Chawangshop

I’m a big fan of Hekai. It’s bite-y and crisp. This one lays right in those tones, and it’s great. The leaves are long, twisted, and shiny. An intoxicating aroma of warm honey, dry grass, and some light floral lift from the leaves. The fragrance is fresh, pleasant, and lasting. I warmed up my pot and placed a chunk inside. The scent opens into what I would describe as fibrous. A ton of oatmeal with nectar and maple wood. This is a rustic breakfast tea, haha. I washed the leaves and prepared to brew. The taste begins with a sharp bitter bite and instant power qi that washes over the body. Afterwards, a light sweetness calms the palate. I had to wrestle with this tea a little bit, for the bitterness continued to bite, and the qi was overpowering. I continued flash steeping, for I like a challenge, and it paid off. The calms down and presents a flavor profile of light white grape tang and dry sweetness. This is a nice solid tea with bite and soon after soothing qualities. I peek into my pot and notice the heavy bud usage and small stout leaves. I enjoyed the pulsing qi and thick sweet lingering taste in mouth for long after the session.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BC29H__TGax/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

This tea needs a lot more time to get to where it needs to go—lots of smoke. The material is promising. Lots of chopped leaf, but good flavor and aroma and strength, which I like. This is the kind of tea I like to age, but the extremely high compression mean I probably won’t want to drink this for another ten years, even with Hong Kong storage. When it IS ready, though, I expect it to be incredible!

Ugh. I love this tea. Huang Pians are simple and sweet. You pay little for high quality material. When something is 6 dollars for 100 grams you expect nothing. This is utterly delicious.

It smells like wild, foresty, savory herbs and beef jerky. Its not a savory tea like a lincang might be though. The taste is sort’ve like a lemon candy with no sourness whatsoever and a continuation of what I want to call floral/herbs but no florals or herbs I have ever tasted, lending a wild and unique quality to the tea. The texture is very, very gloopy. As if its sticking to your mouth, making webs like a chewy gummy candy would. The finish is all pure sugar and it remains in your nasal cavity with a bright sensation.

I ordered chawangshop’s Wu Yi lineup, and I must say all of them are at least very good. This one is top notch. It is the smoothest Wu Yi oolong I’ve had. It’s a deep baked handmade oolong, done exceedingly well. The roast is deep but not upfront in the flavor profile. It is spicy and zesty, with hints of fruit. The broth is silky. Great stuff. Chawangshop is an underrated gem. Don’t be put off by what appears to be high shipping costs, once you place your order and they send you an invoice, the shipping is usually much less than it first appears.

I bought this tea cake from Andrew (Liquid Proust) for a very fair price. That being said, I can now see why it was a cheaper cake. I used 8 grams in a 100ml gaiwan and after about 5 or 6 steeps came to the conclusion that this is just a weaker black tea. I couldn’t quite coax much of a malty black tea flavor out of it. It had a little bit of a tannic after taste but it wasn’t bitter. It just kind of tasted like a generic, weak, black tea.

Now, I am not a quitter and I know for a fact that teas can change. I am willing to experiment with this one some more but as of now… Eh. Not much promise.

This tea starts bad, does poorly for a while, passes through a period of being plebian, and ultimately settles on disappointing.

If ever there was a poster child tea for sampling first instead of buying the whole cake, this tea is it . All the amazing qualities of ChaWangShop’s 98 You Le are turned on their head here. Still, at these prices, one big winner and one big loser equals an overall success.

Just don’t back this tea – it’s the Washington Nationals in this showdown.

Amazing coloured cake, very green yellow, 200g sliced from a larger piece.

Dark yellow tea soup, with a pleasant old/musty aroma, but also this can be bit bready/cakey. I like it, its nice. Has a bit of zing on the tongue which is pleasant, although not super long lasting huigan or anything.

There is sweetness & a bit of a bready taste, its a bit like cake water, with a slight sweet raisin viscous body. This is also a bit of an old-book-taste, depending on how you look at it.

A slight bit of citrus, maayyyybe? anyway, at the 4th steep & there is still a mini-zing in the mouth & sweetness. its slightly herbal, perhaps a bit of floral.

i’m still pretty new to these types of heicha so i’m gongfu brewing – I think this one can take a bit more punishment than i’m currently giving it, so I’m going to have to keep practising with getting the right parameters for fullest flavour. Certainly there wasnt anything offputting at all with this one, but i’m going to come back after a while with a score as currently i’m still seeing what works best

i received this sample from mrmopar. on the label it says shou at the end, but this sheng is all i could find on the site.. typo maybe? im almost positive this is a sheng, and by sight you would agree. the dry leaf smells great with sour to sweet or sweet to sour, on the inhale. broken up i see the leaves are full and intact, the same as when wet.. they just open up into leaves.
the brew is a lot like the aroma, i mean it is s&s with astringency, its sort of delicate and subtle as well. i hope the cold brew brings out more sweetness. i dont know what it is today, but im somewhat underwhelmed by this tea.. its still drinkable, and maybe ill get some cha qi in the process. seaweed & sand, seaweed & sand. i dont hate it though, i like the small bite it has on the tongue. again western style, so this review may be useless.. oh well. adios

-nycoma

Lost my review.. very sweet almost mushroom nice sheng. Bet easy drinking, cheap. Nice aroma, somehow sweet camphor. Nice bitterness.

