Yeah...Whatever, Vendor

"Whatever 98" Green Stamp

Back in 2017 I bought a tea called "Whatever 1998" from Bitterleaf Teas, which I happened to see on their site when buying their 2017 Mansa. This Whatever tea came in a CNNP wrapper covered with another wrapper designed by Bitterleaf as a "raw puer from a private collector." The tea cost $0.55/g and was around $200 all in. I wrote about this tea and completed two sessions, one in porcelain and one in a clay teapot. While I referred to it as a CNNP Green Stamp because of the wrapper, the tea was not marketed as a CNNP Green Stamp. In the listing, Bitterleaf expressed an appropriate level of skepticism of the tea's story from the "somewhat eccentric private collector." Bitterleaf doesn't have the listing on their site anymore, but I found it on the Wayback Machine.

A year ago in February 2020 I had the idea that I might drink up this tea and maybe write about it again after storing it for several years. Before doing this I emailed Jonah at Bitterleaf Teas to ask more about the tea, and especially the private collector. "Anything about him," I said, because I'd offered my Tindr link to this guy in my blog post. Jonah emailed back that "he has a shop in one of the tea markets, looks just like all the others. Honestly, I don't know if we would stop in if browsing the market, but then again they all look the same and it's either that you know someone or fate that you step into a shop with something interesting."

I kept that email for a year now. When Bitterleaf started out selling, they weren't especially known as experienced in puerh tea. To their credit the Whatever tea was sold as a skeptical tea and not as anything in particular, but there is a world of difference between a source who is purely a collector and a person who is a tea shop vendor. Perhaps that's too fine a point for some vendors to appreciate, but for consumers this is a massively different bit of information to know where a tea comes from, a private collection or another vendor. This no-name tea was definitely sold by Bitterleaf as a "private collection" tea in the listing, and on their wrapper, without the additional bit that the guy is a tea vendor with a shop. 

Vendors purchase from other vendors all the time, that's where most get their factory teas unless from, well, the factory. Nothing wrong with this, but then the tea should be sold without any additional embellishments. Perhaps you might disagree on the definition of a vendor. I suppose I consider a "vendor" to be anybody of course with a shop of some kind, but also I consider as a puerh vendor someone who won't tell you where a tea comes from. I suppose Bitterleaf can also come back to say that the tea shop guy sold the tea from his private collection and not from the store shelves, and herein lies a difference for them. Kinda like being a little bit pregnant. I just don't think most tea buyers would primarily view the selling situation as an "eccentric collector" if he is also a tea vendor. I certainly don't.

All I can say is I am glad I am not a collector looking for specific factory teas. Obviously I'm not, because nobody looking for specific factory teas will spend money on something called Whatever with literally no provenance. However, buying factory teas outside of the factory really is buying tea with no provenance because nobody who is a vendor will tell you exactly where the tea comes from. They won't give up sources. So unless you buy the tea from the factory yourself, you are forced to accept "Whatever" the vendor tells you when you buy the tea.

This post is not intended as a huge call-out because honestly there is nothing to learn here, tea-wise. The tea itself is and was of almost no value other than whether it's good or not for drinking, it was priced and sold as a no-information older factory tea. Only people with extra money to blow and who don't care about the wherewithal buys a tea like this. I'm a writer looking for interesting teas to write about, so that gives me a big motivation to buy tea I don't especially need merely because it's a strange tea.

My main message here is not really about Bitterleaf, but rather this: if you have questions about a tea, contact the vendor. You may not find out anything at all, but maybe you will. I was certainly surprised to get additional information that contradicted the listing, whatever Whatever. Of course you may be in a situation where you want a refund too, I don't know. 

Actually, my other intention here is to get around to talking about the tea because I have had it for nearly 4 years and I want to see if it has changed any since I bought it. I thought the tea had a very nice dry storage character but it still had some ways to go. I definitely felt like it was younger than the stated '98, I never believed that any more than Bitterleaf did, and it seemed more like 2003 or some such in my original post just based on the progress at the time. Today I am going to brew the tea in clay, and I am really feeling glad about having a blog just now, because I have photos along with my notes to compare. In my original post I brewed the tea in both clay and porcelain, and now I can use the same teapot as I did then. 

I sampled the rinse this time. The tea still has the aroma of dry, dusty book storage which I rather like, personally I like this better than humid soil, just a preference, and also it is harder to fake. The first flash steeping was a bit too light when I tasted it, so I dumped it and let the tea sit in the water for about 20 seconds. Early notes are the powdery old books along with Mexican coffee notes, like freeze-dried coffee powder with cinnamon added. The tea then opens up with more fruity floral top notes along with a slight bitterness and the coffee powder.

