Are your brown/purple clay pots also lonely?

[mudandleaves]

Well, personally, I would boil a 1990s RouGui . That’s my preferable way to brew aged yancha. Otherwise, I would only use a zini if there was something I would like to rid of - like storage flavors or recent roast aroma.... I mostly use zini for aged sheng and if it’s highfired then for roasted oolongs

That's the thing, the more clays I get and play around with, the more those general rules fail and some pots do different things they are not supposed to.
Even more so with antique clays, which are from long extinct ores. So I just keep an open mind and break the rules from time to time.

See my recent post on a Duanni, which against popular belief is great with High mountain tea!

Interesting. I've tried duanni teapots (one antique duanni, one modern Benshan Luni) and found them to be very good at absorbing (muting) flavours. They were both great with shu puer, strong factory sheng and smokier teas. They didn't do as well with a nicer young gushu sheng or greener oolongs like gaoshan tea. I find zini to be the most versatile of the Yixing clays. High fired dicaoqing seems to bring out the best in all kinds of sheng puer and oolong, and it does well with black tea and shu puer as well. For gaoshan tea I tend to stick to zhuni or porcelain.

[Bok]

For gaoshan tea I tend to stick to zhuni or porcelain.

Yeah that is the general consensus.

In the meantime I have found out that Duanni/Gaoshan pairing is not uncommon in Taiwan. Maybe it has to do with a preference for Winter harvest that is also common among Taiwanese drinkers: More emphasis on body than spring. My Duanni also puts the body in the forefront, rather than aromatics. Guess it all comes down to personal preference!

What has to be said is that antique Duanni can have a very broad range of properties among different pots, as they were often underfired or otherwise not ideally fired in the old days. Mine is underfired. Duanni should be very high fired, which is what I suspect most modern Duanni are.

Personally I think Hongni is the most versatile of the clays. If seasoned well it can be as good as Zhuni and they hardly do much harm to any tea, While Zini can turn good teas very flat, if not paired properly.

[OCTO]

Both are doing pretty well and far from being neglected.... hehehe....

[steanze]

Both are doing pretty well and far from being neglected.... hehehe....

Very nice!!