Had the opportunity to try a sample of Yiwu Mao Cha recently. Interesting experience.
Used about 5gms in a heated 75ml gaiwan. Washed for about 10secs, rested for a couple mins. Water just under the full boil - cooled for minute.
Wow - fish was the first thing that came to mind to both of us. Overwhelming fishy aroma. Very light brownish pea green liquor.
First steep, 10 secs, wasn't too sure how long to brew this so started off short. Aroma now less fishy. Initial taste was very sweet for a few seconds then softened out. I also noted a spicy note on the tip of the tounge.
Second steep 15secs - fishy aroma all but gone now replaced by pleasant soft grassy/wet hay aroma. Taste again sweet to start out then a hint of tannin bitterness - which I found enjoyable.
3rd, 25 secs. Taste similar to #2 but more pronounced - spicy has gone now. Mouth felt very refreshed.
Inspection of the wet leaf revealed a lot of stalk and a mixture of large broken and small intact leaf - all very green as one would expect.
Was this experience typical of this type of tea?
This was a pleasant digression from my world of pu'er and roasted oolongs. It's easy to sit in one's comfort zone but this tea has shown me what I'd imagine most of you already know, that one needs to take a good look "on top of ones box" now and again.
I notice that there are a lot of people wanting to try maocha, but maocha is not pu'er, by strict definition from some experts & tea- makers (professor Zhou Hong Jie among them), maocha is basically, green tea.
If it is the maocha from the actual tea region, one might get a hint of the characteristics of that tea region, but the maocha needs to go through a process of heat & bruising to turn it into pu'er, hence the pressing stage; even the loose leaf pu'er needs to go through at least the heat process.
These days vendors will sell you anything that puts money in their bank. Selling maocha to the consumer is a waste of resource which might otherwise be processed into good pu'er. And at the escalating price of maocha these days, would any vendors get good grade maocha to sell as green tea? This might be something for us to ponder over...
Try getting a sample of this tea from Guang of Houde:
2006 Autumn "Yi Wu Cha Wang" of Chen Guang-He Tang
& do a comparative brewing.
The Yi Wu Cha Wang is the closest to the pure Yi Wu characteristics I've tried this year. I think there are others out there, but from online vendors so far this is the only one I found. You can use hot boiling water if you like (but not ground water!), but make the steeping short and after each brew, leave the gaiwan uncovered.
Even if sun-dried? I always thought green tea by definition was quick-killed.
Sorry, but I'm confused now. The idea that the bruising that inevitably happens during pressing is important makes sense to me, but you seem to pull back from it by "accepting" loose leaf Pu'er. Also, maocha does get heated after the sun-drying, no? So what exactly is the distinction between maocha and loose sheng?
But you've tasted that early nineties Yiwu maocha Guang was selling, haven't you? I'm among many people who think it tastes great.
Isn't it fairly common these days to see Yunnan Da Ye green and white teas?
Are you saying cheaper green tea from Yunnan is probably a more expensive Mao Cha sold to others? Yunnan produces other teas besides Puer so is it just fate some leaf ends up in a Puer pile and others on drying racks? I understand the green tea I have comes from southern Yunnan which I understand is a puer producing area. It is very distinctive in the sense it has more of a plant taste than delicate cultivated greens.
xiexie Jim
On Mar 20, 6:34 am, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote: ...mowed down...
This might go into a long discussion...but at a conference held in Yunnan in 2004, it was generally agreed that "pu'er" must be tea made from the large leaf varietal of tea plant found in Yunnan, sundried, and there must a certain degree of post production fermentation or bio- chemical changes in the tea before it can be considered a pu'er. In other words, all newly produced tea, compressed or loose leaf, are green tea till the post production changes set in. - this is by strict definition, which some experts still disagree on.
To kick-start the changes in post production, heat must be applied to the maocha, otherwise the maocha would probably be still considered a green tea. People have mentioned the term sun-dried so often that one forgets that there is still a process before sun-drying - the leaves are not plucked, and then left out to dry; if that is the case, we would probably get white tea instead of green. Quick high heat or slow low heat is applied to the leaves to treat them first before laying out to dry in the sun...
Nah, I said "even the loose leaf pu'er needs to go through AT LEAST the heat process"...we get a nice tan under the sun, I doubt the leaves are hot after the sun-drying. If there is not distinction between maocha and loose sheng, we might as well call it maocha instead. Maocha means half-processed product, that doesn't mean the end product is the shaping of the leaves into cakes and bowls. To tell the distinction, the best is still to try a sheng pu'er and a maocha from the same region, you'll know then which is more drinkable...
Wait, did I? did we? Don't think I did though. & my question to you would be in what, why and where does it taste great? Provide me with a profile that we can work and discuss on.
I think you are confusing tea plants cultivated for green and white teas, and those cultivated for pu'er...
No, I think a sensible explanation would be that pu'er maocha can make good green tea but green tea maocha may not make good pu'er.
