Pairing Tea

We have known one another for so long, Gentle Reader, that I feel as if I can confide in you.  Among the veritable plethora of "things that yank my chain", up there near the top is "pairing tea".

Don't get me wrong.  Everyone should be free to do as they wish in the comfort of one's own home.  However, if you are pairing TEA and FOOD, and you choose to write about it, then I am probably quietly hating you.  Is that too strong?

>_<  HATRED  >_<  

It feels good, so it must be right.

Pairing wine and food is fraught with danger, too.  It's good when you get it right (thx, Wine Steward), but it gives rise to all manner of silly rules that folk try to remember.  "White with white meat, red with red meat", for example.  I'm probably going to cry the next time I hear that: big, fat tears are just going to tumble down my face.

So, with pairing such a dangerous game, I thought I'd give it a go (!), by matching a tea to a wine.

OK, I happened to be drinking a tea and a wine from approximately the same year.  However, the similarities between the two were absolutely striking.

The tea is a 1990 "Qizi Bingcha", which is a bit like saying "red wine".  The paper, pictured above, is written in the handwriting deluxe of my old teachum, RJ.  I appreciate a bit o' the ol' calligraphy. 

 "From wild trees at the border between Yunnan and Vietnam, processed on pine wood.  A private creation from the tea merchant Wang from Taiwan - I was told."

The boys leave for the park with their auntie.  The tea consequently takes on a new significance, as I pay attention in the unexpected silence.  An old aircraft drones overhead.  A gentle breeze gives the impression of an indolent summer Sunday.  The qizi bingcha is tannic, and magnificently eroded - just like the Pauillac.  There is rounded, unobtrusive, structural sweetness.  Most importantly, it is comforting.

"Very good - this is old tea", notes my dear wife as she takes a cup in passing.  I could drink this tea all day.  Sadly, I have to go to town to buy swimming trunks, to take my dudes swimming, after my previous pair spontaneously disintegrated while I was swimming with them last time.  There's nothing funnier than seeing a bony white man suddenly become naked, against his will, in the children's learning pool.

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UCL, I-IV

I

and just when they stop

f'ing you - then the f'ing

really begins

II

thanks for the question
there's a whole community
working on that

III

more seminars

more hamiltonian

markov chains

IV

I double-dare you

to give your talk and not say

big data

Chunkynuggets

To my considerable frustration, it seems that having recently achieved the novelty of landing a "proper" academic job seems to translate to spending most of my life travelling.  This would have been a great thrill for the twenty-something, carefree version of myself, but poses difficulties for a thirty-something father.  On the bright side, my children are becoming used to receiving chocolate-based gifts from the around the world.

Today's session took place after a recent trip to Brussels, after returning from which I was greeted by a grinning eldest son running to the door to (i) apply the aggressive cuddles that only a three-year-old can manage, and (ii) determine the nature of the treats that I had inevitably brought him.

And yet what treats does his father have, hmm?  Well, this old 1990 tuocha, provided from the magnanimous charity of Peter of pu-erh.sk, certainly counts.

The eponymous little chunkynuggets of tea that make up this session have a "chenxiang" [aged scent], when introduced to the damp, warm belly of the tiny pot (pictured below) that I use for brewing some old cakes.  Even the first infusion, with the leaves still tightly compressed, has a tar-like, sweet scent and a substantially cooling sensation.

I am not a big collector of pots; in fact, I like to "simplify, simplify" whenever possible.  When I first got into tea in the mid-noughties, perhaps like most people I went a bit crazy and bought pots for every occasion one could conceive.  Roasted, green, old, young, frisky, rough, etc. etc.  These days, I drink almost exclusively from Zidu (my big ol' Zishahu that brews around 110 ml), with a tiny 70ml pot for those small samples as may exist of older teas.  I have a pot for green wulong and a pot for heavy-roast wulong, but those are more for fun rather than function.  Finally, I have a shupu pot and a hongcha pot.  Everything else (and there is virtually nothing else, excepting lucha) goes into a gaiwan.