Third steeping

This tea has smoothed out quite a bit since I last tried it. No doubt the clay teapot helps with that. The tea has quite a nice throatiness, very warming. I get a bit of plum and honey along with the fruit and continuing dusty books, along with a grassy/hay note. I have to add more seconds to the steep time with every brew. I tend to err on the too light with brew times because I'm accustomed to much heftier teas than this that instill the fear of tea gods in me.

Ninth steeping

It's been awhile since I drank a more old-fashioned factory tea which is pleasant and soothing to drink, like memories. The tea is much less bitter than it was four years ago, it wasn't heavily bitter then either but my notes indicate it still had bitterness and I'm only getting hints of that now. The soup is much darker brown than it was in my first review, you can see in the photo of the clay session a clear difference. I have to really push the tea because of age and also because it's a fairly stemmy tea, something I noted in my original post. You can't squeeze much flavor out of stems. The tea is warming and gives me the sweats, but that along with a bit less astringency reminds me that my medication suite now is different than 4 years ago. I'm taking a pill that has sweating as a side effect, so I have to ignore that. The tea has some mild qi, mainly just a spinal feeling of well-being and caffeine.

I went about 10 steeps, last time I did 15 and it seems like pushing to get there now, mainly because of stems this time. The leaves are a bit browner than before, but still green too. I like this tea as it is, so I am not tempted to push the storage on it. But it is also not terribly exciting to drink. Just a nice comfort tea of the old time factory sort with no real unpleasantness about it. I know a lot of people settle into a routine puerh drinking where they like a basic comfort factory tea, I guess it's more of a once in awhile trip for me. I just prefer something more engaging. Still, I imagine I will probably drink this up but for now it can sit a few more years. 

Never Too Soon

I tell myself the question is not how much tea I own, but rather how much I drink. In fact, the first question people ask me when trying to track me down these days (I'm around) is how much tea I am drinking. Oh, I drink plenty. I'm still officially "off" coffee, using my tea brewing machine in the morning to make a cup of whatever. Mostly for my a.m. cuppa I am trying to work my way through a variety of teas that I really should have consumed by now. For example:

This photo of a bag of Korean high mountain balhyocha is by Jeon Jae Yeun and the sticker reads 40g, but the bag is really 40g x 5, or maybe x 6. I have written about this tea before on my blog, as it is quite one of my favorites, imported by Morning Crane Tea. The bag here is about 3 years old at this point, an example of my hoarding as I felt I needed nearly a half kilo, and then proceeded not to drink any of it. Downside to hoarding the tea sits and the bag was not vacuum sealed when I got it.

While this tea is certainly still tasty enough, I notice it developed a malty flavor, somewhat like a Yunnan hongcha, and a slightly sour note. I kept it too long, and I don't mind drinking it now in the a.m. with its light chocolate and rosy sweetness, but a wiser lady than myself might own a vacuum sealer to keep the tea fresh. Even better if I had divvied up the tea into smaller bags before vacuum sealing. My tendencies toward hoarding and/or laziness are probably better suited to puerh.

I also collected a bit of oolong over the past five years and recently dug out this specimen from Taiwan Tea Crafts, a very reputable source for oolong and a frequent holder of sales although I have not ordered anything from there recently.

When did I get this 1999 oolong? Probably about five years ago. I recently brewed up 12g and I can tell the tea got a re-roast, and I'm not entirely sure the tea is 1999, but the color of the dry leaf is a faded brown, and it smells like an old pantry shelf so maybe the date is legit.

Again, the problem here is a bag with no vacuum sealing. I can taste the roast faded to a lovely light touch, but so too the rest of the tea has lost most of whatever other flavors. I should have consumed this tea right after I bought it, not five years later.

The oolong is still a little green but with brown edge.

I am on safer ground with puerh tea, assuming I am keeping my collection in decent condition. One of my recent teas finding its way into my cup is a cake of Bitterleaf Teas' 2016 Mansa, another tea I've written about previously. I own a couple of cakes and now am down to one after oops, drinking up all but this last piece I am somewhat hoarding for another day.

Only one chunk left of this cake.

I wrote a bit about the body feels behind this tea, but what I notice now is the large floral presence which just blossoms in the mouth, a huge flavor burst. We usually think of puerh as a tea that will always improve, but this Mansa might be an example of whether hanging on to teas for the future is always the best idea. I assume that puerh improves over time if something other than this beautiful floral must reside in this tea to emerge later on, and I can only guess whether or not that is true. I have a better idea of highly bitter and smoky puerh teas, that something more develops, but my Mansa tea is going to lose its best floral qualities due to normal aging, and I am not sure it has anything else to develop. Maybe it does, but really I just don't know.

What I do know is the tea is so good now, and enough people probably own one of Bitterleaf's Mansa cakes to form some collective idea of whether we should drink this now or hang on to it, hoping for more. I own maybe one more of the 2016 shown here, and also one of the 2017 which I did not like as much but I have not tried it recently. The 2016 though is really an excellent tea and rivals the far more expensive ChenYuanHao teas of the same year.

