2020 Chen Sheng Hao Naka

Chen Sheng Hao sampler box

I have had a bit of a break on my blog here, mainly due weather. We have had a very hot and humid summer this year, living on the edge of the western heat domes plaguing the nation. In the north where I live, houses are built to hold in heat in frigid winter which is misery in a hot summer. My AC is barely tolerable, and drinking hot tea late in the day holds little appeal. I continue to enjoy my a.m. tea, but by midday I am quickly turning to iced beverages to keep cool. Finally we have a few days break in the heat and humidity so I can get in a nice evening session without feeling like I am dying from overheating. 

The blue bags are blends,
the brown are single-origin teas.

Thank god because I have been looking at my tasty new sampler teas from Chen Sheng Hao with some anticipation all month. I could not resist getting this sampler set. For one, just the box alone is tea Disney for me. I know fancy packaging is ubiquitous factory fare in China, but ordering anything in this kind of packaging direct from China is just asking for crushed boxes. Most of my tea orders arrive from China all accordion-pleated. Once, I ordered some Dayi shou cakes in a metal tin, and the tin arrived crushed even with the whole box wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. That tin was so smashed one of the bottom corners split open. So when I opened my CSH sampler box shipped from the new Vancouver warehouse, I felt like I'd ordered a perfume bottle from Saks Fifth Avenue. The presentation is just gorgeous. 

Naturally I am starting with the 2020 Naka because over the years I have covered some Naka teas in this blog, and want to see how this tea compares. The sampler packets contain 7-9g of tea, and this Naka sample weighed 8g. I can see right away this is the small leaf Naka varietal, the real local varietal and not imported plantation tea. Chen Sheng Hao signed a "cooperation agreement" with Naka village in 2012, and first produced their 357g label beengcha starting in spring 2013. You can buy 2013-2021 vintages from the Canadian website, which means they moved a lot of tonnage to this location. I note that years 2020 and 2021 are 250g teas pressed into a square shape. If you want a 357g round beeng, you will need to buy 2019 or older. The 2020 square costs $73 currently, and the 2021 is $68.

CSH Naka area factory
photo cspuerh.com

A few years back LiquidProust organized a Naka sampler tasting on Steepster featuring CSH Naka teas from a range of years. Quite a few people participated in that opportunity, but few posted any notes on how they liked the teas. That is rather regrettable because we could have a real catalog of notes to help with choosing teas from this new Canada warehouse, but we have nothing to go by really. I have some blended CSH tea samples in my stash that I didn't think are particularly wonderful, but they also have storage issues. 

I brewed my entire sample in a porcelain gaiwan as I always do when testing a tea. The tea is completely separated with no chunks, it's all loose tea. Brewing loose tea like this affects how the session brews, so steep 1 the tea is already presenting strongly rather than slowly loosening up. 

The tea hits the tongue with strong bitterness and very quick huigan, and more fruity than floral. The wet leaf smells like cantaloupe rinds left to sit out in the heat. Bit of a dark whiskey undertone, but no smokiness and very little char in the strainer. Processing is top notch, I am not seeing any oxidation nor oolonged sweetening. 

Steep 2

Five steeps in the tea hits with eyeball and face numbing. Clearly I have been off the sauce for a few weeks now. My fall from the wagon probably makes me love this tea more than I probably should, I really enjoy the hot heavy fumes in my throat and stomach. There is a reason I love puerh tea, at its best I feel like I am drinking a toddy rather than tea. So I might be a tad over-enthused, but this Naka is very clean and the processing is less..shall we say...traditional. It lacks the wood smoke processing notes my older Naka teas have, and none of the tobacco-ish finish. One of my Naka teas is of course bamboo-pressed, so I have a really traditional one. White2tea's older 05 Naka has all that traditional wood processing, but the body effects are so nice one can overlook that. But Chen Sheng Hao is a premium factory charging premium prices, and so I am glad to see the processing is at least up to scratch.

