2006 Hong Tai Chang 0802 Raw Pu-erh Tea

I’ve been drinking a lot of Thai teas lately and this one is among my favorites. Like the other Thai shengs I’ve had this one benefits from a bit more leaf and pushing a bit harder than you would a Yunnan counterpart. I get about a dozen steeps and am rewarded with caramelized nuts, Red Man chewing tobacco, curry spices and a mild cedary note I typically only get from Yibang teas. Medium bodied, very clean storage and evidently very high quality old tree material. Deep meditative qi. Doesn’t have quite the depth of an Yibang tea but at 1/4 the price or less I’m in. If I drank this blindly and you told me this was a Taiwan stored Ding Jia Zhai or something similar I probably wouldn’t argue. Interesting thing is I’ve been sampling a good bit of young Thai and Laotian material and they taste nothing like Yiwu to me. They remind me of lemongrass soup. I’ve also sampled the 0803 which is priced the same and a similar tea but has a more bitter up front taste and lacks the cedar notes. I recommend sampling any of the teas from this vendor.

Dry leaf aroma with notes of baby powder, sticky sweet dried dates, and fresh melon.

Liquor brew is orange-pink in colour and has a fruity aroma.

Tea flavour has warm chestnut sweetness with notes of melon and vegetal aftertaste.

I had another session with this tea, one of the best aged pu-erh teas in my collection. Today it wasn’t as sweet as I remember it, but the overall experience is superb.

I found it slightly more yeasty and savoury, with notes of peat, coffee, parsnip, sweet incence and lots of fragrant woody ones. The mouthfeel is juicy and perhaps even bubblier than before – a touch grainy too. The aftertaste is very pungent and expansive, it has a numbing and astringent presence with a lasting and warming huigan.

I’ve had this tea for a couple of years and have reviewed it before but not here, so since I just re-reviewed it I’ll add some notes (it’s still being sold, but of course the price goes up as years go by). I think it might be picking up some more fruit and overall complexity since I’ve first tried it. I live in Bangkok so it’s being stored in a relatively warm and humid environment; I suppose that should be a good thing.

This tea starts out with aspects close to dark wood and spice, and moves into really pronounced dried fruit, with lots of prune on the second infusion, shifting into more balanced and broader range dried fruits on the next round. After that earthiness picks up for balance, maybe a touch of tobacco. The body is fine, not as structured as it might be, but with some depth to the feel, and decent aftertaste. It brews a large number of positive infusions, transitioning less after those first few rounds, settling into a balanced version of the same aspects. More details and pictures follow, along with comparison with another 2006 Thai HTC version:

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2018/05/potential-separated-at-birth-versions.html

I added the entry for this on Steepster, and pictured here is their Sheng 0801, but it is listed together with 0802 for sale on the website using the same image, so I imagine the teas have a similar wrapper.

This tea has a rather mild aroma to it. The leaves after the rinse smell like dry fruit and manure. The infusion is a honey gold, and the taste is mild and woody with a hint of smoke and white pepper in the finish.

The second infusion is rather sweet, with a golden raisin and honey flavor, and still wood, smoke, and a bit of pepper in the finish. The sip starts mild and sweet, then transitions into the more sharp flavors in the finish. Fortunately it isn’t bitter. It’s just a bit sour. The flavor that lingers on is pepper and wood but moving the tongue around reveals hints of sweetness lingering as well.

The third infusion is even sweeter and more rich, an interesting blend of dried fruit, plum, and again strong wood and pepper notes. It’s a balancing act, as you taste all of these flavors at the same time now, creating a unique contrast. The tea feels warming and invigorating to the body as I drink it. It’s noticeably potent.

The fourth infusion is less sweet and more toward the woody flavors. And on the fifth infusion, we’re back to more sweet, so this tea I think teeter-totters a lot based on how you brew it. It’s really interesting.