There are many tea varietals and cultivars in Yunnan, some are more suitable for making into certain types of tea. Besides the cultivars from the tea mountains that give us pu'er, some of the others are:
Feng Qing Da Ye Zhong 凤庆大叶种 : suitable as red tea, excellent as green tea, and pu'er Meng Hai Da Ye Zhong 勐海大叶种: suitable as red tea, excellent as green tea & pu'er - original material for Nan Nuo Bai Hao green tea. Yun Kang #10 云抗10号 : suitable as red & green teas Yun Kang #14 云抗14号 : suitable as red & green teas Yun Kang #01 云抗01号 : excellent as green tea Yun Kang #43 云抗43号 : excellent as green tea Yun Mei 云梅: excellent as green tea, poor red tea candidate Yun Gui 云瑰: suitable as red tea etc etc.
Quick high heat is exactly what tea manufactured as green gets. But, since what you're talking about is *before* sun-drying, am I right to assume that this heating stops short of getting the leaves as dry as they would in the kill-green for finished green tea?
I hope I'm not exhausting your patience. Are you saying, then, that loose sheng, must go through all of (1) partial kill-green, (2) sun-drying, and (3) some kind of kneading/bruising; and that maocha is tea that doesn't go through all three?
Sweet, mellow, dried plum. Gets into that pocket of pure aged mellowness after 6 or so steeps. But, of course, I should provide you with the thing itself, not just the profile.
But it's the same cultivar, by outward appearance. Are you excluding the possibility that a given farmer may decide to sell his crop for Pu'er or green or white manufacture based on the best offer he gets?
I have some loose puer, green, red tea supposedly from the same undisclosed area in Southern Yunnan. I always assumed the same leaf processed three different ways. The green one was called Bai Hao so I'll pretend I won the Menghai trifecta. Thanks for supplying the Chinese characters because you know I always ask for them.
Maocha, at least in terms of tea destined to become puerh, lacks the steaming/pressing stage. Or, rather, at least in current parlance, that is how it is.
Unless you have something else in mind? You keep mentioning "heat" and "bruising" but you don't say when you think that happens to the tea. After everything is done? Before everything is done? Before kill-green? That makes a big difference, IMHO.
Strange...I thought I made a long lengthy reply to your post, but it didn't seem to appear on the forum...did I send to you personally? If not I'll reply again when I have the time...
Exhausting my patience? Send me the Yi Wu maocha to recharge! Hehe...
Kill-green it is, and there are partial and full kill-green. In the case for pu’er, the kill-green is generally considered partial. Someone mentioned that I kept talking about heat process and bruising, but didn’t say when these take place; for heat process I have specified generally 2 stages: during kill-green & before pressing. Tea- manufacturing is very much dependable on weather conditions, and there might be instances where heat is introduced to the maocha in more stages than 2, but these would be varying details for the factories.
As for bruising…the more appropriate term would be Kneading…in traditional Sun-drying method, it is done after partial kill-green, and then left to dry in the sun, it is done again after the maocha is steamed quickly (30-50sec), bagged, and roll-kneaded quickly before being pressed.
Nope, I’m calmly chewing on granola in attempt to reduce it into digestible mulch before swallowing it like oat milk…haha!
I think I have confused the topic more than I’m trying to clarify it…! Dear oh dear! – as Mdm Raz in She-Ra would have lamented…
Historically, Yunnan produced green tea. The traditional method is Sun- drying - Shai Qing 晒青. The product is generally called Shai Qing Maocha 晒青毛茶. Green tea produced with this method is called Dian Qing 滇 青. Dian Qing - or Shai Qing Maocha is the 1st step to making pu’er, sheng or shou.
Not all Dian Qing or Shai Qing Maocha are good candidates for the making of pu’er. To make good pu’er, it is believed that the large leaf varietal found in Yunnan makes the best candidate. Hence to differentiate sheng pu’er ingredients and green tea, and the new inventive methods of producing pu’ers, manufacturers began using the term Shai Qing Maocha exclusively as ingredients for making pu’er, and Dian Qing to indicate Yunnan Green tea.
Other methods of producing Yunnan Green tea also include Pan-frying (Chao Qing 炒青), Drum-roasting (Hong Qing 烘青), and Steaming (Zheng Qing 蒸青). These are generally full kill-green process, and are termed Dian Lü 滇绿, to differentiate them from Dian Qing, which is partial kill- green.
Many pu’er scholars have been debating the qualifying term for pu’er: when is a pu’er really a pu’er? Most see new sheng pu’er as basically a green tea, and most agree that technically for a tea to be considered pu’er it there must be post-production fermentation and oxidation, and it must be aged. What kind of post-production, how long must it age, are questions still in debate.
Many believe heat is an essential link in kick-starting the post- production fermentation; left alone, the Maocha is likely to oxidize and post-ferment (sometimes known as cold post-fermentation), but one wonders if the left to age for the same time, a loose leaf pu’er and a pressed pu’er using the same maocha would taste the same. I have tasted a maocha (not heat treated) and compressed cake pu’er made from the same ingredient, and in terms of flavour, fragrance, and steeping rounds, the cake pu’er is a much better performer, even though, from the urn I saw at the teashop, they were kept together.
At this moment in time, I would think a farmer would sell it as Shai Qing Maocha as it fetches high returns.
Also, not all Yunnan tea cultivars make good pu'er...
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