Steep 5

Overall the tea is quite peach fruity with a slight floral note and a touch of hard liquor and vanilla. Very tongue coating and bitter. After steep 6 I got hit with a strong astringent mouth reaction, and a glass of water did not dispel a squeaky-clean tongue sensation. My face-numbing dispelled after about 15 minutes. Most of the action was over by steep 8. At this point I was brewing at about a minute per steep, but the leaves started to get a little bit overcooked and stewed. The gaiwan smelled a bit compost-y like old fruit peels. My 8th cup still retained some bitterness and the tea can clearly brew longer. With loose leaf like this it just won't have much left in terms of flavor. 

I really like this tea for $0.30/g, and anyone enjoying fresh sheng or looking for something to hold might enjoy this single-origin Naka. You can keep your forum '"factory" creds rather than fessing up to buying something boo-teek, but this is every bit as good as boutique, if lacking somewhat in leaf quality. I see some buds in here, however the tea is mainly chopped with a bit more stems than a boutique tea offers. But really all of the Naka small leaf quality is in here and it matches the price quite nicely. 

More important to me is what Chen Sheng Hao is offering us who live in North America. I am not going to quibble over anything when we have the ability to order small leaf Naka, or any of the other teas this company is selling. I don't care what the price is, whether it's this $73 2020, or an over $1000 beeng of Lao Ban Zhang. The important thing for me is that by opening this warehouse in Canada, we can be sure that China is taking sheng customers in North America seriously. We are no longer a potential market for dumping excess summer shou tonnage. Chen Sheng Hao is one of the premium factories, one of the best really. 

I do wonder if there is any other motivation for the company to move this amount of tea to North America, whether costs of storage are part of the issue, or maybe drier storage. Because it seems to me that although we have a decent sheng market here, I am not sure we have the market for the $1000 beengcha and $6000 tongs. Their market is really in Asia for these prices. Even if we did do this kind of buying, servicing our market here would not require a full range of Naka vintages, the last year or two would do nicely. That's why I wonder about the storage issue, because we know about the current preference in Asia for drier stored tea. Apart from storage I can't think why else CSH would move years of tea vintages over here only to ship them back to Asian customers. Unless warehouse storage is just so much less expensive here, but I cannot entirely believe that when the company has every capacity to build a warehouse anywhere in China. Maybe I am missing some essential knowledge here and somebody else knows more. 

What is important to me is that really for the first time we have the opportunity to buy factory tea direct without any Taobao nonsense and no middleman. I am not sure the prices are any better, but I appreciate that Chen Sheng Hao is here. I am glad to access premium factory teas, new and aged, without needing to order from China and getting a mashed box and agent fees. I don't have to worry I am getting fake tea. This is a long time coming, when you think of the 20 years or more we have waited to buy anything direct in our locale other than shou bricks at a local Chinese food market. 

The Sample Life

Here is yet another tea sample I pulled from my stash this spring that I wanted to try. I am not sure where this is from, maybe Mr. Mopar? Anyway, it is labeled 1990s Menghai 8592 which is a shou formula, and if it is really 1990s I can't throw this out without trying it. Now is not really the time of year for shou for me, but I'll try it anyway. I get to thinking about how samples really are not a bad way to drink tea. Sample drinking has a bad rap on forums from tea snobs who feel that a sample is not a sufficient amount of tea to really know a puerh. Or that a cake size is really a sample, and the ideal purchase is a tong. I don't entirely disagree with that notion, but at the same time I feel a sample is sufficient to at least experience a tea in some fashion, and in this sense could be better than never trying a tea at all. 

I don't know why it is, maybe the pandemic or the economy or tricky shipping, but suddenly the idea of a sample stash has a prudent feel to it. I do feel like the negative view toward samples is pervasive enough that people whose stash consists entirely of samples feel the need to hide that fact when conversing on forums. The opinions of those drinking from samples appear to stigmatize them when they express an opinion, "oh you just tried a sample," rather than recognizing the fact that the person actually tried the tea before opining on it. Seems to me trying the tea first matters more than opining when you haven't tried the tea at all. And plenty of opinions get aired on teas people haven't ever tried! I can find plenty of reasons to own sample teas.

