tingjunkie wrote:
steanze wrote:
do you have an example of a zini pot that does not work for shou?
I have plenty of examples of aged zi ni pots that would be utterly wasted on shou because they the clay is so nice and could handle much more complex and delicate teas. I have also seen an aged zi ni yao bian pot that would be a bad fit for shou because the extra high firing lacked porosity. I've also seen zini pots that were so low fired that I wouldn't recommend them for ANY tea because they were absolute erasers. On the other end of the question, what kind of shou are we talking about? Perfectly stored GNWL from the 80's? A Dayi cake from 2016 that still has some wou dui? Something sketchy from a local Chinatown supermarket?
Matching pots with tea is all subjective, but if there's one thing I can say with certainty, it's that there's no such thing as "aged zi ni" or "duan ni" or "hong ni" that we can discuss without taking in to account many other factors like firing level, clay quality, wall thickness, pot shape, density, etc, etc, etc.
Can we compare a modern $50 duan ni pot from eBay to a vintage, masterfully made, dragon kiln fired, late Qing duan ni pot? Better yet, can we compare a modern pot supposedly made with a stash of "vintage zi ni" to a late 70's F1 zi ni? Are we talking pure zisha? Pin zi ni? Qing shui ni? Duan ni tiao sha?
People love easy answers, but the sooner they realize those don't exist in the Yixing teapot world, the more fruitful their collecting and tea drinking will be. If you tell someone "Zini works fine for shou," it's like saying, "Any red wine should pair well with Italian food." It's just not that easy.
I'll respond briefly because I am short on time:
1) The question is whether zini would work with shou, not whether it could also work for other teas
2) I've tried over 50 zini pots, from mid-Qing to modern, ranging from low fired to yaobian. All worked fine with shou. Shou is not a very demanding tea after all.
3) Matching pots with tea is not all subjective. Different pots have different objective effects on tea. Then, whether you like that effect or not is subjective. But the effect itself isn't.
4) The fact that other properties of the pot have an effect, does not mean that we can't talk about the effect of clay. It's like saying that we can't state "bigger pots have higher heat retention" because also clay has an effect. It does not make sense. Multiple factors have an effect, and yet, we can talk about the individual contribution of different dimensions.
5) "Can we compare a modern $50 duan ni pot from eBay to a vintage, masterfully made, dragon kiln fired, late Qing duan ni pot? Better yet, can we compare a modern pot supposedly made with a stash of "vintage zi ni" to a late 70's F1 zi ni? Are we talking pure zisha? Pin zi ni? Qing shui ni?" I tried all these with shu. They all work just fine. Whether we can compare them or not, it depends on what the comparison is about. Can you compare a Ferrary to a strawberry? On taste, probably not, on color, sure you can. Just the same, a late Qing duanni is quite different from a $50 duanni from ebay. But they both brew shu just fine.
Sorry for the short reply, I have a flight to catch