This lovely little tuocha is crisp, smooth, and particularly sweet - it is perfect for my return to a dark, northern country which is entirely saturated with rain and winter chills.  It is hard to imagine that such a country exists after spending time away, even in Belgium, but exist it does.  The strange thing is that I actually come to miss the dark, wet little country when I am away/.  There truly is "no place like home".

What does one look for in an old tuocha?  Sharpness?  Pleasant sweetness?  Endurance, and strength?  This 1990 version has all of these virtues.  Even after some twenty or so years of aging, this tea caused my dear wife to observe "an aggressive aftertaste" - which is quite a compliment for an older tea!

The red-orange soup, which looks so invitingly thick in the photographs above, has a tangy, long-lasting scent that reminds of the benefits brought about by tight compression: though aged, it has the retention of some of the characteristics of youth that blend very well - it is a fascinating mixture of aspects that we might otherwise associate with both age and youth.  I deliberately brew it strongly to emphasise its considerable strength.

What a wonderful way to return home.  Thanks again to Peter for the session.

England is Closed

It's true - England is closed.  The extreme weather has come at just the right part of the year, as we close up our various responsibilities and head back to our family homes for the Christmas vacation.  

The country has gently rolled to a complete halt.

The snow, it snoweth every day

As we go about our last few days, the snow keeps on tumbling, reminding us all that we will soon be unable to travel.

Heidu used to enjoy sitting on this table - I double-check to ensure that the bump in the snow is not him

Advent services, Christmas lunches, end-of-term dinners, all fading gently into the constant silence of falling snow.

Compare our frosty woodpile with the same from warmer times...

I close up my work for the year, and tie up the loose ends from the past few weeks of interviewing.  This is the second year in which I have been interviewing candidates for our undergraduate course, and the process turns the university upside-down in the week after term.

"The Oxford interview" has a special place in England's folklore, having become something of a myth.  Newspapers like to speculate about what happens; there are always urban legends of candidates being asked to perform bizarre tasks in oak-clad, secretive chambers, while bespectacled dons stroke their beards and throw port glasses into roaring fires.

Even a stopped clock keeps the right time twice per day

The reality is more mundane; we, the interviewing tutors, devise some questions to test the candidates - ideally questions that are harder than their schooling, so that we can see how they stretch their reasoning to new situations, such as they'd encounter during the rather gruelling undergraduate course.  The idea is that no-one can solve the questions alone, but that we see how much help we have to give them to reach the end of each question. 

It's very hard work, and it must be done right - the candidates have a lot riding on the interviews, given that we ultimately have to pick about 10% of the candidates to be our students for the next academic year.  There are many variables - the media like to scrutinise us (and rightly so) to see if we are admitting a decent proportion of students from state schools and ethnic minorities.  Just last week-end, an indignant article in The Guardian newspaper published a familiar (and rather unfair) anti-Oxford piece on what they perceived to be our archaic procedures.

It is an all-consuming process, given that we are stiving to be fair, and the end of the process is a huge relief.  The Master of the college was kind enough to break out some decent bottles at our farewell lunch to thank us for the hard slog - mine was not the only tired smile at the table. 

Now, back at home, with snow mounting on windows, I celebrate the true end of the year by pulling out the last portion of a 1990 Fuhai / Kunming tuocha, from Teamasters (with accompanying notes here).

The wrapper says "Kunming Tea Factory", but the Teamasters label has "Fuhai" - it's one of the two

I don't always drink shupu, but when I do, I prefer good shupu.

What's a few jinhua [golden flowers] between friends?

This shupu is very decent.  Assuming that it's not the rubber tyres + fishpond of a bad shupu, a good shupu can be rich in flavour, akin to mahogany, and very smooth.  This tuocha is very clean, and produces a crisp, sweet soup that reassures the soul.

Its texture is particularly particulate - "dusty library" is my usual phrase for describing this sort of character, as it has the distant flintiness of damp paper, but aged, matured, and deepened.

