Xi Zi Hao

have been meaning to get to this LP sample for what feels like eons… even breaking up iron samples, I’m reminded why I despise iron pressings.

5.5/90/212, gaiwan

dry: very very sweet dried berries.

wet: barnyard (think i finally kind of understand shah’s notation for this now…), lychee, tropical fruits, caramel.

1st: cough syrup, mint, tropical fruits

2nd: fine astringency, slight bitterness. mint and floral in taste

3rd: bitter, cherry-like, chocolate. inclined to think that diangu leans cold?

4th: awfully bitter. fruity floral mint backdrop

5: cherry syrup

6: papery with fine astringency

7: fruity bitter

8: not much taste, but slight pineapple aftertaste

9: more rounded, but still bitter

10: soapy bitter. something vegetal

11, 12: fruity. candied-carrots. dried date, slight underlying bitter

13: no longer bitter. moved to mug.

This is the first tea in a very long time I’ve had that has changed so drastically from steep to steep, and with obvious, distinct notes. does it seem to be worth the $1835 for the XZH direct? absolutely not. does anyway actually pay XZH direct pricing is the real question i suppose. at any rate, dollar per gram from LP was interesting, and perhaps a confusing whirlwind of an experience. Diangu in taste is unlike anything else I’ve tried. In feeling… I don’t know. It was 3 am and I was working on an overdue pset.

A gift from TheTea.pl, and a very nice one indeed. I found a cake (375g) being sold (in Europe) for $130, which I think is a bit higher than what I would be happy to pay for a tea like this one.

It is a shou that I would put on the savoury side of the spectrum. What is also remarkable is the particularly smooth, buttery mouthfeel and a soothing, meditative cha qi.

Dry leaves smell of old wooden cabinets and blueberries, but overall you will find very little fruitiness in this tea. After two rinses, the aroma I get is that of coffee and peat with an almost smoky touch to it. The taste reminds me of shiitake mushrooms, coffee again, as well as Brazil nuts. There is also a flavour of dried dates, but without much of the sweetness.

According to XZH yearbook pics online, the material for this cake was a blend of LBZ (“老班章古茶園”), Yiwu (“易武正山”), and Guang Bie Lao Zhai (“廣別老寨古茶園”). No idea what the last one is, but BabelCarp says it’s “a small puercha growing village in the Hekai [tea mountain]”.

6.4g, 90 mL gaiwan, Brita filtered tap, boiling, 15s rinse.

Was going to write out notes for this, but I don’t think I’ll bother. Dominant medicinal flavor and warming effect, no grogginess. Needs some pushing a few steeps in. I can’t describe the medicinal taste well, but it’s another one of the TCM ailment cures that I remember having often as a kid. Okay aftertaste, sometimes particularly sweet. Some mushroominess. I can’t account for whether it’s placebo or not, but the LBZ may have contributed to a focusing effect. Who knows.

Purchased from some forum for something like $200 a while back for a mostly intact cake. The wrapper is extremely bug bitten and tea oil stained, but seems to have had milder storage overall. I have not seen any other English reviews on this tea, so possibly an underwhelming and overlooked production. Name translated into English would be something along the lines of “Choice formula/prescription”.

Liquour is a clean orange-yellow; rinse had quite a bit of saponins. Not too shabby a purchase considering Tony Chen’s stupidly high price annual price raises, but this wasn’t terribly enjoyable of a session. Will toss this back into Mylar and see what happens. Have heard mostly mixed reviews re: long-term XZH ageability, but this wasn’t enjoyable enough for me to want to try it again, much less finish it in the short-term.

Thanks Obritten for this sample!

2009 XZH Jingmai
7.3g, simple syrup water, 212 f, 100mL gaiwan

dry leaf: light smoke, hay, tinge of medicinal

1x 10s rinse

wet leaf: light smoke, heavy on dried fruits

5s: thickened texture. light upfront w/ vegetal hint, and a crisp sweetness on aftertaste.

8s: stronger. touch of bitter, sweet aftertaste. A darker hint in background.

10s: smoky and hit of bitter. Aftertaste is slightly floral & creamy in away. Slight medicinal touch & nutty in a sort of way as well.

10s: still sort of sharp + crisp sugary aftertaste.

13s: sharp initially, with undertones of a honeyed sweetness. Lasting dried fruit in aftertaste.

16s: lighter in sharpness, with a fruity, pineapple-like note in aftertaste that lingers. A sort of medicinal hint in immediate taste.

20s. light smoky medicinal w/ slight bitter note. Aftertaste has a slight herbal component to it, ringed by edges of sweetness.

25s: lightened medicinal. slight crisp on aftertaste.

30s: similar, lightened. A slight woody note present upfront.

35s: like water but add light wood & some florals. Maybe a hint of mushroom.