With so many unknowns with aging puerh tea, I can say that it is never too soon to dig into my collection and drink a tea and depending upon the tea it can indeed get too late. Puerh is more forgiving than, say, the Korean balyhocha in terms of sitting a couple of years. Had the TTC oolong received a vacuum sealing, it might be good almost indefinitely. Many puerh teas are undrinkable young, and speak for themselves that more aging is needed. But I think this Mansa is probably at its best now, and risks fading in the future, and perhaps drinking up highly floral teas sooner rather than later is a good idea.

Puer Aeterna, Naka in 2018

2018 Naka tea ball from Bitterleaf Teas

I feel hesitant writing about Naka puerh now. Back in the early days of my blog I wrote about white2tea’s 2005 Naka white label tea, and that post has followed me ever since. Naka became a meme for tea drunk puerh. I get direct messages from random people asking “are you drinking Naka???” I assume these messages mean white2tea’s Naka, of which I own two beengs. Perhaps surprisingly while it is one of my favorite teas, I have not tried it in a couple of years. I suppose I am hoarding it, even though white2tea has reassured me that they have a nice supply if I need more. 

Back then my blog post also included a discussion of the long-sold-out 2007 bamboo Naka from Chawangshop, which is a traditional preparation of Naka leaf. The tiny leaves for which the region is known are stuffed raw into bamboo tubes then heated to set the tea. This rough bamboo Naka I own is not as potent as the white2tea beeng, and the difference in price reflects the quality and preparation. I’m not the only person who has tried both the white2tea and bamboo Nakas from Chawangshop, and the Chawangshop teas sold out fast years ago. I think we generally agreed the 2007 had more body feels than the 2012 bamboo, but all this is a memory now, long gone in old discussions.

The difficulty with the white2tea beeng is the cash outlay, today you need $369 for a 357g tea. You can buy a 25g sample, which is nice, and when people talk to me about this tea, they usually have purchased the sample and not the entire beeng. I hear again and again “I wish I could buy the whole tea.” After the Chawangshop teas sold out, I bought a couple of random cheap Naka teas from Taobao and eBay, mainly to answer a question to myself of whether or not we can just “buy” Naka easily. The answer very quickly emerged as a no, and I stopped wasting money after that. Naka has older small leaf tea which I like, and modern tea gardens too which are not the same as the small leaf. So, I cannot say for certain that my cheap buys are not Naka, since they could contain modern tea from Naka. But I can say for certain they are not the small leaf variety, and they are unremarkable.

In a recent purchase box from Bitterleaf Teas, I got a Naka ball as a free sample. Let me say that this is not a blogger premium because I know non-blogger tea heads who also received the same sample with a purchase. We are lucky that Bitterleaf generously gives these samples and I imagine they are limited. My tea ball weighed 6g, with 1g water loss as they sell at 7g weight.

The size of a dime 

The ball is not as tight as other tea balls I have tried in the past, probably because of the recent pressing and because the size is small. It opened up with a bit of steaming in the gaiwan.

The first three steepings contain a considerable caffeine punch, which is a difference from the semi-aged Nakas I own, obviously they have diminished in caffeine over time. This new Naka has wonderful feel into the stomach and chest, I can feel the tea for a good thirty minutes after a couple of steepings. As a new tea, the processing is clean with very little char in the strainer, no smokiness and I don’t see many red edges, but obviously my sample is quite small and not the actual 100g beeng. The tea is already past green brew into a more yellow tea, a nice sign, and I had let the tea rest for a few weeks outside in my hot, humid porch. A small amount of tea like this firms up fast.

Steeps 5 and 6

I feel relaxed after a few steeps, not the babbling incoherent crazy woman from my other Naka teas but I’m sure my son doesn’t want to see that person very often. The chest feels from this tea clearly set it apart as a better tea than the 2018 Laoman-e, but at $1.28/g (beeng price) compared to $0.38/g I expect the Naka to be a vast improvement. Both teas have a nice floral top note, and are not especially sweet, but I control bitterness by flash steeping and drinking hot. Of the two, the Laoman-e is much more bitter when allowed to sit or cool. The more expensive $1/g Laoman-e has the best leaf quality of any of these teas, in terms of the plucking and processing, but this Naka definitely offers more body experience, if less strong in flavor than Bitterleaf Laoman-e.

But alas, you pay for body experience and more money every year. I find this Naka tea fairly durable for 10-12 brews but the young leaves are still somewhat mushy when rubbed. The floral notes fade and I think the body experience is likely to endure longer in this tea than the top notes will over time. One of my LBZ teas is like this, the tea flavor is quite muted but the physical effects are still there. The only way to get that incense note in teas like this is to wood smoke process them. The white2tea Naka has more retired smoke which contributes to some depth, but it required more humid aging to get that worked in.