Enjoyed this. Thanks whoever suggested it from my chawangshop thread.

http://www.chawangshop.com/media/heicha/2011_Hunan_Heicha_Zhu_Xiang_Ji_200g4.jpg

Seriously. Just look at that beauty.

If you’re thinking it looks like someone broke apart a couple of wet cigars & shoved them in a bamboo wrapper you are probably on the right tracks.. this one is pretty dank with smoky hints.. cigar tobacco & sweetly sour notes. – Not ‘smoked’ like DHP or Lapsang but just in the background. Also some medicinal & pile flavours but again they all sit behind a plummy Hunan Heicha sweetness. It isnt as strong as a couple of wet cigars, it just gives that impression subtly.

All this is pretty mixed together in the soup, so its either balanced or jumbled, depending on whether you like that or not :) This soup isnt thick & dark & earthy like a shou its more fruiter in the viscosity.

These notes give way to a mellow tea later on in the session, but with a bit of a body feel going on. Crept up on me :) Not massively strong but just noted. turns into library flavours later.

Its not that long lasting. Its not super rich or thick. Its also not expensive & is certainly interesting if you like those old smokey book flavours, while not tasting overly smoked, a slight sweet to balance things out while not being fruity. Maybe its more a bamboo sweetness.

This tea has fairly strong notes of camphor and spice. There is also a fair amount of fermentation flavor to it. Behind all that I think is a sweet note. This is fairly nice ripe puerh considering the price of only $12 for 250g. I would probably buy this again if I run out. It’s fairly good although not spectacular.

I steeped this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and boiling water for 30 seconds.

I am now officially a cheap tea date. 2.5p/g & i’m devouring this like its going out of fashion. Its fruity & old & dank & spicy (like mince pies)… has a slightly tongue numbing sour note, sweet… just so much win for so little wonga.

I mean you just open the bag & inhale the goodness. It’s a bit like the sweet part of a christmas cake or a pack of dates has been transformed into a boggy leafy mess. Raisins? yeah something like that. There is old wet mud in there but because of the fruity flavours it just tastes of win.

Love it.

It does leave me a little confused though – this seems to be closer in flavour to an aged sheng than any 2012 shou could ever be….? I wonder why that is

this tea punches me in the face a bit, with some sour/bitter sweetness. im not sure what to say about this tea, it tastes low-key. i think it smells a little like fern plants and tastes like sandalwood. there is some citrus that comes at you with a dry bite to it. this is another tea mrmopar sent me and its unlike any other sheng ive tried so far.. its kind of offensive but in a good way.

-nycoma

Earth. The Final Frontier.

There have been a few reviews on this tea, and invariably the taste mentioned is earh, or soil or such. This is definitely the tea those loamy shous are trying to imitate. You’re not going to get more ground taste in your tea without having to chew.

And I suspect, really, that’s all I’ll need to say for you to know whether this tea is for you. It harbored no surprises, it didn’t evolve during the steeps, nor did it out stay it’s welcome. Although, to be fair, this sort of tea gets brewed very long very early when in my pot by preference (and due to being “bombproof”), so perhaps a more measured approach would extend its number of steeps considerably.

Of particular note is the lack of funky or off flavors, despite a taste profile that usually features some. Not sure how it was stored precisrly, but I did only one rinse and couldn’t taste anything sloughing off as the session progressed. Well done.

Overall, an enjoyable cup, but certainly not one I’ll miss when it’s gone. Perhaps like the fabled Red Marks of old, it just needs another quarter century to come into its own. Don’t look to me to exhibit that degree of patience, however.

Scent: lovely, gentle, aromatic bamboo softness. I think to myself, “Hey, maybe this will be a hei cha that doesn’t flirt with a level of total horror and dankness that’ll make me half afraid to drink.”

Taste on the first steep: slightly dank, unbelievably dusty and dry.

Me: “It’s pretty old bookshop.”

Wife: “It’s less the old bookshop, and more the abandoned cardboard boxes that they used to move the books around in the bookshop.”

By the third steep, it’s developing kind of… halfway pleasant warm gentle sweet nutty notes under the undeniable taste of bookshop.

Wife: “This makes me think of first grade.”

Me: “Definitely… there’s like, paste and glue under the cardboard taste.”

Wife: “Yup.”

Me: “Do you like it?”

Wife: “Well, it makes me sad that I’m an adult now and there aren’t construction paper projects in my life anymore.”

Me: “I think I’m starting to like it. That makes me worry for the state of my soul.”

My first two experiences with aged liubao from Chawangshop were so inutterably dank/musty/insane-dead-bookshop that I thought I would never like aged liubao. But this was the bridge for me, just the right balance of dank must and intense warm nut chillness that I thought, “Hey, I could like this.”

