What HeiCha are you drinking

[StoneLadle]

Luk Po and Luk On both need super hot water. Anything less is a waste of tea. The names I used above are the Cantonese versions.

Also, a good Luk On benchmark would be the Ying Kee brand from HKG. Their website was still running the last time I checked. They are a venerable and some say, ancient, tea house. I love them.

[wave_code]

ah yeah I had forgotten about the Ying Kee one I had - I made a Liu An thread here and had posted about it. I do like that one quite a bit too, though its very different from these, much darker and has more notes like shu which I guess maybe come from the HK storage. They have a distributor for these small bags here in Europe of 50 or 75g, but I'm still quite curious about the processing and selling loose in small bags. I'm guessing they have a lot more on offer in HK than they sell to western vendors though. Was Ying Kee one of or the main HK vendor that had tried to recreate Liu An?

[StoneLadle]

Which LA have you been drinking recently?

Ying Kee's LA is aged yes , in traditional HKG storage, which is another benchmark for me in terms of LA quality. The taste you mention could be the dust taste, that of age, which is highly prized. Not much point in drinking clean uninteresting LA that hasn't gone through the process.

Small bags are made from production batches. They don't process them into small bags at the factory. Ying Kee would commission the tea and then repack accordingly. They've always been one of the leading merchants for LA.

Malaysian stored LA has similar character in terms of storage and old dustiness and the perfect balance of delicate flavour and aged taste is the prize.

I brew this the same way I do LP, 8 grams in a 150ml pot and long lazy steeps.

[wave_code]

I guess to be more specific I was wondering if these are baskets they are emptying out and repacking in smaller plastic bags, or if they never bother with the whole basket process to begin with.

I have one Sun Yi Shun basket from 2012 I check in on now and then but I feel it still needs a lot more time given how I'm storing it. The samples I've been drinking over the last week or so are all from Chawang. The Ying Kee one I have is "Jia Cang", from 2009. Previously I had the 2002 Sun Yi Shun from theTea and that I thought was really fantastic.

[polezaivsani]

Heh, i began my LA sessions with 5g leaf to 50ml water. No wonder i've been enjoying a good deal of buzz afterwards. Tried it 1g/10ml today and find it delicious still, but the cat's been out and high on extra dose for a while now

[StoneLadle]

I guess to be more specific I was wondering if these are baskets they are emptying out and repacking in smaller plastic bags, or if they never bother with the whole basket process to begin with.

I have one Sun Yi Shun basket from 2012 I check in on now and then but I feel it still needs a lot more time given how I'm storing it. The samples I've been drinking over the last week or so are all from Chawang. The Ying Kee one I have is "Jia Cang", from 2009. Previously I had the 2002 Sun Yi Shun from theTea and that I thought was really fantastic.

LA without the bamboo isn't correct. The tea and bamboo baskets are synonymous and symbiotic. You can trust Ying Kee to do the right thing. It's just a pity that there isn't enough bamboo to go around into every packet that they send off.

Buying baskets is the way to go really.

'02 Sun Yi Sun prices out of HKG are pretty good right now and I'm tempted to get a few baskets myself but today I did something... But that's another story...

And finally, I think you'll get more out of your LA with the correct clay pot. @OCTO might want to chime in here.

I drank an old LA today out of the gaiwan just to see what my late dad had done to this tea and while totally enjoyable the muskiness and medicinal bitterness would have integrated better in a pot to really round off and complete the treasured 'dustiness' or old taste...

[StoneLadle]

Heh, i began my LA sessions with 5g leaf to 50ml water. No wonder i've been enjoying a good deal of buzz afterwards. Tried it 1g/10ml today and find it delicious still, but the cat's been out and high on extra dose for a while now

That's quite a waste of tea unless you're getting a good solid two three hour session out of that combo. The leaves are not giving up the juice fully as the tea to water ratio is simply too high

[Balthazar]

Some of you might find this two-part CCTV documentary (with English subtitles) of interest




It's from the "Across China" (走遍中国) series that's been running for some 18 years. As pretty much all of these food/drink documentaries, it's pretty panegyric, but an interesting watch nonetheless!

Jinhua is introduced right before the 17 minute mark of part 1 (before that it's mostly about the history of the silk road, ancient tea horse road, etc.)

The second part, which mostly focuses on qianliang tea, is the most interesting one imo.

[StoneLadle]

@Balthazar ooohhh... The words CCTV bring back some PTSD from last year but I shall take this one on the chin and take a look in the name of tea!

[Balthazar]

It's about tea, so I think it's gonna be hard to find it very traumatizing

[StoneLadle]

SPoiler Alert...









RMB400,000.00 for a basket of 50 year old tea. That's traumatising enough !!

[Balthazar]

RMB400,000.00 for a basket of 50 year old tea. That's traumatising enough !!

You're in for a surprise, they'll get to a RMB2,000,000.00 one soon

Do remember that we're talking about 50kgs of tea though, so we're actually only talking about RMB 40 (USD 6) per gram. For puer of the same age, such a price would be impossible.

[StoneLadle]

I am eyeing a 2002 basket of LB these days...

Like a hawk...

I'm expecting the price to be around USD6,000.00...

Wondering what to liquidate...

[StoneLadle]

And just last week I heard rumors of a kilo of 1950s LB change hands for USD30,000.00 during this early Covid-era...

[Balthazar]

I am eyeing a 2002 basket of LB these days...

Like a hawk...

I'm expecting the price to be around USD6,000.00...

Wondering what to liquidate...

Are we talking about a 42kg basket? If so, the gram price ain't bad. But of course it's a huge sum (or would be for me anyways!) to pay upfront, in one installment.

I'm curious, what brand/production are we talking about? (If it's not a secret)