Definitely the small leaf. Any red in the leaves is my fault,
I sessioned this tea over several days, during which it
oxidized somewhat.

Price-wise, the Bitterleaf 100g beeng is $1.28/g. By comparison, white2tea Naka is $1.04/g but you will need $369 to buy a 357g beeng, as opposed to $128 for 100g at Bitterleaf. In this case, the semi-aged tea is actually less expensive per gram. The same is true for sampling: 21g of Naka balls costs $29 (3 balls), and white2tea offers 25g Naka samples for $29.90. In the first case, you may lose a few grams due to water loss, in the second case a chipped off sample of aged tea will naturally result in some tea dust and loose leaf in the baggie. Most people cannot afford the $369 outlay for white2tea, a few more can likely afford the $128 for 100g, even though white2tea’s beeng is a better value. 

Really, anyone considering this is likely to think wallet pain first, and then whether they prefer young green versus older factory. I could say I’d like a beeng of this new tea from Bitterleaf, but am torn because of what I already own. Bottom line, if we want Naka, we are gonna pay a lot of money, no way around it. Luckily, both vendors make smaller samples available to folks who are content with a few sessions worth.

As long as I keep writing about tea, I suppose Naka will be my “puer (a) aeterna,” distinguishing my tastes for some people. In Latin, puer is the word for “boy,” my eternal boy. I prefer the English transliteration puerh, rather than puer, because it distinguishes the two cultures, my own Latin-based language and Chinese. I guess I prefer the Chinese characters more and more anyway, especially 熟普 for shou, because the “cooked” character has representations of cooking flames, or heat from composting. I suppose my point is that I appreciate tea more widely than just the Naka people associate with me from the blog. I can tolerate myself as a puera aeterna of Naka. The eternal Naka girl. But if you feel inclined to ask me if I’m drinking a dime-sized Naka at the moment, think of the prices. My answer is probably, alas, “no.” Same as anyone else. A lot of heartaches for a dime. 

Telecaster, anyone?

2018 The Bitter End (a Tea)

2018 The Bitter End beeng, and loose leaf high grade

This year our weather morphed from winter into hot summer within four weeks. I took this photo in mid-April before shoveling out of this snowstorm.

I took this photo on date April 18, 2018. 

Now we are sweltering in hot temps more akin to southeast Asia than close to Canada. The past two days the temps soared to over 100F (up to 43C) and dewpoints close to 80, giving my tea welcome Hong Kong-like storage conditions. While my tea is very happy, I am not so happy. My window AC units really cannot cope well with these high temps, the air is stagnant and barely tolerable as long as I do not move.

Everything hurts, I ache. I used to be an agile person, what happened to all that? I cannot stand to drink hot tea, much less write about it and I refuse to write about tea I am not drinking. Instead, I buy bags of ice and chug cold drinks all day long, when I am not sleeping that is. Wake me up come September. We lost a few degrees in what the weather people are calling a “cool off” which is short for “not much change.” I thought “I need to drink some tea and talk to myself on the blog.”

I recently purchased Bitterleaf Tea’s aptly named 2018 Bitter End, reportedly a Laoman-e 200g pressing selling for $77. Along with this, Bitterleaf offers baggies of “better” tea from the same farm, for over $1/g, or $11.50 for a 10g bag. I bought two of these baggies because one is not enough. This is a great opportunity to try two different quality grades of tea from the same farm. Laoman-e is tough to find nowadays, given this area is right next door to Lao Bhang Zhang and often substituted for LBZ in the past.

This is a close up of the loose leaf higher grade from the bags.

Laoman-e is known for bitterness along with the neighboring Bulang area. I like my teas bitter when young, so hit me dad. The teas arrived smelling slightly vine-y because they are just two months old. In fact, the tea was picked on the same days I had the above snowstorm. I gave the teas a two week rest in part for the tea, and in part because it’s too hot to drink tea most days. So, what is the real difference between these two teas?

The date on the wrapper is backwards, but it is dated April 18,
picked the same day as that crazy snowstorm photo above.

The cake consists of younger cultivated tea leaves, and brews up with a lovely floral scent, but don’t be fooled, the bitterness awaits me. Right now the tea looks green and under boiling water gets quite bitter from steeps 3-6. The cake is very, very clean, not a hint of smoke or charring. I expect the tea to thicken up during aging rather than when young.

This is a 200g beeng.

The bitterness lightens up after six steepings, so now the tea gives perhaps 8-10 decent strength brews, and may eventually produce more as it tightens up over time. The leaves appear a bit stewed at this point, although some of the leaves do not crumble when rubbed between the fingers. It’s a decent tea, and the price point seems right.

The brew is still fairly green, normal for a recent pressing.

