Roughage

2007 Meng Ba Na Cooked Puerh from Canton Tea Co

Roughage drank 2007 Meng Ba Na Cooked Puerh by Canton Tea Co

I’m not feeling particularly inspired today so I went for an old faithful rather than something that requires concentration and attention. This is still my go-to shu even after all this time and all these teas that I have been trying.

It brews dark reddish-brown, reflecting beautifully in the glass cha hai and gleaming with an internal light. There is something marvellous about seeing my yu ru pot steaming on the chapan with a full cha hai next to it. The earthy aroma wafts upwards from the tray and I sip the tea down. It is round-ound-ound and rich, a freshly ploughed field. There is no fishiness to the flavour or to the aroma. Lovely. A perfect accompaniment to my lunch (a bacon and stilton sandwich). The flavours seem to complement each other beautifully: sweet, salty, sour and earthy all together. And while I digest it, I read The Wanderer again (Anglo-Saxon poem not Dion or Quo!) and contemplate my need to include so many parenthetical statements in my tasting notes. I should be contemplating my lesson plan for tomorrow, but parenthetical statements just seem so much more interesting than what I am supposed to be doing.

2012-10-25 08:40:10 -0400

205 °F / 96 °C

0 min 15 sec

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Bonnie 2012-10-25 11:39:06 -0400

This is lovely. I want to look at the pot of shu and eat a sandwich while you mumble the poem with crumbs spilling out or your mouth (that would never happen, I can’t imagine it)…with proper BBC British vocalization that a Yank like me expects of course. Now I’ll have to go buy Stilton at the cheese shop and cook up some bacon!

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I am a professional Vikingologist and I like tea! To be honest, I have always liked decent tea, but in 2011 I started working at learning what good tea really is. I am busily expanding my tea horizons quite significantly, much to the chagrin of my wife, who despairs of my enthusiasm. My favourite teas are Darjeelings and sheng puerhs, but I struggle to find black teas (other than Darjeelings) that really float my boat. My absolute favourite teas at the moment are Anji Bai Cha and Dong Fang Mei Ren both from Canton Tea Co, neither of which are shengs or Darjeelings. Seems odd, but that’s the way it is. I do wonder if the scores I give out actually reflect my predilection for Darjeelings and shengs.

I am slowly adding to my experience by trying as many different products as possible. I like to think that I am developing my palate and becoming more learned about tea, but I suspect that may be wishful thinking!

I find rating the teas difficult. Often a particular tea will appeal to me because of my mood, even though it does not get a top rating on here from me. As a general guide, I use the following ratings:

0-25 Undrinkable
26-50 Really not to my taste
51-75 Ok to good
76-99 Always welcome in my pot
100 – There ain’t no such thing as a perfect score!

As I rate teas, I try to revisit my scores and check that my old scores are in line with the new ones.