Just starting out.

You have taken the plunge into puerh, and are tasting around to find out what you like. In this case, sampling is a great idea. I think especially if you are looking for daily drinker teas, the best thing to do is crunch a lot of samples to find that sheng or shou which suits and sits well in the tummy for every day. Certainly sampling ahead makes sense if you are thinking of dropping a larger amount of money, or are checking whether the claims surrounding a tea are genuine. 

Your Budget.

Let's face it, teas are expensive. You can participate in a puerh hobby, but only to a certain degree because you don't have money to waste. Still, this is better drinking some tea than none at all, right?

No one else in your household drinks puerh.

If you are sharing living space with another person or even a full family, that space is subject to some resentment when one person uses more than their fair share. How many partners complain not about the tea, but rather how much space that tea takes up in the living space, and how loud is that complaint because they don't share in the hobby? Nagging gets annoying. Also, a strategy to try more teas is do-able when you are getting just samples, the partner is not so likely to sniff at an envelope arriving in the mail rather than a big tong box. 

You move around frequently.

Owning a stash takes up space and increases exponentially when you have tongs and when you need specialized storage solutions. Puerh is a long-haul hobby, and hauling just is not conducive to a lifestyle where you need to move every year, or even two or three times a year. Maybe you have no home at all and live in temporary situations. Having a stash of samples means one box as opposed to hauling multiple plastic tubs, crocks and tong bags. Feels good to travel light.

You don't want to bother with storage.

Space is part of the reason perhaps, but another very valid reason to go with smaller amounts of tea is because you have no interest in storage. Some people do have the space and the money, but don't want to bother with storage solutions and babysitting tongs. Is your opinion as a taster of teas really worth less because of this? Someone drinking samples for two years may have a better idea of puerh teas than a person with two years of drinking one tong. Many people find storage challenging or uninteresting, and feel they have to hide this when talking about puerh. 

Opportunities arise in sample form.

Many of the best teas simply are not available any longer as full beengs or tongs, and the only way to get your hands on a tea is when a collector is willing to break up a beeng for a few friends. Any amount of that tea is a gifted moment. Also, many superb buying opportunities from vendors are samples. We all know about Houde's sample sales. Let's see who is sleeping...did you sign up for Chen Sheng Hao marketing emails? If so, you woke up to this in your email box yesterday.

CSH is offering a box of 7g x 10 samples, or a box of 28g minis, or you can get a 10g sample of 2020 Lao Ban Zhang for $38 and change. Better run along quick if you want any of these. Might want to sign up for emails first, you can get a code for an additional 10% off everything except the LBZ.

One criticism of samples is that they may not be in the best condition, or taken from a bad part of the beeng, such as the beenghole. But a beeng may not be in the best condition anyway, and the chances of this are just the same as for a sample, it depends on how well the tea was kept, whether a beeng or sample. I guess someone has to get the beenghole, no one throws it out, it is just more compressed. Aesthetically the beenghole is less pleasing, but if one feels the experience is diminished, perhaps ordering another sample is the remedy. Even if the tea is sold out, I've heard of many instances when a vendor was willing to send out another sample, so if you don't like your beenghole just email the vendor.

Quantities of "gushu" teas are small.

Even if you can get your hands on some nice tea, chances are the amount is small because the harvest is by hand from a small stand of tea trees. 200g beengs are more common now than 357g outside of big factory productions of drinker teas. Some vendors have 100g or even smaller beengs. The quantity of some of the best gushu teas frequently consists of a small bag of loose puerh. The quantity harvested is so tiny that a pressing is not possible, and the leaves are lovely such that the whole leaf may be appreciated rather than potentially broken away from a pressed form. 

You want to taste widely.

After the pandemic year I think people want to make sure they have the experiences they crave. Time is already limited by how much we work and put into family life. I think the whole "stamp collecting" criticism is a bit overdone, especially now when we can find more important places to put time and money. Yet drinking a bit of an experience is valuable time spent, and you can taste your way around 10 teas much more easily with a sample quantity than buying 10 tongs you then must store. 

