Chinatown Yunnan Tuocha

Assuming my understanding is correct, Xia Guan is a popular pu'erh manufacturer. I have a tuocha of theirs from this past year, and it has some bite to it (mild, my eye). Did your wrapper have a picture of a white crane anywhere on it, or on the box?

You mentioned brewing it with cooler water...you doing this in a regular teapot, or gungfu? I've been brewing mine gungfu, boiling water, starting with ten-second steeps. If the way you're doing it is bringing out some of the mellower qualities, I ought to give it a try.

Jennifer

Yes. I found some earlier discussions of it from the group and saw a photo of the box on Mike's site.

Anything green I tend to lower the water temps, whether it's a greener oolong, a white tea, or this. I used my new teapot.

Funny, some on line places are selling it for over $10. Mine was $1.49 in Chinatown.

There was a discussion recently by me and one other about this product. You can find it using Google. Essentially this is the Jia Ji or Very Good Grade. Those two characters are on the box. There is another version in a purple box called Te Ji or Special Grade which I haven't seen and more expensive. The version is my Chinatown is a penny less than a buck. If you shop around the penny/gram price or even two in your case for a good green puerh is a steal. Is there Chinese information on the bottom of your box with the letters 00 anywhere? Also the paper wrapper should have the Crane emblem. If you look at the previous thread you'll discover the interpretation. I know of one other person who has bought this in Chinatown without any information on the bottom of the box. I drink my puerh's straight out of the cup because the leaves settle when brewed and never taste astringent. Just add more hot water.

Jim

Rebecca Ore wrote:

Chinatown).

Chinese.

Yes to the Crane. Only black printed number ending is 00 is 671000 and then there's something in blue ink stamped but obscure that looks like

000 04 (or 07) followed by a Chinese character.

Rebecca Ore wrote: [snip]

The old supply and demand thing, I guess. :) No Chinatowns around here, so I have to expect to pay slightly inflated prices online. The folks I visit have been selling it for about $5, but both just started selling a Xia Guan Supreme Gold Ribbon tuo cha in the ten-dollar range. Sometimes it's hard to compare tea prices between vendors, but with something like this where you can actually know it's exactly the same product, you can really catch people out. If someone is selling the A one for over $10, how overpriced might the rest of their tea be?

Jennifer

That last inscription is saying someting about a date. The last Chinese character which looks like a stepladder(yiyue) is January. Notice after the same character at the start of the desciption is the character riqi when means date. The first two characters I don't know maybe harvest, production,run,batch etc. So it is 00 January. The 04 on my box is washed out but something in Chinese. I think this is a date of production but someone pointed out the Crane emblem was only first used in 2003. I think this is old XiaGuan stock with the new Crane emblem. If so then this XiaGuan is already aged four years.

Jim

Rebecca Ore wrote:

Hi Rebecca,

What is the color of the paper wrapper? If it is the crane and characters on plain paper background then it is 1st grade. If the logo has a predominantly red background then it is what they call supreme grade. Don't put too much faith in those boxes, they are far from standardized and are easily swapped around. The green boxes like the ones on my site are usually 1st grade if the tea inside wasn't swapped. There are a lot of scam artists, both Chinese and American, who prey on our ignorance regarding pu'er and swapping boxes is easiy since they arent sealed. The price you mention isn't bad, it sells for about $7 per kg in China. The biggest expense is the shipping, if they bring it in by the truckload they can sell it at a good price.

While most Chinese use boiling for green puer, I do recommend lower temperature for young greens. It is a gentler approach until you become more familiar with how to brew it without getting too bitter.

Mike

Beige paper with mostly red letters with some green plants beside the crane in the circle and some green characters. I take the Grade A on the insert to mean 1st Grade.

I think this is the same thing that Holy Mountain had for over $10 . $1.49 for 100 grams of tea works for me, even if it would be cheaper in China.

