Catching up on my cupboard and notes. I can’t believe I’ve drunk up nearly half this cake so far this summer. But it has been my go-to daily drinker for a couple of months now. This cake is packed full of buds and has that champagne grape profile of higher tier Yiwu, but at a fraction of the price. A nice change from apricot sheng if you know what I mean.
The tea is a little bitter when pushed, but I like this fresh profile while the tea is new, and less so once it hits a year old, so I’m trying to drink it up young. No expansive qi or terribly subtle qualities. In the summer, I get overheated on a daily basis and struggle with water retention from heat and BP medications. This tea cools my body in two cups, yep hot tea. Very yin. My interior heat cools, and I begin to pee out all the water my body is holding. I feel immensely better just after a couple cups. Yeah kinda gross, I know, but we all have our symptoms.
I get maybe 8-10 steeps tops, so I can finish this off in an evening or maybe a couple cups left the following day. I tried cold brewing this since the hot brew is such a nice light yellow/green, but it doesn’t really hold up cold. The brew turns dark and more bitter in the fridge.
Gotta recommend this for the higher tier flavor and budget price tag. My pick for a daily drinker from the 2015 Chawangshop house teas, but not an age-r. A better choice for aging is the 2015 Mengsong.
Flavors: Green, White Grapes
I’ve been curious to try a chawangpu production mainly because they’re low-priced Banna teas, but the shipping costs have kept me from making a purchase. How would you compare them against Yunnan Sourcing productions?
If you are ordering from the China-based Yunnan Sourcing, the shipping will be comparable. YS has a customer purchase point system that is basically a growing coupon code. This can help defray costs. Chawangshop doesn’t have a poin system, however when you check out you are getting a shipping quote and not the actual cost. You don’t pay right away until the package has an accurate shipping cost which is, in my experience, always lower than the checkout shipping.
YS teas are often blends, and Scott has worked on these blends a long time, over a period of years. Because of the lead blends, I would say the appreciation is in the subtleties of the leaf blend. Chawangshop seems to focus on single batches from his sources, not so much a blend. Some teas are craft or farm teas, made by the people who harvest the tea. Some like the Lao Yun, the less expensive version is made by the women themselves over a wood fire and you get that wood smoke to air out. That is one example of a coarser, more craft and less refined cake. This shop offers many other tea products that are coarse. I find them interesting for this reason, I am a rural woman from another part of the world.
I suggest ordering from the US Yunnan Sourcing for a lower shipping cost and subtle blending, and sometime do an order from Chawangshop for their craft locally made products.
Very interesting assessment. I don’t mind hints of smoke so long as they don’t dominate or impart a burnt flavor. Would you say the level smokiness in Chawangpu productions is similar to that from the Puerh Shop?
I’ve noticed that many of YS’s in-house cakes are actually single estate/village productions or single mountain teas, which I suppose could be a blend if there are different varietals on the mountain. As a broke student, I’ve been very satisfied with YS cakes in terms of getting real value for my money. Although I was disappointed with one of their Dan Cong’s. Good point about YS’s point system. I completely forgot about it and now I see that I have over $15 worth of vouchers!