Septième jour de l'Avent 2015: Dian Hong

Dian Hong sauvage de 2011

Pour cette septième fenêtre de mon calendrier de l'Avent, je tourne une fois de plus mon attention vers la lointaine province du Yunnan, mais cette fois-ci je vois rouge! Le thé rouge de Zhenghe de Teaparker m'avait un peu laissé sur ma faim. Malgré ses petites feuilles qui font penser à du Jin Jun Mei et un goût sucré, il manquait de finesse dans ses arômes. C'est pourquoi, je choisis un de mes thés rouges préférés: le Dian Hong du printemps 2011. D'habitude, on emploie un cultivar distinct du puerh, cultivé en plantation, pour faire le Dian Hong, mais ce thé rouge a la particularité d'être fait avec des feuilles et beaucoup de bourgeons de théiers à puerh, sauvages, anciens et de haute altitude.

La qualité des feuilles est primordiale pour tous les thés. Cette origine exceptionnelle explique aussi pourquoi ce thé continue à s'affiner avec le temps. Les odeurs de cassis et autres fruits rouges deviennent de plus en plus douces et profondes. Le plus impressionnant, c'est la chaleur qui se propage dans le corps après la dégustation des premières infusions. C'est si intense que je retire mon gilet!

 Au moment où j'écris ces lignes, 12 heures après le début de la dégustation, l'infusion est devenue pratiquement transparente, mais je suis surpris par sa pureté et la douceur persistante de son goût. De plus, au niveau des parfums, on dirait maintenant plus du puerh que du thé rouge, comme si son vrai caractère se révélait au final!

J'en profite pour vous annoncer quelques bonnes nouvelles côté boutique:

- Pour le mois de décembre, tous mes thés rouges sont en solde de -10%. (Et un grand nombre d'autres thés ont vu leur prix réduit).
- Pour que vous soyez nombreux à participer à mon concours de dégustation, j'offre un échantillon de cet Oolong mystère à reconnaitre pour toute commande de plus de 60 USD. Si vous trouvez son terroir, vous pouvez gagner 25 gr d'Oolong de Da Yu Ling d'hiver 2014.
- 25 gr de ce Si Ji Chun Oolong et le transport par avion sont offerts pour toute commande de plus de 100 USD,
- 25 gr de Beauté Orientale et le transport par EMS sont offerts pour toute commande de plus de 200 USD,
- Je continue aussi d'offrir mon guide de l'infusion du Oolong au-delà de 60 USD et une ou plusieurs de mes cartes postales.

 Passez commande cette semaine pour partager le bonheur d'un bon thé durant les fêtes!

Advent Day 6: Saint Nicolas Day

Saint Nicolas provided German-born Thomas Nast (1840-1902) with the inspiration to draw the first cartoon of Santa Claus in an American newspaper. This white bearded man dressed in red is now one of the most iconic figure of Christmas. So, on this 6th day of the Advent, he's my main inspiration for this Chaxi.

I even have a wooden figurine of him, partially shaved, smoking a pipe (of pine scented incense), surrounded by 2 candles, because it's the second Sunday of the Advent period.

Today is also my weekly tea class with Teaparker. And he had a great idea to celabrate Saint Nicolas Day. Let's have a white and a red tea from northern Fujian!

We start with a Fuding Bai Cha, pressed as a cake. White teas were invented some 100+ years ago. Traditionally, they were simply dried in the shade. Nowadays, to speed things up, they are often roasted, which reduces their moisture content and helps their storage.

This aged white tea was cooling and quite sweet. Since it's never snowing in Taipei, white tea is as close as we can get to a white Christmas, tea wise!

White tea

Then we turned to a red tea from Zhenghe and brewed it in a flat Yixing teapot.

After the cooling of the white, the red tea feels warming and much more full bodied! There are hints of chocolate... another typical gift that Saint Nicolas brings today!

Joyeuse Saint Nicolas!

Cinquième jour de l'Avent 2015

Après 3 jours froids et gris propices au puerh, un soleil chaleureux est revenu sur le Nouveau Taipei. Pour assouvir une grosse envie de me désaltérer avec un Oolong de haute montagne, je choisis mon Da Yu Ling d'hiver 2014. Infusion en zhuni d'Yixing préchauffée:

Se préparer à la célébration de Noël quand on a 40 ans passés (et qu'on est papa) c'est aussi se reconnecter avec l'enfant qu'on a été. Le calendrier de l'Avent me préparait à la plus belle nuit de l'année. Il y a donc quelque chose de foncièrement nostalgique dans cette démarche. Cela explique l'envie de boire des vieux thés qui restent jeunes. Et il y a aussi le désir de sortir de l'ordinaire et de goûter à des endroits légendaires.