The “better” Laoman-e sample is in loose form, and of course the leaves are lovely. Here is the main difference, the “better” tea adheres to the picking standard of 1 bud/2 leaves and I see more buds. The brew is stronger by far, tongue-punishing bitterness that lingers in the mouth for a good hour afterward. 

Brewed leaves from the beeng, I used a hefty amount.

Three cups of this is plenty to convince me that this is the better tea. The color and viscosity are the same with both teas at this stage, but one is a mild bitter hurt and the other is bitter pain.

Brewing of the higher grade loose leaf,
the color and viscosity are virtually identical.
But the loose leaf is quite strong.

For me, the main reason I carted these teas is for the opportunity they offer to try two different quality grades from the same tea farm. A few years ago, white2tea offered a similar comparison from the Mengsong area. Back then I found this comparison informative and fun. Not only am I able to refine my palate in tasting differences between tea grades, I gain more insight into how tea buyers taste teas. Even if I had my youthful agility back, a trip to Yunnan for this same experience would cost me thousands of dollars. Instead, I can get this experience at home for less than $100.

Here is the loose leaf, I used a lot less and
got punished harder. You can see the 1 bud/2 leaf, and
some double buds.

I feel a bit of hope with this offering from Bitterleaf , seeing a doorway for me contending with high prices for puerh. Maybe vendors will continue to offer a reasonably priced tea like the beeng here, and then also sell samples of better quality from the same farm. In addition, Bitterleaf sells a huangpian brick from this farm too for a reasonable $28. This is quite a nice line-up of options for the wallet. I can store away the affordable beeng, and yet still enjoy a bit of good tea too from the sample.

Bitterleaf states on the listing for the higher quality tea that they could consider doing a larger buy if enough people are interested in a purchase. I am guessing the offer may consist of a 100g pressing. In any case, I see the dilemma of the professional tea buyer, which is just like our own as amateur buyers, the uncertainty of whether to really spend for that high grade leaf.

2017 WMD Mansa

Over a year ago I very much enjoyed Bitterleaf’s 2016 WMD Mansa, and I added a 2017 version of this tea into an order I placed last spring. At that time, my attention was primarily focused on Bitterleaf’s collector/hoarder “late 1990s” CNNP, a well-stored tea I am still somewhat obsessed with. When ordering teas, my interest is often laser-ed in on one tea and other teas are add-ons mainly to take advantage of shipping. In the case of Bitterleaf Tea ordering, once you hit the $100 purchase mark you will get free shipping. I was well past the free shipping mark with the CNNP tea so I decided to get the Mansa now rather than order it later and pay the shipping too.

Dark wrapper this year.

Bitterleaf Teas continues to impress followers with their unique artisan tea wares, many of which sell out immediately. So you must follow their Instagram feed or email ahead if you hope to snag a particular piece. While Jonah Snyder primarily answers email inquiries, his wife’s professional-level photography skills make their website stand out from virtually all other tea vendor sites. In my youth I took old-school black and white photography courses, but with cell phone cameras and an “everybody is a photographer” mentality today, I appreciate here that professional skill and know-how are still obviously superior. I must cover my eyes to avoid tea ware temptation, and quickly navigate to the teas on the Bitterleaf website.

The neifei got rather buried in this cake.

My cake of 2017 WMD Mansa got a full summer of warm and humid weather to settle down and now nearly six months have passed since it arrived. The price of the tea is the same as last year, a hefty $0.88/g so $88 for 100g. I re-read my post from last year and further prepared for this year's session by not drinking any sheng two days in advance, so that the full effects of this tea might affect me all more strongly. As I recall, last year’s tea had some serious stoner effects for me. I tried to go lighter on the parameters with a small 60 ml gaiwan, but chipped off 5g so what the hell, steep it hard.

This is a 100g beengcha

The smell and appearance of the wet leaves under boiling water immediately seem to me a different tea than last year, something I have heard from other buyers. This tea does not have the strong florals as last year, although I do smell a bit of floral in the cup, but also an ordinary Menghai note which is new. The leaves for the most part are also much smaller.

Initial steeps have a custard-smooth and thick quality to the brew, some bitterness and a mild Menghai fruit flavor. The tea has some residual lingering in the throat down to the stomach. After four cups I broke a sweat and felt some stoner effects in my face, not so much as I recall from last year, but of course we are never the same on any given day. As the leaves open up, I find one or two that have the thicker stems as last year’s tea, but this year’s beeng is a bit more tip-py with small buds and small leaves.

Steep 4

After eight quick brews I need to push the tea with longer steeping time. The next three steeps are sour/bitter with a touch of fruity floral, very astringent and mouth drying but still decently thick. Yet I’m hitting green tea now and the leaves are forced into a stewed veggie condition. Last year I remember thick leaves steeping for days, easily past fifteen brews. The mix of leaves appears to consist of some of the larger leaves I remember from last year, and much younger/smaller leaves that smush under the finger rub test. The larger leaves are more sturdy and do not break when rubbed.

