In my previous post on Cha Tou I stated that the best Cha Tou are ones that are smaller in size, however it is not unusual to get some the size of large marbles. I therefore thought it would be good to review some bigger “marble sized” Cha Tou.
Because the larger Cha Tou takes longer to age I have specifically selected an older tea for this review.
The Cha Tou are from the ripening process of a Xiaguan production from the 90’s that have had some storage in Shanghai for at least 10 years.
The Cha Tou are typically the size of small Chinese dates (2-3cm in length) but vary in size as well as compression, as to be expected from this type of material.
As you can appreciate from the photos the Cha Tou don’t have a uniform shape but I suspect they were picked out and graded by size so they all have roughly the same size and weight and all have some evidence of spores from storage which may make a welcome contribution to the final brew.
I did the customary two rinses, followed by a good 10 second steep in the gaiwan.
Despite fairly tight compression the nugget did show signs of opening up, this was somewhat assisted however by ensuring the water was as close to boiling I could achieve between kettle and gaiwan.
In the brew I used borehole water which is softer than most tap waters and free of chlorination. This yielded the taste of traditionally stored Puerh well without any undue “funky” flavours. The initial aromas were delicately of damp wood.
In later steepings the colour of the brew deepened, likely due to the nugget opening up further, however there were still some compact leaves in the gaiwan that benefited from being teased out.
Overall brews 1-6 were fairly consistent with some loss of profile beyond brew #7. There was no astringency when pushed a little harder and longer in the gaiwan and quite light in delivery with the woody and camphor notes that is not also unlike an aged Liu Bao.
Having read Varat’s review of a 1990’s Xiaguan ripe brick production I can certainly detect some similarities as well as that typical Xiaguan smokiness.
Despite being fairly large in size for Cha Tou I was still able to enjoy and get a fairly decent brew. I think there is a balance between size of Cha Tou and the age of the material, it would be interesting to undertake some comparison testing, comparing age and size and brew effect. I suspect there is some middle ground to be have with Cha Tou whereby the size and the age mediate the taste.
My theory would be the older the Cha Tou the better but size having a negative effect on this, such that +10 year old Cha Tou material would be definitely worth sampling, but keep it below the size of a finger nail as a rule of thumb.
Tea Medicine 