Ancienne plantation de DYL au km 103

Avec ce Da Yu Ling d'hiver 2014, je cumule ces 2 caractéristiques. Il a beau avoir un an, il semble tout aussi frais que celui de 2015. On dirait juste qu'il est encore plus doux et raffiné.

Et comme le gouvernement Taiwanais récupère et détruit toutes les plantations de Da Yu Ling lorsque le bail des fermiers arrive à terme, c'est un terroir voué à bientôt disparaitre. Ceux qui auront eu le privilège d'y goûter transmettront son histoire et ses mythes.

J'ai bien l'intention de me mettre quelques paquets de côté, afin de pouvoir encore longtemps garder la nostalgie de la pureté et de la force de ces théiers parmi les plus élevés du monde.

 DYL, vertiges du parfum et vestiges du passé.

Advent Day 4, a leftover from the TeaMasters puerh class

A new day should mean a new tea, but today, exceptionally, I'm drinking a puerh I started yesterday afternoon and that had still a lot of flavors to give. Before I speak about that tea, here's a summary of yesterday's puerh introduction class.

Puerh is a tea from Yunnan. It belongs to the black tea (hei cha) catergory. This category includes both the manually fermented teas (shu, cooked, wo dui puerh) and the raw (sheng) puerh that will ferment naturally with time.

There's a great variety of puerh tea trees: camellia tachangensis, camellia taliensis... Most have big leaves, but not all. We can distinguish 3 types of puerh:
1. Plantation puerh (taidi)
2. Old arbor from ancient plantations.
3. Wild trees that have grown without the help of man. This last type has the more natural characteristics. Growing on its own, without pesticides, means that such trees had to learn to defend their leaves against insects. That's why their buds are protecting one or even 2 buds. This explains the exceptional energy and power of wild puerh. It also explains why such leaves have a very long aging potential.

The oldest tea tree in the world is a puerh tree of 1700 years that is 34 meters tall. But there is no evidence that puerh tea was invented during the Tang dynasty. At that time, green tea was pressed as cakes (with a hole in the middle in order to attach many cakes together with a rope). According to Teaparker, there were 149 different green teas during the Tang dynasty (618-907), but none of them was puerh coming from Yunnan. Puerh might have been used by the local tribes as a herb, but wasn't prepared as tea then. However, we find records of puerh sent as tributes to the emperors of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).

Because high quality aged puerh can sell for a considerable premium, there are a lot of fakes on the market. During this class, we brewed 3 puerhs claiming to be from the mid 1980s: a loose shu, a loose sheng and a Tuo cha consisting of a mix of sheng and shu puerh. (You can find these 3 teas and my 1999 '7542' in this sampler). And while the appearance of the dry leaves and the color of the brew is not very different, the taste is much more alive and young with the sheng puerh of 1985 and the leaves are returning to their original state.

The side by side comparison helped clarify what a 30 years old sheng puerh should taste like.

Shu vs sheng puerh

What's unique with puerh is the fact that we can find some very old trees and even some wild trees in the mountains of Yunnan. (Plantation tea is not necessarily bad if the plantation is well managed, but it's not what makes puerh special in the tea world).

To demonstrate the unique taste of wild puerh, I flaked a few grams of my 2006 wild Lincang sheng puerh cake. Since it has a very high ratio of buds, the best is to use a silver teapot to have very hot water going to the heart of the leaves and extracting all their flavors.

My 3 students agreed they never had had such a pure, sweet, harmonious and powerful puerh! We enjoyed 3 amazing brews together.

And I continued to brew for this 4th Day of December.

It's 9 years old already, but feels completely fresh. There are no traces of humid storage or basement smell. It's just getting deeper, sweeter and finer. This shows that it still has a very long aging potential.

Excellent tea always lights up the day!

Advent, day #3: Jingua Gongcha, the darkest light

The Advent time leading to Christmas is also a celebration of light around the winter solstice, when days are shortest and nights longest. Every day, I open a door in my Advent calendar and brew a tea to enlighten me during this dark period.

Today, this tea is an aged cooked puerh! The darkest of black teas seems like a paradoxical choice to celebrate the light! Shu puerhs don't have a good reputation. Very often, they are synonym with cheap, tasteless tea with a terrible, dirty basement smell. And sometimes it's even worse!

