Jujube Fragrant Brick - anyone heard of it?

I get a lot of listings for products, but not much decipherable information about the brick or its flavor when I plug those characters into google, at least in the first few pages of links. I'm going to keep searching though.

My brick shows 永明 factory.

Interesting about the combination of jujube & puerh. I'll look closer at the brick for any unusual pieces.

Feed it to a search engine and you'll probably get a host of other things!

"Jujube Flavoured" isn't correct, "Jujube Fragrant" is more accurate and to the point.

There is no Jujube - correctly: dates, precisely: dried red dates - leaves or fruit in the pu'er. It is much like saying : Camphor Fragrant Pu'er, you won't be looking for camphor shavings in the tea, it is all the production and 'ageing' method which creates the fragrance of dried red dates.

If this is foreign to you, Jason F, which I suspect it may not be, talk a walk in Chinatown, stop by the asian grocery store, and ask for dried red dates. Buy some home - there should be a lot of it now in Chinatown, it is close to Chinese New Year and we love this fruit in our cuisine during this festive season.

Take a deep sniff of the dates, register the notes and fragrance, and then brew the tea, using really hot water.

Discard the 1st and 2nd round. Brew the 3rd round with short steeping time (20 sec max) and then take a deep whiff of the tea.

You'll probably find some similarity between the two.

My brick shows ?? factory.

Interesting about the combination of jujube & puerh. I'll look closer at the brick for any unusual pieces.

samarkand43c53611$ snipped-for-privacy@news.starhub.net.sg1/11/06 11: snipped-for-privacy@uk2.net

Danny, I've noticed some distinct sweet flavors in aged Pu'erhs from the

1950's and 1960's that might be described as plum-like or even date-like in the sense you are describing. Is that it?

I went down to our Chinatown a year or so ago and picked up some dried plum to get the feel of what "plum" means in regard to Pu'erh. We have plums all over our grocery stores here in the States, but the Pu'erh plum essence has nothing to do with them. I'll repeat the search, this time for dates.

That's the ticket. By the time you go to all that trouble, it's simply mind over matter, or in this case, matter over mind. (Just joking.)

Michael

Hi Michael, yes, in a broad sense, that's it. Only that these days, the art of imitation has been near perfect, a hydro-thermal fermented pu'er that's not more than 6 months old can produce these fragrances, not so much in flavours...

You may be hunting down the wrong lane. You should be looking for prunes, specifically, black prunes which are usually sold in medicinal halls and used as a medicine. The sweet flavours in Pu'er have nothing to do with the tastes of red dates or black prunes, these are in the fragrance of the tea, not in the taste...

Haha! Not really though, by the time one goes through all that trouble, the fragrance of a red date is a distant memory, and one has to reconstruct that fragrance to see if it matches the one that's whiffing from the cup in front of you...and that should be fun to see how our mental faculty can help, or fool, us.

BTW, anyone who's interested...Yong Ming Tea factory's 'authorised' direct online retailer...

Thanks everyone for all your input on this. I'm going to try to find some red jujube's, dried, fresh, whatever I can find, to try to associate the aromas. Hopefully some of those other cakes on the Taobao site will make it to my Chinatown.

I also got a tea cake that my store sold as a Menghai 7262 cake, but it looks...strange and possibly faked. At the very least, it's been repackaged: the cake and wrapper look new but it has the old Zhongcha label (yellow label) with the chinese for "Menghai Puerh Tea" written on it, and a yellow zhongcha nei fei that reads "Xishuangbanna Dai Nationality Autonomous Region Menghai Product". I'll post a new thread with a picture link soon.

samarkand43c56765$ snipped-for-privacy@news.starhub.net.sg1/11/06 15: snipped-for-privacy@uk2.net

It would be fun to compare. I have no hydro-thermal -- that's the wet blanket treatment, right? -- on hand at the moment.

Well, I beg to differ with you here. *Some* of the 50's/60's samples -- red labels most specifically -- matched well to the plum essence. By the way, "prunes" for us are specific in taste and aroma. The chinese versions, which are red, are quite different. (But, I'm sure you know this; I don't mean to preach.)

Good point. I was only half joking.

Michael

Hmmm, I still think you are hunting down the wrong lane...The chinese versions (plum? prune?) are red - you said...?

No, that's not the one. Am I correct to say that Plum is the fruit and Prune the dried or preserved version of plums? If that is so, then as I have mentioned, it is the fragrance of black prune (It is called Wu Mei, I think I wrote it wrongly in the previous post) that's in the tea, not the plum essence.

Wait, the scientific name for it is called Fructus Mume, what's the scientific name for plum? Hmmm...

Oh yes, I forgot to add, the 50/60s samples of red label - the zhao qi hong yin - do not have plum taste (? - you meant taste, not fragrance, right?). The fragrance is distinctively floral and ?orchidy?, the tea, by comparison to those from the later date, is sweeter, perhaps that's where you discern the plum note?

But technically, Almond / Plum / Date fragrances and tastes are mostly (and majority) the products of hydro-thermal fermentation process.

samarkand43c68cbc$ snipped-for-privacy@news.starhub.net.sg1/12/06 12: snipped-for-privacy@uk2.net

Yes, but when we speak of the Japanese or Chinese versions here, we say dried or preserved. I've checked this all out with Michael and Winnie at Tea Gallery. I think part of the problem is that old sheng Pu'erhs display a wide variety of tastes that are somehow related in a fruit/camphor/mint/leather spectrum. I've got a lot to learn.

I'm going to look specifically for it. I also wonder whether the "prune" we know here in the States is the same as the one you would find in Singapore. They might be quite different.

Prunus non-Wettus v.Drius

Michael

snipped-for-privacy@news.starhub.net.sg1/12/06 12: snipped-for-privacy@uk2.net

Your question leads me to go out and have another go at all my samples: Goody, another old Pu'erh orgy ahead.

WHAT! Say, it ain't so, Danny. These flavors figure in the 1950 together with camphor, leather, lots of other complexities. Back to the tearoom.

Donations graciously accepted.

Michael

samarkand43c7a02e$ snipped-for-privacy@news.starhub.net.sg1/13/06 07: snipped-for-privacy@uk2.net

A penny, a nickle, a dime, a cake of 1950's red label Meng Hai. Come on guys. Every bit helps. If everyone donated just one gram, while I'll bet...

I'll second that! Donations most graciously and humbly accepted...

:")

Danny

Ahhh I forgot, you have the best source there! Ask Michael or Winnie about Wu Mei, or black dried prune, I'm sure they can tell you loads and even show you where to look for them!

BTW, it's Prunus Moisturus v. Preseverus, haha!