2018 Censers and 2018 Arbor Red white2tea

While I am not a frequent buyer of white teas, over the years I picked up a few cakes which promptly got lost and forgotten somewhere in my house. I cannot tell you where a single one is located at the moment, except to say I do not store them with my puerh. A few years ago, white2tea caused a stir amongst their tea club members with a sample of Aged Fuding white tea, and several of my tea friends have tried to find a similar tea ever since. I got that same club offering too. I opened the bag and thought hmmm, no…and closed it back up again. My bravery for trying aged white got lost after other sour and un-impressive examples left a rather bad taste in my mouth. I feel somewhat like I do not yet deserve to try a decent white tea, going into it with a bad bias. But because my new puerh teas are still rather wet, now is a good time to drink this new 2018 Censers white tea I got as a sample with my recent purchase from white2tea.

A lucky sample in my purchase box.

White tea offers instant gratification for a tea drinker, unlike puerh which must first sit and firm up, and then age for half a lifetime. In all its processing forms, white tea is very good new, and generally speaking a Bai Mu Dan is best in the first couple of years. However, this tea is a Bai Mu Dan grade pressed into a beeng intended for further aging. The popularity of white2tea’s pressed white cakes speaks for itself with ubiquitous sold-out signs every season. I believe that the company is definitely interested in producing with an aging focus, given the market prices for a decent aged white tea. A good aged white rewards the drinker with a wine-y mix of spices and florals, and the leaves turn into brown leather which you can boil in a pan to extract even more flavor.

The wrapper is a reference to the aromas white2tea finds in the tea, I don’t own the wrapper but it appears to be a Christianized imagination of a Jewish High Priest, from what looks like the choshen mishpat breastplate of twelve squares, but with a rather bishop-y looking hat instead of a wrapped cloth hat. Maybe this image is taken from a some old painting, I am not going to chase down where it is from. The incense idea is probably the take-away from the wrapper image.

You can see how green 2018 Censers tea is at the moment.

Very freshly pressed white tea.

By contrast, check out the Aged Fuding club tea I managed to dig up from a box of tea envelopes. This is probably the color goal some day.

A more autumnal color.

I decide to brew up just 3g in about 30 ml water. I have to say this is definitely one of the more complex white teas I have ever tried. I used water just off the boil and didn’t rinse the tea because new white tea does not need rinsing. The first three brews are bright, almost neon yellow, with a floral and spicy aroma. White tea processed this way seems to burn a little on the way down the throat like a white radish. The white tea florals are obvious notes to look for, but I got hints of green watermelon rind and dried fig rounding out the bottom. This is rather amazing for white tea which is normally somewhat a floral two-note tea for me.

Censers starts out bright yellow.

The tea darkens in yellow color on steeps 4-6, and thickens considerably, bringing out the fig and spice a bit more. I struggle a bit with steeping the next few, the brew remains thick but the money steeps seem to be the earlier ones. 

Pretty in the gaiwan.

The tea fades somewhat into a greenish floral at this point. The leaves are very leathery already, suggesting a boil might be in order.

Tea thickens and gets a little darker steeps 4-6.

When boiling the tea, I am rewarded with a much darker brown brew that tastes more like diet cola in melted ice water. 

Wow, quite a change from yellow to brown after boiling.

This tea definitely could be boiled more than once, but I think the best days for boiling are further down the road when the tea ages and the flavors gel together more. At that point I would expect deeper wine flavors, spicy fruitcake and the radish to show up more in later steepings than they are now.

Leftover leaf might have more to boil out.

This tea is not a caffeine bomb for me, but I can feel the spicy radish in my chest as I often do with white teas like this, and a mineral aftertaste which may change in character in a few months. I need to try this tea again sometime over the winter. Right now I am sweating from a combination of the weather and boiling water.

I am not the best judge of white teas, and I look forward to a more seasoned palate person taking this one on, such as OolongOwl. I am also not the best at brewing white tea. This is a very rewarding tea in the money steeps, however. Yet if I go for a white tea purchase, I might pony up for the just slightly more expensive 2018 Arbor White and get something with a bit more body feel.

With puerh prices so high this year, if I am budget-conscious I’d rather have a super nice white tea at this price point instead of buying a wet-stored mediocre drinker puerh just to find something easy to drink. For that matter, I would rather have a decent hongcha and did just that by purchasing the 2018 Arbor Red. I know for a fact I will drink up any and all hongcha that arrives in my house, and having consumed all the Big Red I purchased from white2tea a couple of years ago, I am well overdue for another hong purchase. With my Censers sampling out of the way, I feel warmed up for something more hard-hitting.