But there are exceptions to all rules and the 1989 Jingua Gongcha is one of them. The name means 'golden melon tribute tea'. While names are like stories, easy to make up, this one indicates a goal of making something shining like gold that would be suitable as a gift to an important person. And this shu puerh does live up to its name and expectations!

The brew is beautifully black. The taste is a paradox: very light and sweet, and yet it develops a fine, rich and persisting aftertaste. It's almost alive, like very old sheng puerh. The scents are not dirt, but rich soil and incense. The whole experience feels pure and natural. (I don't even rinse this puerh!)

In the dark universe of shu puerh, this Jingua shines with its darkest light and sweet pleasure.

Un calendrier de l'Avent de thé et chocolat

 Il y a quelques années, ma mère m'offrait ce calendrier en tissu avec des pochettes qui permettent d'y glisser ce qu'on veut. Je m'en sers pour mes enfants: chaque jour, ils viennent y trouver un petit chocolat qui leur apprend aussi un mot de politesse qui ouvre bien des portes:

Mon petit cadeau quotidien, c'est, naturellement, un bon thé. La période de l'Avent est l'occasion de goûter aux perles de ma sélection. Tandis que les nouvelles sombres s'accumulent, garder espoir de jours meilleurs devient nécessaire pour le moral. Et quoi de mieux que de commencer chaque jour par un moment de pur bonheur, simple et chaleureux.

Calligraphie à la main de la galette d'Yiwu de 2003

 Après le Da Yu Ling d'hiver, hier, je choisis mon puerh sauvage cru d'Yiwu du printemps 2003. (Elle est jolie la calligraphie de son emballage!) Son odeur sucrée de prune continue de s'affiner en devenant plus 'épaisse' et mure. N'ayant pas séjourné en cave humide, ce puerh âgé d'une douzaine d'année a encore des senteurs fraiches et jeunes, mais sans agressivité.

L'avantage du (bon) puerh cru sauvage, c'est que quelques feuilles suffisent pour produire une infusion riche et puissante...

Le goût est à la fois épais, doux et pur à la fois. Il met le feu au palais, un feu doux qui gagne les entrailles et aboutit à une transpiration soudaine et généreuse! Ce feu me donne l'énergie du dragon pour ce second jour de l'Avent!

Que va bien me réserver la troisième porte?!...

Patience! Nous le saurons demain. Entre-temps, je vous invite aussi à découvrir mes nouvelles promotions de Noël 2015.

Da Yu Ling, winter 2015

The plantation at 103K has been uprooted and nature is quickly erasing traces of its previous existence. What remains is a green landscape with magnificent cedars basking in a bright and crisp sunshine. As Da Yu Ling plantations disappear one after another, let's enjoy some of its Oolong while we still can!

Here is the latest winter harvest:

Cultivar: qingxin Oolong
Harvested by hand on October 18th, 2015
Origin: Da Yu Ling, 100K
Elevation: 2500 m

The brewing begins with a strong pour on the side to create this swirl that helps tightly rolled Oolong leaves unfurl. And thanks to the bright sun shining on my chaxi, it seems as if this pour is bringing water, wind and light to the leaves!

The color of the brew gold and joyful. The winter midday sun is bright and soft at the same time. The transparent and clear brew of this winter Oolong also feels bright and mellow. It's a much softer, tender feeling than spring.

The scents are also softer and sweeter. At one point, I even smelled a light gingerbread scent! It's very delicate and pure.

The taste is what's most amazing. It starts very sweet, coating the tongue and palate with a layer of freshness that takes root in the back of the throat. The mouth salivates with pleasure. The power of Da Yu Ling is slowly revealed in this lingering aftertaste.

Boiling water is necessary to open the leaves and get the most out of these amazing leaves. That's also why it's important to preheat the vessel well.

The Da Yu Ling name became legendary even before the Taiwan government started to end the leases for these plantations. Partly, this legend rests on the fact that the highest Oolong plantation in Taiwan culminated at 2,650 meters in Da Yu Ling. But the other reason is the incredibly delicate, elegant and powerful aftertaste of this tea. Tea bag makers will continue to sell 'Da Yu Ling' packaging for many years! But only a small minority will know the true taste of this High Mountain. 

It's a privilege to be able to enjoy such perfection. And I feel very happy and thankful that I can provide access to such a gem.