45s: A sweeter medicinal.

1 min.: light w/ some fruit + an edge.

2 min.: only a light woody note remaining.

thermos overnight: light bitter & woody. Decent aftertaste, though much lightened.

a bit relaxing. Was tired when brewing, and the tea didn’t really add to the energy, though the caffeine is certainly present since I woke up several times throughout the night. Whatever cha qi is, chemical composition of water seems to affect it to a fair extent. Why is it that people have noted that it’s not always noticeable unless you pay attention? Is it that it’s not present in most teas, that it’s not getting extracted, or that it’s there and we’re confusing the effects for something else? All of the above? How does subtlety, depth, and perception of effect contribute? In my 9-5 this summer, we’re all heavily invested in the reproducibility of experiments (and sometimes I have nightmares about triplicate and standard error measurements). That carries over to my hobbies sometimes, so I can be overly meticulous in noting specific parameters instead of “going with the flow”, as it were. Neither approach has inherent flaws, but I wish there was better characterizing of it all, despite some inherent subjectivity involved.

Because I’ve never had a consistently good sleep schedule (a work in progress until who knows when), I can’t ever seem to totally separate calming effect of tea from just taking time to brew in detail and being tired enough from just slowing down or just really enjoying a tea (particular oolongs I’ve had in the past come to mind). In my memory though, the 1990s Liu Bao from Three Bears, 2004 YQH Jinhao Chawang, and this tea are the only ones I’ve tried that seem to have an effect that’s not wholly attributable to caffeine. This tea has had the lightest effect of the three, but present nonetheless. I’ve been reflecting as the other day I was reading a note for the 1990s LB wherein another reviewer noticed feeling really calm, and I realized that’s something I noted as well in my original review. At the time, I thought it was merely just the taste and my own quirks in preferences for silly novelties like having teas older than I am, and that was the first time I had considered that I might’ve experienced cha qi without knowing. The YQH Jinhao Chawang is inherently quite an interesting tea, in that my sample seemed to have preserved much of the florals despite the age, but looking back, I don’t think my reaction was just to the taste alone.

Since only a minority of reviews note ratios and infusion times (it’s tedious and clogs up the review, I get it), it’s hard to know if my experiences are just due to not leafing heavily enough (which seems unlikely? I’m not brave enough to do 1:10 quite yet, and the caffeine you’d get from that is borderline overboard, at least to continue sustainably without developing /too/ much tolerance), or if I’m just dense (which could certainly be the case, but I also reserve a healthy level of skepticism for the reviewers who experience “face-melting cha qi” in just about every single review they leave). I don’t have any answers, but hope that as the Western puer scene continues to expand, that we’ll start finding them!

It’s kind of odd to review something you sell, but hey… people enjoy a few of my words every once and a while :p

Anyways, ripe tea and I have a hate&dislike relationship. Hoping to upgrade to a love/hate relationship at some point. This is somewhat helping; so is the Chen Yuan Hao ripe teas.

So these things are STRONG at first. Like I just got in the ring for the first time and someone hit me in the kidney. Wait, imagine my kidney is my taste buds as a collected group. This review is weird. I’m still stoned from the Xiaguan. Dangit, I should erase all of that. I mean delete. Next paragraph.

After a bit these ended up brewing this dark orange liquid that reminded me a musky aged raw puerh in a decent to good way. Still, not like other ripe puerhs that I have tried but I really enjoy it for what it is. Still warming up to ripe puerhs outside of the golden needle white lotus, Whispering Pines, Chen Yuan Hao, Black Gold, oh and Green Miracle.
So there’s a few I enjoy, but that’s out of probably 80 by now.

Cost a bit more than typical mini touchas, but as for now I find it to provide a solid session. Going to try porcelain next to see how it comes out.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BbmbThPgvBz/?taken-by=liquidproust

Hey everyone! I have been BUSYYYYYYYYYYYY
Anyways, I took a new direction with my company and decided I will hunt down crazy awesome puerh or rare stuff because I want to share the ability for people to experience teas that sometimes I only got to read about like these XZH teas!

So here I was walking outside with a disc in my hand and walked to some flowers for a picture https://www.instagram.com/p/BX1IRVKg7AA/?taken-by=liquidproust

Not sure if anyone had any idea what that was, but whatever!

So when I went to break this cake I was kind of like ‘aweeeee man I cannot mess this up!’ and so I looked at it for a bit https://www.instagram.com/p/BX9dbjvAFaO/?taken-by=liquidproust

Nothing really unique about it… boutique tea, special name, pretty stuff… let’s see.

So I drink this and it reminds me of fuzzy peaches… that is really all I can say because I highly doubt anyone else will have that experience but if they do… fuzzy peach puerh sounds amazing!