We have many other beverages in life we may wish to indulge in, perhaps your partner likes wines or whiskies or other drinks, or you do, and you want those beverages as well as your tea. No reason to miss out on a memorable experience of a particularly good tea just because you don't want a whole tong of it. 

You can't fit a beeng down your pants.

Showing up with a gym bag at a tea shop is a guaranteed way to be watched the entire time. 

I think a perfectly valid way to live the puerh life is to get the tea you can afford and have room to keep. One doesn't need to drink an entire sample in one go, a bit can be saved in the bag and tried again in a few years for a renewed experience. You still get the benefits of tasting changes in the tea without being saddled with bulky storage. At some point, even a collector has to stop hoarding. At that point, acquiring any more tea makes little sense except for a sample.

This "1990s Menghai" 8592 consists of slivered chunks taken off a beeng. They opened up nicely with a couple of rinses and started out sweet and thick like apple juice. But I could only get down two steepings. My stomach was hurting from pills when I started. I had hoped the shou would help the pill belly, but it didn't. The tea had more fermentation flavor than should be the case for a 20 year old tea, and I noticed the leaves were small and chopped, they didn't look like grade 9 leaves before the chopping, they looked like better leaves frankly. I started to wonder if the label on the bag wasn't accurate. It could be the gifter re-used a sample bag without changing the label and I have forgotten what the tea actually is. Oh well. It's a decent enough shou, and I am glad I tried it, but also happy I only have a sample. That's another reason to live the sample life, a lot less waste.

I think we need to get rid of the gate-keeping around tea quantity, and stop making people feel their opinions on a tea are less valid because they own a sample rather than a tong or beeng. Plenty of opinions abound on teas given by people with no experience of those teas whatsoever. So how is your sampler life somehow less valid than these total virgins? Enjoy your wide-ranging experiences of puerh tea along with all the other indulgences you can fit in. Stand up and give your opinion on teas and let's welcome the view of someone who definitely has tried a tea. 

$1000 Wedding

Disclaimer: I do not, repeat do not, go through life looking to reference Gram Parsons songs. Not on purpose anyway. In fact, I look to avoid any songs with potential to infiltrate my head aside from deliberately self-flagellatory tunes like the Kyrie from Bruckner's Mass in E minor No. 2 (all four parts plus horn "the saints who sung out loud"). But here I am, twice in one year, dredging (not channeling) Gram Parsons as I did in The New Soft Shou. This time, the $1000 Wedding comes up, and not too untimely since Rolling Stone magazine named it #40 top country songs of all time in July 2014. Not untimely either because my retired bipolar country western singer roommate continues to live out this lyrical material, "he took some friends out drinking and it's lucky they survived" in -20C weather sleeping at the Kwik Trip truck stop where he is now in a prelude to becoming famous. And also timely because White2Tea starts selling a $1000 1998 CNNP 7542 Qingbing (Liming). Did you just swallow all this? Actually the teacake is $1100, to be completely correct. And I've had the opportunity to sample this twice and been told not to write about it. Well, this ain't cheap shit.

1998 CNNP 7542 Qingbing Liming by white2tea

People have debated the meaning of the $1000 Wedding song written by Gram in 1974, but the most oft-told story is that Gram proposed to marry his girlfriend Barbara, or Gretchen or some such, and she went and picked out a $1000 wedding dress which is more like $10,000 by today's standards. Gram backed out of the wedding and she never picked up the dress. Or maybe she did pick up the dress and like an albatross it sat around the house and Gram looked at it and wrote the song. I have a dishtowel with a picture of Gram's face on it. The 1998 CNNP Qingbing is sold by the Gram unless you want to spring for the entire wedding dress.

Actual dishtowel.

