The Essence of Tea - Blog & News

I've spent the past couple of weeks in Taiwan, searching for some aged puerh. So much has changed in the past year. I knew that the prices had been rising pretty fast, but I wasn't quite prepared for the situation I found in many places. It's all going to China, at a faster and faster rate. People I'd previously bought tea from didn't want to sell any more and were asking if I could sell them back any of the tea that I'd previously bought. I visited several shops & wholesalers and found the same situation. The prices they could sell their tea to mainland Chinese customers for was so much higher than they could sell for in Taiwan. Tea from the 70's or before, they were pretty much just hanging on to since the price is rising so quickly. It all seems a bit crazy, but there's a gold rush on for these teas right now.

That being said, I did manage to find a few things - some very well stored late 90's Menghai tea factory cakes, some mid-90's CNNP '8582', some older Liu An and maybe an 80's Menghai 7542. I also bought some more of our 70's Zhi Ye loose leaf puerh. These are on the way back to the UK at the moment and should appear on the website in the next week or two.

Apart from the search for

This last few months has been a time of some soul searching for Kathy & I with regards to our life, our tea business and our hopes for the future. Our tea house in Falmouth has been both immensely rewarding and incredibly time consuming for us. On a business side, it has been just about breaking even since we opened and, despite the steady increase in people beginning to appreciate tea, has seemed that it would take quite a while to be even at the stage where it could employ someone to help us take care of of the shop.

Just after Christmas, we decided that we'd be happier to close the teahouse and spend more of our time concentrating on our online business, spending more time in Asia, learning more about tea and finding better teas for our customers who appreciate the finer end of puerh teas and Wuyi Yancha.

With all the work we'd done to improve the property in Falmouth, offers to take over our lease of the premises have come rather quickly & we've closed and cleared out the teahouse just in time for our annual trip to Asia. It's been a lot of fun having the teahouse and providing a space for people to come and drink tea & we've met a lot of amazing people. Some of my most treasured memories of it are the quiet moments at the end of days where friends have come and we've spent hours drinking some wonderful teas. We hope to keep in touch with our regular customers and organise some special tea events in Cornwall for those who are interested.

I've arrived in Taipei yesterday to spend a month searching for aged teas. Also on the cards in the coming weeks are some time in Malaysia, searching for good aged Liu Bao, some time in Wuyi, Yixing and of course 6 weeks in Yunnan for the spring tea harvest.

While we're away, there's someone helping us to pack and send out orders (so our web shop will remain open) and we hope to return home in May with the new season's fresh Puerh tea and some different aged gems that we find along the way.

We've just restocked a lot of the aged puerh cakes and loose leaf teas on our website. Unfortunately the 1993 7542 cakes we've had for the past few years have already all been sold by our supplier, so these won't be restocked. We'll try to find some other nicely stored, aged 7542 of this era during our trip to Taiwan in February.

We'll be closed for a little over the Christmas period - closing 23rd Dec - 2nd Jan. All orders placed online during this period will be posted on 2nd/3rd Jan. Our teahouse in Falmouth will reopen 6th Jan.

I made the (slightly belated) draw today for the 15th-30th November draw for a Mannuo puerh tea cake, for reviews of teas posted between these dates.

The winner, as chosen by random.org, is 'tT' for the review left of our Xiping, Anxi Tie Guan Yin.

The winner for the period 1st Dec-15th Dec is Antonio Luigi for his review of our 1970's Pinglin aged oolong.

This marks the end of our Mannuo cakes to give away, but we've enjoyed reading the reviews left & would like to give something back to reward the time and thought taken to write them. Until our 2012 cakes arrive, I'd like to continue these draws by offering a 2011 Manhai puerh cake (400g) - a cake that's only been available at our teahouse in Falmouth until now (not listed on the website). There'll be 2 draws per month.

I had the bad news last night that the wholesale price of some of our cakes has gone up. It seems the market in Asia for aged puerh is going crazy.

The rate of change of prices for aged puerh constantly amazes and shocks me. Some of the 80's cakes have over doubled in price over the last 2 years and many of the famous cakes have increased over 40% since last Spring.

Unfortunately, this means we'll have to increase our prices too as we restock these older cakes. Apologies for this, but with the huge rise in demand from the burgeoning wealthy Chinese middle classes and the rarity of many of these teas, it seems that's just the way the world of aged puerh will continue to be.

