Inherited mystery puerh
Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 10:16 pm
A recent rebroadcast of a lovely segment about sharing an inheritance of Puerh on the Splendid Table radio show & podcast (I wrote about it soon after it was first broadcast here) reminded me of my own minor inheritance of a bit of puerh. After my father died, I found this puerh in the back of the shelf where he stored his teas, and I first posted about it on TeaChat back in 2012:
It seems like it was quite a large disc, originally--the fragment that I got was probably 30% of the original size.
It brewed up in to a deep earthy liquor with a full-bodied mouthfeel and a spicy aftertaste, better than I guessed.
Responses from the TeaChat community were consistent with my suspicion that Dad acquired it on a trip to Hong Kong in the 80s or 90s; he took several business trips to various parts of Asia with stopovers for tourism in Hong Kong during those years. He also had a wide acquaintance through his calligraphy hobby of people around the world, and it could easily have been a gift from someone he sent one of his prized handmade pens. And from appearance one contributor identified it as a shu.
I enjoyed a strong camphor note in this tea, and was curious whether it would be considered a positive or a negative by serious puerh fans, and I finally took the opportunity to share it with the LA tea group during our recent gyokuro tasting. Would they like it, or loathe it?
I was so very pleased to find that they liked it!
Victoria took some notes on their comments, and will be along soon to record her impression from the tasting, as well as from a series of long infusions over the week after the tasting.
I've since found the shop (Hung Chong Tai Tea Merchant) still at that location on Google maps:
I hope I will be more mindful of this tea's journey across the ocean and through many hands and decades of time to me as I enjoy it in the future.
It seems like it was quite a large disc, originally--the fragment that I got was probably 30% of the original size.
It brewed up in to a deep earthy liquor with a full-bodied mouthfeel and a spicy aftertaste, better than I guessed.
Responses from the TeaChat community were consistent with my suspicion that Dad acquired it on a trip to Hong Kong in the 80s or 90s; he took several business trips to various parts of Asia with stopovers for tourism in Hong Kong during those years. He also had a wide acquaintance through his calligraphy hobby of people around the world, and it could easily have been a gift from someone he sent one of his prized handmade pens. And from appearance one contributor identified it as a shu.
I enjoyed a strong camphor note in this tea, and was curious whether it would be considered a positive or a negative by serious puerh fans, and I finally took the opportunity to share it with the LA tea group during our recent gyokuro tasting. Would they like it, or loathe it?
I was so very pleased to find that they liked it!
Victoria took some notes on their comments, and will be along soon to record her impression from the tasting, as well as from a series of long infusions over the week after the tasting.
I've since found the shop (Hung Chong Tai Tea Merchant) still at that location on Google maps:
I hope I will be more mindful of this tea's journey across the ocean and through many hands and decades of time to me as I enjoy it in the future.