2017 Mansa leaves

The problem for me is this tea has the same name on the wrapper two years in a row. I am somewhat stuck. I cannot help comparing last year’s production, my expectations are set in advance due to the name. I cannot explain the reason for these differences between the two productions because too many explanations are possible. Had Bitterleaf simply used a different name for the tea, I would not have the same expectations. The truth may well be that these leaves are from the same trees as last year, and the weather or time of picking may explain the differences. But I could just as easily believe the tea is not from the same trees as last year, or that the large leaves are the same but another younger batch of leaves has been added in. Maybe the quantity of the harvest was lower and the production required boosting with another tea.

2016 Mansa leaves on the same plate as above.

Overall the brew is not terribly complex, but then neither was last year’s tea. Certainly the tea is still fairly fresh and may change more in the next six months. Comparing the tea to an inexpensive drinker, the quality of the experience is definitely better than average but the sour late brews and lack of longevity are concerning at this price range. At this point, I am stuck because I know 2017 teas overall are more expensive. So, “this year’s prices” may well fit in with reality. What stood out about last year’s production was leaf quality and longevity, and the drinking experience was also better than the average drinker. If an “average drinker tea” of lesser quality costs more this year, then I could say 2017 WMD Mansa is right in line with other 2017 teas.

So if I buy 200g of this tea at $176, this falls in the higher price range of other vendors, for example white2tea’s 2016 Untitled 2. However I think I prefer a bit more complexity at this price range, and for the money a good alternative, theoretically speaking, is a much less expensive but sold out w2t Bosch. At the same time, not many teas offer similar drinking experiences with the body effects, and we will generally need to pay a hefty price tag for teas that do offer such effects.

I have heard second-hand that vendors are saying they could not make the same productions this year for the same cost as the past two years. I am left wondering about 2017 overall. Because I have not bought any other teas from this year’s harvest, I do not have a good comparison. One can do much worse buying a drinker quality, and this tea is a somewhat better experience. To decide for your own self how much better this tea is than other teas, I suggest sampling first. Honestly with this year’s prices so high across the board, buying samples before committing your wallet is likely the best strategy.

1998 CNNP Green Stamp "Whatever 98"

Finally my tax refund shows up and like a horse wrangler after a dry, two week drive I head to the puerh bar and start buying rounds, with no intention on stopping until I fall the floor or lose it all in a hand of poker. First in from the mails is this CNNP “Whatever 1998” 357g beeng that I just had to have for some reason. I think what got me is the idea that Bitterleaf’s Jonah Snyder pried it out of the sticky fingers of a so-called “eccentric” collector in the Kunming area. I figure whatever it is that Bitterleaf dug up in Kunming, it will be dry at the very least. After that, nobody knows what this tea might be. We can always assume the worst and wait for any pleasant surprise.

Outer wrapper provided by Bitterleaf for protection.

Here is a scenario I can believe. Some puerh collector buys a few tongs of CNNP back in the day for a couple of dollars a cake. Fast forward nearly twenty years, an American guy shows up and offers $100 a cake, so maybe $700/tong. The collector sells a jian and suddenly has a cool fat wallet of nearly $3000 and laughs his way off to buy a nice used car, or tickets to Disney World. Haven’t we heard these stories before? So then Bitterleaf  turns around and sells for $200/beeng. But I don’t know what they paid the eccentric collector, I am just making up numbers.

Inside is the original wrapper, with a few welcome bug bites.
Not much of a clue to origins with this kind of wrapper.
Sometimes these teas got a "whatever" wrapper back in the day.

In short, this tea does not really line up with my experience of CNNP teas from the early ‘oughts. Plenty of Green Stamp teas around, but the others I have had are wet-stored, vastly different in character and much weaker than this tea. Overall it lacks the balance and smoothness that the recipe teas like 7542 would have at this point. On the plus side, the storage is dry and genuinely aged, the browning on this tea with absolutely no wet notes cannot be faked. The tea is more similar to late 1990s CNNP brick teas with the bitter start and sour middle, but the leaves are larger and more intact, suggesting a spring/summer mix, maybe more summer than spring and definitely Menghai origins.

I struggled with lighting to capture the leaves without the neifei looking
whiter than it actually is in person. The details are important, and
the neifei is a bit darker than this to the naked eye.

This is one powerful tea that requires wrangling and wrestling, and is definitely a cowboy tea, not one for the gentle teahouse types. The tea takes many brews to get to the actual leaves, and the tea has more strength than I’m used to from generic CNNPs. I spent a week drinking this tea, and did two sessions for 15+ steeps each, one in a porcelain gaiwan and one in clay. I don’t normally need to take many notes on a tea, simply because there isn’t a whole lot to write that I can’t keep in my head, but I took a lot of notes this time because I needed to, and because I feel certain most puerh drinkers would want more and the tea deserves some attention.