Yes this is all crazier than usual. "(S)he felt so bad when (s)he saw the traces of old lies still on their faces," we see many cakes online and attempts by vendors to convince us that every single one of them is excellent, so how will we ever know? How will we know unless a tea drunk says something? I didn't buy an entire cake myself. But somebody has to write about this shit and I'm almost dead anyway so might as well be me. I'm hoping that people do Get Gram for no better reason than to add to the conversation. If you're putting in an order with White2Tea, consider adding on an extra $15 or so to get 5 Grams of this Qingbing so you can at least try it. So I don't have be talking to myself with nothing else to do. I think $15 is a low enough price for the conversation.

Actual tea.

Supposedly this teacake is big right now in buying circles in China, mainly because it is CNNP and 7542 and dry stored. Dry stored as in Hong Kong definition, a very slight humidity which I consider "well integrated" in that the musty blends with whatever smokiness and woody or leather fragrance in the tea. I can smell it because I'm the Daughter of the Woman Who Vacuumed Sealed clothing against mildew. But I wonder about the cultural capital this tea represents, if the cultural value plays a big part in the price factor going on in China over this tea.

10 gram sample shown here, a promising brown.

I measured out 5 grams from the 10 g sample in my 60 ml Yixing. You can see the first steep here (3 rinses) is very clear. Most of the 7542 recipes I've tried are still fairly punchy even at 20 years old, but this one doesn't have that kick in the teeth green bitterness but maybe this isn't all Menghai material. I'm choosing to use Yixing because I brewed the first sample of this tea in a gaiwan and so now I want to use a pot that I would normally use with a tea of some age and value. Besides, I have at least 3 pots of tea leaves sitting around the house most of the time, a downside to buying good tea is how long it takes to steep it out. We're talking days. A 30+ steeper sheng is gonna sit and I hate to do that to such expensive leaves.

First steep following 3 rinses.

What I notice about this tea is the spicy start, the pepper and almost cinnamon along with the wood and leather. Must be my medication, all teas seem to taste minerally to me lately. Second steep is a bit thicker and red in the cup. I wonder how this 1998 has got so far along with the aging without being soaked to death in humidity. Not sure how they got a 7542 aged this quickly really. I've had early 1990s 7542 that tasted years younger than this, that had years to go and still green left in it. The cup is getting thicker after the first couple of steeps, always a good sign. Huigan is pretty much a non starter after the brownie I just ate. Yes, I just ate a 65 cent pan brownie along with $1000 tea but Dear Son is at fault for walking by me and sticking the plate under my nose. I increase steep time after the 4th steep when I took this photo.

Second steeping.

Sorry to disappoint the readers looking for an Objective review. Are you of the belief that if you taste one of those "fantastic" older puerhs of excellent storage that you'll never go back to anything else? Can anyone really come up with such an Objective opinion with any certainty? If so, I hope you trot off and go read what that person has to say. In my Relativist universe of tea, a few facts are in play.

1. I am a Tea Drunk.

This means that I can take the alcoholic equivalent of gin with a splash of Listerine and say Hey, it's all Good and You Too, baby.

2. I don't believe that outside of China I can get any of the fantastic teas that will make me never go back to anything else.

This is because I don't live in China, or Malaysia, and yes I lied about dating the Taiwanese Businessman. Sorry, I apologize to the readers who emailed me thinking I was serious and looking to hook me up on a date with a Taiwanese Businessman. I'm still deleting spam on a daily basis from people posting on my blog about Green Supplements.

3. I'm an Old Lady who farts and takes fish pills.

Listen. You wouldn't want to be in an elevator with me. Is this the sort of person you rely on for tea advice?

Third steep plus leaves.

Somebody had to write about this tea, my writing is flawed but all I have to give. This tea tastes pretty good. I think it is worth it, for the sake of trying something we normally don't get, to add 5 Grams of it to your White2Tea order and spend the $15 to at least be able to talk about the cultural capital behind the tea, is it the same as buying a commemorative 1998 Packers Coca Cola bottle? Let's find out.

Finally, I think tea vendors need to add a Bridal Registry to their websites. The Coffee People have them, why not us? People spring for $1000 cappuccino machines as wedding gifts every single day. Give some happy Tea Drunk the $1000 Wedding of his 357 Gram Dreams. She wants Petr Nowak more than you know, and instead she gets Corningware, dear jesus, five steeps and I think I'm tea drunk now, god I love tea. "Supposed to be a funeral, it's been a bad, bad day."

