly in cheap tea. It's the strongest in xiaguan, and that is becoming something I am only able to stomach very occasionally now

[BW85]

The smoky/meaty taste is something I didn't mind when I started drinking puerh, but I am finding that I really hate it, it is present almost uniformly in cheap tea. It's the strongest in xiaguan, and that is becoming something I am only able to stomach very occasionally now

I agree. The smokiness in the yun yun is very mild in my experience though, and unlike that of cheap teas. I really like this tea.. It's very active/energetic. There is almost an effervescent quality. Wish I had more than a sample

[Zacherywolf7]

The smoky/meaty taste is something I didn't mind when I started drinking puerh, but I am finding that I really hate it, it is present almost uniformly in cheap tea. It's the strongest in xiaguan, and that is becoming something I am only able to stomach very occasionally now

I agree. The smokiness in the yun yun is very mild in my experience though, and unlike that of cheap teas. I really like this tea.. It's very active/energetic. There is almost an effervescent quality. Wish I had more than a sample

yes I agree. I definitely just got the smokiness initially on the nose, it wasn't an issue beyond that and really never was.

[paxl13]

Today for me was a repeat of the 2002 Green Label of W2T, this tea was even better than the first time I did it! I perceived the milkiness and the cacao bitterness quite clearly! I am in love! Bought it on a suggestion of Paul and so far I'm not regretting it!