Dry Tea

Because the CNNP wrapper is thin and somewhat fragile, Bitterleaf Teas has added a heavy paper wrapper over the original and also a padded envelope packaging on top of all that. The CNNP wrapper shows a few bug bites, and the reverse side has no date stamp. The cake is uniformly brown with no odors except for perhaps a metallic smell, like a cold metal faucet, but not graphite as in wet teas. Leaves are on the larger side with some buds and a bit of huangpian. The mix has the occasional flavorless dark leaf, but not enough to concern me, and I scraped the dark leaves and found one that showed green in it, maybe just some old tea got added in to this cake.

A beenghole cannot hide what's in it.

The storage here is absolutely dry, but without loss due to dryness. No wet whatsoever here, and early steepings had a hint of florals. I really must congratulate Mr. Eccentric on his storage conditions; if it’s dry then you cannot do better than he has. One cannot fake this kind of brown and I can vouch for 14+ years on this tea. This is a very conservative estimate on my part of at least 2003, and I might believe older too. Again, the brown cannot be faked. Most CNNP teas you see still floating around are wet stored which makes dating very tough, and so this tea is a welcome cake that hides nothing.

Porcelain Session

First steep 8 grams/120ml porcelain gaiwan.

Leaves pry easily from cake, leaves on a chunk come apart with fingers. Smells of dry storage, wood, slight mushroom, some floral. No wet odors on my cake whatsoever. No medicine smells or flavors. Two rinses, and then taste/tossed first steep as it was a bit light.

Steeps 3-7 quite bitter, mouth coating type bitter, full yun in throat. On a Bitter scale of 1-10 with 10 being scalp-lifting, mouth punishing bitterness, such as Wilson’s 2008 Haiwan LBZ; white2tea’s New Amerykah more like 8-9, this CNNP tea is currently a 6 or so. This tea must have been undrinkable when young. These steeps 3-7 are still a little tough to drink with fairly bitter profile, and very mouth drying. The brew is orange with red brown starting, but plenty left to go. Viscosity is fairly decent, thick and oily going through the strainer. I really don’t see any char here in my strainer.

Around steep 10, storage off.

I poured an aroma cup on steep 3 and smelled nice floral nectar/honey lingering after I poured out the tea. The florals are not so noticeable in a drinking cup, I needed a tall narrow aroma cup to smell it at the bottom. Some humidity into this tea might open up the florals more, but too much might kill them too. A tiny bit of mushroom, but no Chinese medicine or incense, and no smokiness, just bitter wood, like peeling a sumac branch and chewing on the green wood beneath. Huigan is very slow, the bitterness seems to coat my mouth for more than an hour with hints of sweetness trying to come through.

Some qi after the first few cups, very light face melt and a bit in the spine but this isn’t a qi heavy tea. I personally do not feel this has terribly high caffeine either, maybe when younger but I hardly break a sweat and do not feel jittery myself. In fact, I could use a shot of caffeine because I decide to take a nap, not from the tea itself but because the tea isn’t keeping me awake.

Another note is dusty dirt, like a dirt road smell in early steepings and what seems like dusty dirt in the bottom of the cup. This comes through my very fine strainer and sinks to the bottom of the cup. I consider this an environmental addition I taste in long-stored teas. A person cannot put something away for fifteen years without it taking on at least some dusty dirt. Any tea in a closet will have a bit of this.

A bit of dusty dirt  at the bottom of early steeps that I poured into a tiny cup.

Steeps 7-10 after my nap, the bitterness is a bit less though still astringent, and I notice the dry storage sour in these steeps. With the bitterness fading and the storage not yet entirely off, my tongue has room to taste the sour dry ferment more. Leaves at steep 7 show some greener bits emerging. I get some stone fruit, but really nothing like hay, the tea has gone from hay to wood at this stage in its life.

Some of the leaves around steep 7. The leaves start off brown
and with continued steeping they show the green over time.
This tea is slow to open.

Some summer tea in here might also account for the bitterness and astringency. Leaves do not come apart with finger rubbing. At this point I decide I need to try this tea in clay to see how it performs. I feel tempted to toss the session at this point and start over in clay, but then having got through those early bitter and then sour steeps, I want to keep going and see what happens.

Steepings 10 and 11, I finally feel like I have the storage off, the bitterness is fading and the sour too, the reddish brew now turning more orange yellow. I get some incense, Chinese medicine but very faint. More spicy bass notes, peppery or grated woody spices

Day 3 on steep 12, what a shock and a surprise to resume the tea today and be greeted with a nectar honey of a cup. All that bitterness and the sour storage ferment punished me for two days just to get to this. I wouldn’t even recognize this tea had I not been drinking it all along. Maple syrup in oak, minerals like ice water melt. Right now I’m steeping about 30 seconds or a bit more simply to keep the thick viscosity as consistent as I can from steep to steep. Still rather drying in the mouth. Transferred the tea to a larger gaiwan as the leaves outgrew my 120 ml size.