Requiescat in Pace.

Little Green Apples

Been on a bit of a puerh hiatus lately. The truth of aged sheng is the caffeine is aged out, and I need the boost so I've been drinking a good deal of black tea instead. And I've had my reasons.

My roommate is a psychopathic maniac with an alcohol problem. He's out of meds and won't go get any more. I just can't manage to chop up a tuo with any appreciation when he's drunk and calling the cops who don't quite believe me when I say I only have a tea problem myself. I wish I were the crazy one making jokes, because the truth just seems made up. But I really do share a household with a person with a severe mental illness and it's been a bad year for him and consequently it just cuts into my tea hobby, especially when I'm chopping up the front door frame with a chisel to install a yet another deadbolt instead of sniffing my tea collection which I'd rather be doing. Right now I'm trying to type whilst said roommate is obsessively vacuuming, something of a conciliation on his part because I caught him drinking mouthwash this morning. At least the vacuum drowns out his singing.

To the rescue, my tea friends have been so very generous and I don't know what I'd do without you all. Managed to sneak out of the house today to the post office to pick up a very generous, unsolicited sample package from Neil over at Teaclassico.com. Cracked it open to try the 1998 CNNP Apple Green tuo cha, I recall reading Hobbes' review on this tea back in August and I think Teadb covered it as well.

I'd get stopped at airport security traveling with this baggie.

Aged tea is difficult to come by, and this tuo confirms further my belief that if we older people want to buy some tea with a bit of age on it already, we need to look out for examples like this. The tuo has had a year or two of Hong Kong aging, so it has that touch of humid storage which works out the smoke and bit of char I see in the strainer. The bitterness too is basically gone, making this a reasonably priced example of tea with a little age that is drinkable now. I get a bit of tingle in the mouth from this, and a bit of dry mouth which as I've said before can be triggered by medications I take.

These tight tuo leaves open up quite a bit over multiple steeps.

My sample seems to be completely aged out. In the 10 or so steeps I got out of this, all were fairly brown and smooth. Gives out the darker brews early in the first 4 steeps. The leaves are larger and have a leathery dried look, I'm not seeing any green here. No work needed on my part to age this further, the humid storage lingered in the steeps but I didn't air the sample. All the tea needs now is just airing and no special storage.

Second steep. I find brushing my tea pets a calming ritual.

Is it mind-blowing, life-changing sheng? No, but a nice daily drinker for those with a taste for aged tea.

Now, this tea sells for $93 at Teaclassico.com for a 250g tuo. USA-based Tea shoppers might want to take a look at what is likely the same tuo at Generationtea.com. I've heard that these two online sellers buy from the same distributer in Taiwan. Generation Tea also calls this tuo "Apple Green" and overall tends to charge a bit more for puerh, in this case $100 for what they are saying is a 230g tuo. At Generation Tea, differences of $7 in price and maybe 20g of tea (shaved off for samples, maybe?) might be offset when comparing the shipping cost from Teaclassico. Currency exchange rates might be a factor for other buyers as well.

The question comes down to this, do I have the time to age newer tuos and hope to live long enough to drink them at this level of age? Can I be bothered to deal with years and years of storage? For some, the answer might be "yes," and young people can likely pick up the latest $20 Dayi tuo for much less cash and hope to drink the results in years to come. If you are older though, and money is less of an issue, it might be worth paying an extra $70-ish for aged tea you can drink right now. The Apple Green tuo is worth considering if you are in the aged category as I am. Either way, if you can get ahold of a tuo with a year or two of Hong Kong aging under its belt, I think this is one of the best ways to guarantee a good tea down the road. Your years of dry storage following a humid start to a tea is likely to be a good bet if you live in the west. When I brew this again, I think I'll use an Yixing to add a bit of that mineral taste and tone down the storage flavor.

If you decide to pick this up, plan on airing the tea and drinking it fairly soon. It's ready now.