1990's Ding Xing Hao

Tea type
Pu'erh Tea
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Camphor, Earth, Musty, Peat, Plum
Sold in
Not available
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Tea Pet
Average preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 30 sec 6 g 4 oz / 112 ml

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3 Tasting Notes View all

  • “Upon opening the paper wrapper, I am hit with a musky smell – rather like walking into an old dark unused library storage room. The cake looks dark and clean with many large twisted leaves mixed...” Read full tasting note
  • “Oh no, another talker. This one arrived in mummy wrapping, i.e. The Paper, white and brown, bug bit and iron-creased. I could smell the wet tomb storage immediately. Should really air out what gets...” Read full tasting note
  • “AMAZING!!! This aged sheng pu erh is full of complexity. Sweet, earthy, very very mild bitterness (less than most sheng), spice, straw, air this tea keeps me present during sessions to appreciate...” Read full tasting note
    99

From Private tea factory

This Ding Xing Hao tea cake is made in the late 1990s and well-kept in Guang Dong natural dry storage. The wild big leave is a refined selection from arbor tree of Yi Bang Mountain倚邦茶山, Meng Hai tea regain. The tea cake is in light brown color. The liquor is supple and oily with very slight astringency on the palate. Good balance in taste with well highlighted by the camphor flavors and flowing texture. Sweet after taste.

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3 Tasting Notes

301 tasting notes

Upon opening the paper wrapper, I am hit with a musky smell – rather like walking into an old dark unused library storage room. The cake looks dark and clean with many large twisted leaves mixed with pieces and stems. Easy to pick off leaves for steeping. Stinky tea liquor so I did three quick rinses rather than the usual two. The orange color of the tea soup reflects the age of this cake.

Good complexity. Solid character and flavor profile – sweetness and bitterness work nicely together to achieve a firm base upon which the subtleties of the additional flavors; – hay, camphor, old book leather and stonefruit – reveal themselves throughout the tea session. Most noticeable is the strong Qi in this one – an “energy” that makes me feel very alive and rather happy. Lingering aftertaste. Decent endurance and steep longevity (10-12 infusions) so I’ll likely go back to this little teapot full of happiness sometime over the next two days. Not the most flavorful sheng I have enjoyed but an interesting find indeed.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 0 min, 15 sec 5 g 3 OZ / 90 ML
Cwyn

I have this and it is still one of my favs. I broke mine up and crocked it. Then put the loose into a ceramic jar, have since drunk up all the loose. Mine improved with airing for sure!

DigniTea

Good to know. This was a sample Daniel “encouraged” me to try. I have not been able to decide if I want to spring for an entire cake.

JC

“Sticky tea liquor so I did three quick rinses” lol I love Puerh, I feel like this is the only occasion I would feel related and ok with that phrase in something I’m about to consume.

DigniTea

You know that’s true, JC. ;-)
Interesting tea. Have you tried this one?

JC

No, but I really want to try it. Sounds really good. I had a 1980s XiaGuan tuo that was the same way at first sniff ‘ahhh the scent of something that hasn’t been opened in decades, this should be good’. lol

Where can I find some of this?

DigniTea

I thought I had mentioned the source in my note but it looks like I forgot to do so. I recently picked up teas from The Chinese Tea Shop in Vancouver. Here’s the direct link to the online store:
http://store.thechineseteashop.com/1990_s_Ding_Xing_Hao_Pu_erh_Tea_Cake_Raw_Sheng_p/pugc-dxh-90.htm

JC

Thanks! I’ll check them out. Its always cool to find new places to try. :D

DigniTea

Great. Good place to pick up teas with decent age on them. Fast processing and delivery.

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90 tasting notes

Oh no, another talker. This one arrived in mummy wrapping, i.e. The Paper, white and brown, bug bit and iron-creased. I could smell the wet tomb storage immediately. Should really air out what gets dug up out of the ground. But if our friend here on Steepster is correct, this tea is meant for avoiding. Couldn’t hurt to have a teensy, weensy bit of a sip, now could it?

Stuck my pick in the back, and tea easily broke away, like dried bones. No complaints when I weighed what gave, 5.6 grams. Got out my tasting 60 ml senchado, which is tiny kyusu meant for small sips of fine gyokuro, but I have dedicated it for puerh tasting. Two rinses, water is clear. Them bones is oily. Had to nudge it around in there to see the dark red & amber swirls float away from the leaves. The ghost rose up.

“Noooooooo! No! Leave me alone! Who are youuu?? Gah, a white woman! Probably a Jew.”

Yeah, yeah and this ain’t Egypt, sweetheart.