2018 Arbor Red

2018 Arbor Red comes sealed in a white envelope.

For the record, 2018 Arbor Red is not the most expensive hong I have bought from white2tea. I’d say white2tea’s Xigui hongcha ringing in at $1/g cost me more. I still have not opened that pricey tin, obviously I am hoarding for no good reason. That tea came with a buyer/seller “contract” in blood to gong-fu and not western steep. 

Very nice touch, the addition of a cloth-like inner wrapper.
Outer wrappers get wrecked so quickly...

This Arbor Red claims to contain old arbor large leaf puerh with serious-sounding effects in the description. At $0.43/g this is not cheap hongcha, but it’s not in the hoarding price range of the Xigui, so I am expecting some fun over the next year with this baby.

Does the neifei really say "fuck the fakes"?
I think so...

Arbor Red arrives in a sealed white envelope in the box for a reason. Opening it up, I am bombed with the strongest odor of hongcha I have ever smelled in my life. I also had a tong of puerh in the box, this Arbor Red would have tainted my tong for all time in shipping had it not been duly sequestered. The cake is really fresh which is probably why it is so strong-smelling right now, I am reminded of the day I steamed apart my 100g beeng of Drunk on Red, which was Feng Qing material and now, alas, completely consumed. I plan to hang on to the envelope to keep in the wonderfully intense aroma in this Arbor Red tea, and plastic bagging on top of that just for more insurance. (note to curly: I’m pretty sure your wife will not let this in the house.)

The tea is slightly greenish, with varying shades of brown.

The tea is strongly compressed and requires an ice pick to break some off. If this tightens up any more I might need a saw, but right now going in through the beenghole works. Thankfully someone sent me a stronger tea pick recently. I break off 3g and brew in 30ml of water, the first steepings need more time because of the compression, I start at 4 minutes, 3 minutes, then 2 and I can do 15 seconds after that, no strainer, I plan to pour back the stray bits. No wasting leaf…

The last somewhat nice photo of this post.

Okay. I am typing and deteriorating rapidly. The tea hits me with fresh tobacco, tannins, and heavy honnggg oak barrel. Drinking as hot as possible sears the throat like a shot of bourbon and Virginia cigar. Face melting after two steepings.  The tea sits in the throat and gut like hard likker, I know I won’t be drinking this in the morning with milk and meds. In fact, this could interact with meds in ways I might regret. However, the tea may calm down more over a year or so into a gentler sibling, but I can definitely tell this is puerh leaf. The empty cup smells mineral-ly like a screen porch after a rain or a wet tool box.

The remainders of a babbling fool.

I can drink this and never need to see people ever again. Arbor Red is a tea for the guy who doesn’t change his underwear until spring and roasts squirrel on a spit. Or the momma who hits fast pitch hard past third. Well, Arbor Red is for the type of person who won’t be buying Censers, I feel fairly certain about that.

After steep 8 or so I need to add much more time to get me a heavy brew, but now I am getting the sweeter aftertaste in the mouth, hints of dark chocolate. Yunnan leaf red teas usually have malty chocolate notes, although they usually don’t hit like a truck the way this tea does, making me think pancakes and bacon while laughing at my own internal dialogue.

I know I can get more out of this tea than the nine gong-fu steepings so far, but I want to move on to the boil. I add a lot of water to my 3g of leaf compared to the white tea I boiled earlier. 

I added a ridiculous amount of water here, filling the pot.

While I’m awaiting the pot to boil, I realize I am overdosed on the heavy body feel of this tea combined with the caffeine. The white tea earlier surely contributed a little, but five hours have passed since then.

After about 3 minutes of boiling pot likker.

(3:45 a.m. I go across the street and order a chicken sandwich with chips. While waiting for the cook, I see bottles of Gold Peak Unsweetened tea in the cooler, 10.5 ounces for $1.89. I feel smugly satisfied that my Arbor Red session at home cost $1.29, that full beer mug by itself in the kitchen is 12 oz. My leaves are not even done yet. I can boil them up again later.)

Fruit jar of fun.

Maybe down the road as this tea settles it will fade in the fresh tobacco notes and move the dessert chocolate forward, but I hope not. I don’t have another red tea with this profile, and I am not a huge fan of super sweet Yunnan dessert style teas. Arbor Red is a unique savory addition to my collection.

The best reason to do a red/white tea session side by side is to figure out which kind of drinker I am. (As if I don’t know that already). White2tea makes a white tea processed version of this same leaf. Forget that, I’m sure it’s just as good in its way but is better to leave that one to others who really dig the lighter and more subtle flavors. I can’t afford a whole tong of this, and that would be piggy of me. But I went ahead and bought one more for the long winter.