Cup after cup of this constant, pleasant bookishness remind me that shupu doesn't tend to evolve during a session; nor is it potent, unless mixed with a portion of shengpu.  However, its constancy is a virtue, when you crave a calming, soothing experience with a welcome old friend, as you toast goodbye to last term, and last year.

The last of 2010

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I bid you adieu.  I trust that you and yours will have a most excellent Christmas, and I look forward to sharing a (possibly virtual) cup with you in 2011.

Lei and I are now off to the family home to introduce Xiaohu to his relatives.

Here endeth the lesson

1990 Menghai 9062

I'm not a great fan of blends of shengpu/shupu. However, this is the first production of the 9062 recipe, and so I'd thought I'd give it a crack by buying a sample from Nadacha, where a brick currently sells for between £50 and £60.

The mixture is obvious

The dry leaves are heavily fragmented, and appear to be a mixture of copper-coloured shengpu with darkened shupu leaves. The aroma is very pleasant, reminding me of rich plums.

Similarly, in the wenxiangbei, it remains appealing: a host of creamy, smooth scents with good duration come from the decent brown-orange soup. As pictured below, the miniscus is already yellowed.

I first notice the powdery, damp texture and flavour of the shupu, but this combines well with the sharp, bitter twist of shengpu. Even after all this time, the two components are quite distinct, yet complementary.

The tea is absent much in the way of kougan [KOH-GAN, mouth-feeling, texture], which makes it seem a little bit dead. Can one be a little bit dead?

Later infusions turn out to be lo-fi woodiness, with some gentle sweetness. While not the most clock-stopping of pu'er, it turned out to be enjoyable. I was ready to buy one of these, but the sample has convinced me otherwise, however.

If this tea were a Heidu facial expression, it would be:

Meh

1990 CNNP "Jiang Cheng" Brick

Cold rain - not the brutal stuff that commands respect, but the annoying, drizzling, clammy kind. The perfect day to stay indoors and explore an old tea.

Copious thanks to Norpel for this sample; it's from a 300g brick sold at Teamasters for $175 [pictured].


I'm not sure what the "Jiang Cheng" means as it doesn't appear on the wrapper - we have "Yunnan Yesheng ["wild"] Tea Brick, CNNP". Wild!

As you can see above, the leaves are small (SE describes them as "grade 1" size) and very dark, with a robust compression. A vividly sweet shengpu aroma indicates that this has been aged very well. Today, a small Hanwu ["Han-dynasty ceramic"] pot, pictured below, dedicated to older teas.

Unlike the more contemporary teas that I have been drinking lately, this one is bold and clear throughout its beidixiang [the initial cup-bottom scent]. That crispy clear aroma from the dry leaves shines throughout.

As shown above, the soup is a deep amber, with a definite golden ring at the meniscus that some take to be a mark of quality.

First into the mouth, the sensation of buzzing lips comes long before any flavour has had a chance to register. This is a particularly fine tea as far as chaqi goes, leaving the mouth menthol-cool afterwards, in accordance with Chinese medicine's designation as shengpu as a "cold" drink.

The flavour itself is rather simple: sweet sandalwood, a very quiet huigan, finished by a pleasant shicang [wet storehouse] yunxiang in the nose. The storage is really top notch: it is clean and fresh, and the chaqi has become bold.


Fine as this tea is, it strikes me as a bit monotonic: the sweet, high flavour is simple, and each cup is much like the last. This is a tea to drink for the sensations it generates in the body, rather than for enjoyment of flavour or aroma. I deliberately overbrewed the tea on occasion in an attempt to get something complex out of it, but this was plumbing for depths that seem not to exist. It didn't really strike me as "wild".

A fine experience of a well-aged tea; thanks again to Norpel for this excellent companion on a cold, wet day.


P.s. Unless I'm very much mistaken, this looks to be The Half-Dipper's century-and-a-half!

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Addendum

In the interests of good scholarship, an article on this tea can be found in the oak-panelled interior of Chadao, penned by Geraldo. Happily, my notes appear to be in agreement, and I must quote a rather fine passage as a most suitable epithet:

"On the excellence scale, I would rate it very high.
On the fascination scale, I would not rate it quite so high."