The other pu'er in the grocery story is a compressed several sided slab in a red paperboard box (looks almost like wood but isn't) with a metal bead clasp. It was $15 but is probably is as much a gift item as a drinking tea. I've got both of them on a bookshelf in my dining room at the moment (thinking the kitchen temps and humidity would vary too much over short periods, not to speak of volatile oils and odors).

I was wondering if the ball had to be bigger to age -- if not, I'll probably buy some to put up in my camping gear storage closet (on an outside wall so it's a bit cooler in the winter than the central part of the house). Or do you have suggestions? Philly goes through coolish dry and hot humid cycles regularly enough.

Sounds like you definitely have the 1st grade tucha. Look at jingteashop.com or mandjs.com and you see the supreme grade with the red background. The difference is slight btw.

You can age any size piece, the smaller the piece the faster it will oxidize and mature. If the climate is comfortable for humans it will do fine for your personal collection. Do avoid heavy odors. I have more detailed storage tips listed on my site if you are interested.

You will see a lot of different packaging techniques using the EXACT same tea inside. Many are indeed targeted as gifts or collectibles. You can pay as much as 10 times more for the same tea depending on the package. Those fancy boxes often cost more than the tea.

Speaking of the Xia Guan Jia Ji tuocha. I belong to another tea group where we often do group tea tastings. So far we have done 3 pu'er tastings, each one hosted by a different member. I recently had the honor of hosting the third puer tasting and the Xia Guan Jia Ji was the tea we tasted. I bought 2 tuocha of a 2004 tuocha, 2 of a 1993 tuocha, and 2 of a 1984 tuocha and split them up between 8 tasters. All three teas were Xia Guan Jia Ji so it was very interesting to taste the various ages. Seb from jingteashop.com was kind enough to locate all of the different vintages for us. I set it up as a blind tasting so each participant could taste each one and objectively judge them against each other. I included a sealed envelope with the key to explain which as which so each person could read it after theiy finished the blind tasting. This was quite an interesting trial, and quite surprising as well. I highly recommend this method of blind tastings as a way of learning about puer.

Mike,

Any chance you can share the results of that one here? I'm curious about how this cheap Xia Guan tuocha Grade A compares to the higher priced pu'ers.

I think I'll see what's available at some of the stores that have a larger selection of teas, but it would be pretty painless to put a couple of these up for a few years if that would improve them.

Sometimes, the ethnic market teas are wonderful; sometimes, they're disappointing.

Very interesting.... After the tasting what were the surprises and wa there a consensus on the favorite?

teamani

-- teamania

Hi Folks,

I am not ignoring you, I am extremely busy at work right now, I will respond in the next day or two.

Mike

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:20:40 +0000, teamania cast caution to the wind and posted:

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

remove the "filter" in my email address to reply

Sorry for the long delay here. Between crashed computers and testing some beta Home Automation hardware I haven't had much free time lately.

So we tasted the three tuocha, and the surprise was how close in taste the 1993 and the 1984 were. Everyone agreed that both were much smoother, sweeter, and full bodied than the 2004. The real curious thing was that while the 1984 was sweeter and more rounded than the

1993 it seemed curiously close, a lot closer than the 10 year difference would have indicated. One of the main reason for these differences had to do with the compression level. The 1993 was compressed much looser than the 1984. Since it was looser it oxidized and matured faster. The 93 was easily crumbled with your fingers where the 84 was so hard you had to use implements of destruction.

The teas were all good, and the 1984 was particularly sweet. However I have to say that unless you are a connoisseur of this type of tea you should probably stick to the young stuff. Well aged puer is so expensive that it is hard to justify the premium. Think of it in terms of the difference between Folgers coffee and Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Is it good, even great, yes! Is it worth the ridiculous premium, not hardly. That is, unless you have the puer bug of course!

Mike

Thanks for your review. maybe more aging occures in the beginning in th

first few years and then the future aging is less dramatic.

Teamania

Mike Petro Wrote:

-- teamania