This tea is like a bull in a ring that must be worn down through many steepings to finally get close to it. I realize how many tame and easy teas I’ve been drinking lately, mainly due to going easy with the stomach on medications. I have tried to stick to either gentle new teas or wetter stored teas, obviously reclining in a comfy, sleepy sofa with my tea sessions over the past few months. Now I am back on the hard bench with an order to sit up straight and stick out my knuckles. I went through some punishment in those early steepings and finally hit the pay day.

Most puerh teas will need 7-8 steepings just to get the storage off and begin to taste the actual tea. You really cannot judge cups 1, 2, 3 etc. of a semi-aged tea for much except for the storage and few early top notes. A puerh head will wait until after steep 8, and this tea is such a strong bitch it took 10 steeps to take off all those layers and get to the nectar beneath. But oh, she is so nice just now. She finally sits her arse down and lets me taste the innards. The brew is more yellow, the reddish orange is gone. Here’s where I’m finally down to the actual tea. Now ideally when this tea is completely aged, the early cups will have much more honey sweetness. The level of bitterness is what’s left to convert, and a good dose of humidity might move this along nicely.

I go fifteen steeps altogether and then I take a photo of the leaves. The leaves are plushy; they bounce in punishing boiling water like lily pads, without shredding in the waves from a gaiwan lid like insipid seaweed. I chewed the darker leaf bits to make sure they are not shou, they are flavorless and a bit like dried leather. Maybe some older tea got added.

Leaves at steep 15, quite a difference from the earlier photo above.
Some thick sticks amidst the leaves.

I am at about 40 seconds per steeping when I decide to start over with clay. The tea is now lighter and consistently sweet with not much else to taste. With a few longer steepings I could get 18-20 out of this tea. It might stretch for more brews down the line a few years when the remaining bitterness converts, but the main brews are done for now.

Clay Session

8g in 90s Yixing

Oh god, I’m starting over now. I really had to take that ibuprofen, should I dare put this tea in that medicated stomach? I need to beg the clay teapot for mercy. Need full-ish stomach as a buffer.

Rinsed twice, first seven steepings seem less bitter than the porcelain session, even though I am using the same parameters. The sourness is still there too, but muted somewhat. The downside to clay is I am missing the floral notes, the price to pay for muting of the more challenging flavors. I also had to deal with the Yixing clogging. Of course it’s normal to need a toothpick with a single-hole Yixing, but when dealing with a rather bitter tea I need to keep the steepings short, a problem when the spout clogs during a pour.

Yixing session, steep 6, a bit reddish early on that fades to yellow.

Overall the brew is much more balanced but mainly in tempering the bitterness and dry storage. I prefer the Yixing session purely for drinking purposes, but really if I am checking on the progress of a tea, I need the porcelain which will not hide anything, when clay adds a uniformity to the steepings across the session. However, the Yixing makes the tea more satisfying to drink, if a person wants to drink this tea now rather than waiting a few more years.

Photo from my Yixing session.
One of the old brown tea leaves found here and there in the mix.
They don't change much, and have a bit of a leather flavor when chewed.

Fifteen plus steepings is certainly respectable, and I figure that if this tea is treated correctly in storage, it may have even more to give someday.

Storage

The long session shows that although the tea starts out rather brown, beneath all that is still some green tea. Because of the dry but not overwhelmingly dry storage, I am very pleased with the condition of this tea. My hat is off to Mr. Eccentric Collector, he can have my phone number and Tindr link. This dry storage cannot be faked, and the tea has a semi-aged flavor. I wish the tea cost more in the $150 range, but this is a bit unfair when most CNNP teas available now are either wet stored or lack the longevity in the tea pot. I cannot blame Bitterleaf for recognizing they have a find here for those drinkers who want some power in an aged tea and drier storage too.

Now that the tea is in my hands, I plan to give it the summer’s heat and humidity here. When the summer is over, I will wrap the tea in plastic for the dry winter. I do not use plastic with any of my teas, save one cake which is wrapper-less and arrived in plastic, a cake I have saved intact with the plastic merely as an example.

I am concerned about retaining what remains of the top floral notes. The strong bitterness of the tea recommends it for a more humid climate, but the risk is losing those faint top notes in exchange for trying to push the bitterness along. The cake is worth the babysitting. Not many CNNP teas of this strength and dry storage left to buy these days. I think a name like "Whatever 98" is certainly appropriate because we just do not know much about the origins here. Yet I will look forward to tasting this again over the summer and again in the fall. What a pleasure this tea is!