The next day, I was definitely thinking about this tea. I suspect this makes me something of a tea pervert.

If you dare, take a journey through the leaves to the roots and taste the earth itself.
don’t get discouraged by its simplicity, and remember, the soil is more valuable for those who know what it can grow.
With its generosity it will give you as much as you want to enjoy and explore its secrets that went through time..
Now, if you took the lesson and let your roots go deeper, you can feel the good flowing from below helps you the get higher and higher!

Got this out of the Puerh TTB. It was pretty good, though not particularly remarkable.

Dry leaf smelled lightly grassy, wet leaf smelled more mushroomy or like forest floor. Slight disclaimer regarding mushroom notes: I’m not particularly fond of mushrooms themselves, and am thus not intimately familiar with their flavor, so when I say something tastes mushroomy, I’m not sure how accurate or whatever that is – it’s a bit of a savory flavor with some similar characteristics to forest floor/wood/moss notes for me.

The first steep tasted lightly grassy with a slight vanilla sweet note. After that, the mushroomy flavor started coming to the front of the sip, at times becoming more vegetal. The vanilla finish lasted for only a couple steeps, later replaced by a slightly citric sweet note that I struggled to place – maybe a bit like pineapple. The texture was decently thick, though I don’t think I’d call it creamy or oily. The flavors balanced out after around 6 or 7 steeps and it became harder for me to pick out individual notes. The flavor began to die out around 9 steeps, though it did yield a few softer and lighter tasting infusions after that. A pretty good tea, but probably not one I’d want to pick up a cake of, though the price is reasonable. I’ll need to try some other stuff from Chawangshop in the future!

I obtained this in a tea swap with CWarren.

I’ll start with the serious side of the review first. The tea was quite mouth kicking. It had nice brown sugar and earthy notes. It is good for those who like the casual ripe pu-erh that keeps you up throughout the day. However, I was up all day and night. In fact, within the hour of drinking the tea, I was scrubbing the floors and washing the house from within. I wanted to run for the first time in ages (I usually would rather hike). I wanted to sing in the streets & on rooftops.

Rather, I cleaned, took a nice brisk walk on a 95 F day, and sung along to the Beatles. I felt such a surge of energy from this tea, that it allowed me to get a whole a lot done throughout the house; which was relaxing.

Very nice. Thanks again for the tea, CWarren.

Note 100!

A sample swapped with CWarren a few months back. I’ve just finished this off, so I thought I’d make a note about it before heading to bed.

First off, never have this later than you should. My “normal” ending time for tea is at 5 p.m. However, due to an eventful series of events (my wife dislocating her arm at work, eye doctor appointment, and the A.C. guy coming to fix the unit) I was unable to get to this at the time I was planning on having it. Therefore, I started drinking it at 7:30 p.m., and am fully awake until 12 or so.

Okay, back to the tea. It’s quite good. It has a solid citrus-y note about it. Not fishy like other pu-erh stuffed tangerines/oranges that I’ve had. It’s very mellow and sweet, with a slight kick to it. I hadn’t noticed the tea’s affects until I was playing Battlefront online, and I started “Chewy-ing it up,” as my brother called it. However, I calmed down afterwards, while talking tea via phone/online.

Overall, I liked this session. But now, I’m getting tired and need to start settling down for the night….or try to.

Thanks again, CWarren!

This tea, which comes from ChawangShop’s well renowned product line of “the more words in the title, the better the tea”, is astonishingly cheap for its age. From such a well known vendor, this often a portent of some sort of doom. What kind? Let’s find out!

The dry leaf had no shortage of odor, primarily of a musty variety. This does not lead me to believe we’re dealing with a genteel, floral affair here. This is some biker bar tea odor right here. Game on.

It becomes apparent from the first rinse that the 2005 do re mi fa so la ti do is going to be a very no-nonsense cup, which is fine by me. Having worked ten hours yesterday, I’ve had my fill of nonsense. Early infusions are thick and hearty, yet unrefined. The mouthfeel is excellent, but both Tibetan Flame pu bricks and Pigpen from Peanuts are looking at this tea askance and thinking it’s a bit dirty. Would have been a wise idea to employ a strainer.

I think if I were to try to describe the flavors, I would term them Gothic. In the “portentously gloomy” sense, of course, not the young girls wearing black dresses and ridiculously small hats sense. It’s old, it’s fermented, and was likely put up damp at some point, and it’s not going to hide any of it. Take it or leave it.

Lest I give the impression I wasn’t impressed with this tea however, I do feel that if you’re not looking for a focused detail tasting session by the koi pond of your Zen garden with guqin music in the background, but rather something to provide an excellent background chug while you perform your duties as a lumberjack or bear wrestler, the 2005 up down up down left right left right B A merits much consideration. Good longevity, decent flavor duration, not much progression, but if you want tea that does acrobatic tastes, you’ll be paying a lot more.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pluck some of these new hairs off my chest.