We'll still try to source some other vintages over the coming year and expand our range, both of some landmark teas from the past 60 years and some more affordable teas for everyday drinking.

I was taking some photos today for a booklet describing our teas & thought something on the website might be nice to demonstrate one method of Gongfu brewing. This isn't intended to be an exhaustive description of all styles of gongfu brewing, just one we've found to work well in general & is relatively simple for all.

The winner for the 1-15th November Mannuo Puerh draw is as selected by random.org is Norbert for his review of our 2011 Nantou Green Tea.

I've been working fairly constantly for the past few weeks on a new look for our website & put it online last night. Hopefully over the next few weeks I will continue to refine it and to add some functionality to make your experiences here more pleasurable.

As with all things in the world of computers the transition is unlikely to be without (small) glitches. If there's anything that is not as it should be, or you encounter any problems with the website, please feel free to let me know & I'll do what I can to fix it.

I've spent most of an interesting day watching the Yixing auction happening at Woolley and Wallace in Salisbury (UK).

There were some beautiful and rare pots up for auction and some went for huge prices - many many times the estimates.  Their auction catalogue is online & makes an interesting read.

I'm often asked about what makes some young puerh teas so 'green' in flavour and in colour, while others don't have so much of this greenness to them.

The big difference is the level of oxidation of the leaves prior to the kill-green stage. After the leaves are picked, they are spread out and left to wither (ideally for around 4-6 hours but this is dependent on the weather and the water content of the leaves) to soften the leaves so they don't break during the kill green process.

Extending this period of time brings out more floral & fruit characteristics in the flavour and aroma of the tea, whilst toning down the greenness of the tea. Some producers do this on purpose to achieve these characteristics. Personally, I prefer this limited time period, to produce a young puerh that is clean, bright and fresh, while keeping as much power and strength in the tea as possible.

There seems a tendency among some western drinkers of puerh, in their writings on the internet, to attribute the oxidisation of the leaves to 'tweaking' or some such nefarious processing techniques on the part of the producers to make their young puerh more widely palatable.  While some producers do purposefully oxidise their teas a little more, more often than being a conscious decision, I feel generally the oxidation of the leaves shown in many young puerh teas is an accidental side effect of careless processing.

When the leaves are being picked, perhaps the farmer is stuffing too many into the bag he's carrying or emptying too many bagfuls into a larger sack. The leaves at the bottom will become bruised and begin to oxidise too much & too early. Perhaps the farmer is careless with slinging this large sack of fresh leaves onto the back of his pickup truck or strapping it onto the back of his motorbike. Perhaps the place he is doing the kill green process is too far away from the trees where the leaves are picked, or perhaps he's tired, has too many leaves to process and doesn't get around to the kill-green stage until the next day.

In the kill green stage the intention is to halt the oxidation of the leaves completely.  The difficult part is to use enough heat and time to heat the leaf sufficiently to penetrate the thicker parts of the leaf and stem, while not burning the thinner edges of the leaf. This is why in many teas one can find leaves that are slightly singed around the edges & the tea liquid will have excessive little black specks in the bottom of the tea soup. On the other end of the scale, perhaps the leaves will not have been heated enough, or not thoroughly enough and there'll be reddened stems and/or leaves.

Some of these traits are normal in a hand processed tea, but the percentage of leaves with these characteristics should be limited and definitely shouldn't be excessive, lending to the defining characteristics of the flavour. The leaves should also be more or less completely green, a sign that the kill-green process has been thorough and a few slight specks of black in the bottom of one's cup lends some confidence that the tea has been hand processed rather than having the kill-green stage done by machine.

The accidental oxidation of the leaves through careless processing is so easy and so common that I feel this is much more likely in many cases than an intentional decision to  oxidise the tea to a higher degree.

There are other variables too - the age of the tea is one. The greenness is the first characteristic to go as the tea ages. So if a puerh tea is pressed with maocha that's a few seasons/years old, it won't taste so fresh and green.  Recently I tried a cake, purported to be from this spring, but was quite probably not.  The fresh greenness had subsided and there was a characteristic slight honey-sweet flavour along with a very slight storage flavour.

Detecting these flavour profiles is really a matter of experience.  There's no substitute for attentively drinking a lot of tea, from different producers and of different styles.  More and more these aspects will become obvious and with some pointers in the right direction and logical reasoning, one will naturally be able to discern more and more varied characteristics.