Treasure?

I know you asked for the "smart people" but I thought I would chime in anyway.

"Bo Nay" is another term for Puerh, it is a term often used in Dim Sum restaurants. I do not recognize the brand or the logo but it is vaguely reminiscent of cakes I saw in some Hong Kong stores. Judging from the photos your cake is definitely a Shu/Black/Cooked/Ripe Puerh.

Mike

See the previous thread "What pu character is this":

Jim

Marlene Wood wrote:

ah ha! thanks jim (and mike)

Let us know how it tastes, will you Marlene?

Ok here goes: brewed in a gai wan. Smell: well, the room I keep my tea in smelled kinda like socks, and the dry leaf its self is musty. #1 Pu like, earthy/loamy and a little something else. The sock thing perhaps? smooth. #2 about the same #3 getting an itchy thing in the back of my soft palette, kind of like when you eat cheap chocolate #4 Liqour lightening, pink-y, brew longer? Re boil water #5 brewed 2x time. back to #1, less sock this time #6 brewed 5min or so, liqour still dark pink/brown still earthy, losing flavor. didn't continue after this. starting to slosh inside.

I forgot to mention my other find in the excitement of the pu. I got a 'Gift Pack of the World's Finest Quality Tea". It had 6 small tins printed in black and red over brass. It had tie guan yin, jasmine, yunnan, orchid, and sow mee. The yunnan tasted pu like actually, and the jasmine is hardly jasmine scented. The tie guan yin is not tightly rolled, and I gave the oolong to a woman on the bus who seemed interested in my purchaces. She seemed to like it. the sow mee (which i've never heard of before, any info?) has large leaf bits, and the orchid has quite a bit of stems. I'm excited to try them all, but they all smell about the same. Can't wait to give them a go. Tomorrow though, after I've gotten over all this pu i've drunk.

My very first purchase of Chinese tea was a six pack of TenRen tins from their store in SF Chinatown in 73. Basically I couldn't afford anything else they had to sell. I was thrilled because the tins had the English and Chinese. Anything I know about Chinese I learn from tea. Image my surprise when the Chinese character we call black means red. I also bought one other box of tea called Sow Mee from another shop because the sampler had one called Shou Mei but the characters were the same. You call it potato I call it a spud. I still have tea from both. I didn't investigate Chinese teas very much during the next ten years till I moved to my current metro area and found it had its own Chinatown. Sow Mee which means Longevity Eyebrow (or OldMan but mine aren't gray yet) is the all leaf version of Chinese White Tea. You move up in grade and price to BaiMudan(White Peony) which is leaf and bud and BaiHao Yinzhen(White hair silver needles) which is all bud. I only developed a real appreciation for SowMee in the last year or so because I discovered it tasted like BaiMudan and much much much cheaper. White tea is dried in the sun and not processed any further. I also bought my first teapot at the same time. I still have it and others which have never been out of the box. They're unglazed and predate the lead scare followed by glazing in the eighties.

Jim

Marlene Wood wrote:

Also known as Shou Mei. It's a fairly low grade of white tea made from rather big leaves after the smaller leaves and buds are culled for higher grades.

/Lew

"Bo Nay", or rather "Po Lay", is Pu-er in Cantonese dialect.

Katie Tam

Hmm, no salty taste. At least not one that was pronounced.