Did 10 shots of this in a 40 ml Jian Shui tasting cup. The most intensely camphorated tea I’ve ever tasted, like a cold, dead finger down my throat. Embalming fluid.

Earthy, wet tomb flavor which actually comes and goes, oddly enough. Still a bit dry on the tongue. A good airing is well necessary, this cake arrived in plastic. But for sure this tea has been wet stored, despite the description saying these cakes were dry stored. However, it appears this tea company can churn out 100 ktons per year of tea so perhaps there are a lot of these cakes around. Could explain the low price.

Hobbes reviewed this tea a few years back on his blog, however I tend to remember the cute and wistful, almost memory-like photos of his children rather than the teas he drinks. Of course he drinks an awful lot of tea too, even he can’t remember it without handwriting and typing out his notes. Anyway, he records this as a Yiwu. He thought it could be a 2001 and I am inclined to agree, except the cake really does fall apart easily. Could be the wet storage sped this one along a bit.

Cake is $149 or so at Daniel’s chineseteashop. Or $30 at jiujiucha.taobao.com plus the sale of your last born in shipping and agent fees, if you use one.

I need a good, serious session with this tea when it is good and aired and exorcised and stops yelling at me. Big leaves in this mixed with some smaller leaf chop, and a few stems, including one Big Hard Stiffy. Can’t bend that one no matter how many times I hit it with boiling water, and It has the little round suction cup at the base which attached to the branch. Lower down in the tree maybe. All the leaves turn very brown in the cup. Needed longer steep times on this to coax the oily leaves, and a bigger pot to let the larger ones unfurl.

As for psychotropic effects, I got very warm, and didn’t feel anything except I found myself standing and pouring my tea all over the counter. Where is the cup? Over there…

Am two fisting this now with a shou in case those cold fingers wrap themselves around my neck. The camphorated finish is long, even after the Rishi shou I am swallowing, the cold is still at my throat.

Flavors: Camphor, Earth, Musty, Peat, Plum

Preparation
Boiling 1 min, 0 sec 5 g 2 OZ / 60 ML

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99
41 tasting notes

AMAZING!!! This aged sheng pu erh is full of complexity. Sweet, earthy, very very mild bitterness (less than most sheng), spice, straw, air this tea keeps me present during sessions to appreciate all the subtleties of it’s flavor and character. The BEST cha qi I’ve ever experienced in a tea. Available at thechineseteashop.com When I first sampled this tea in their store I was on lunch break from a seminar I was attending, I was transported into tea heaven and completely lost track of time and was 2 hours late back to the seminar. I did not care, as I had just had one of the best tea experineces of my life. I bought a cake at the then price of $150 and it’s good enough that I’m considering getting another for long term storage. This tea would get a 100, except I’m the type of person that believes in the possiblity of something better that I just haven’t tried yet. This tea will be hard to beat though, I just love it! Truly a gift and a pleasure to taste this tea.

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 7 g 6 OZ / 185 ML
Cwyn

Wait, what? Tea that results in forgetting work? Sold, in for one.

awilsondc

Hahaha, it was probably a combination of teas… the culmination of the tea journey I was on. I entered the shop and they were in the middle of a session of aged 80’s liu an which they offered me to sit in on, we then sampled an aged 80’s sheng which was phenomenal. After a tea lesson from Daniel at The Chinese Tea Shop I was ready to buy this tea, but he said NO! You have to try it first! :) So we sampled this one along with a 90’s sheng/shou combo which I also ended up buying. The culmination of the whole experience was a feeling I will not forget. And hey, who cares about work anyhow… :)

Cwyn

Ok doc I just got this cake in the mail today. It does look rather aged, has a wet storage smell but not real intense, and was in a plastic bag too. It seems like it was well taken care of. I will let it air out a couple days and try and repeat the experience you had, also because a follow up with a bit of shou like you had is prudent on the system. I’ve learned that from our other doc on here Yang-chu.

Cwyn

Btw, found it on Taobao for about $30, or a bit less if you want to accept a more bug bitten wrapper.

mrmopar

Cwyn please share the link….Please…. :)

awilsondc

Did you get it from taobao then? I’m also curious about that link! Let us know how you like it!

Cwyn

It is jiujiucha.taobao.com. There are two cakes on the page, the bug bitten one at the top is a “Storm Deal,” the one further down the shop page is the same, I think. Mrmopar, you might recall Hobbes reviewed this cake awhile back. I think it is a 2001 myself, but what do I know.

mrmopar

Woo Hooo Thanks! I will check it out and Hobbes notes on it.

mrmopar

Who is your broker for Taobao?

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