shehecheyanu! the story of my first time trying and buying (good) puer

20 kislev 5781

i now knew what puer was. i watched So Han’s videos. i read some articles on the internet. i was hooked on the idea of puer. ancient, aged, wild tea leaves. aromas and tastes that rolled and turned and evolved with every cup. flavors of the forest floor, tobacco, and smoke. one of the first forms of tea. it sounded magical. so i planned a trip to seattle. 

 

i used to live on the east side and never went into seattle enough because i hated the traffic so much it didn’t feel wroth it to me. instead i spent my free time in the woods and making weird radio dramas.

 

but now, i lived in a city where there was music, there was culture, there was nature, but there was no good food. especially good Chinese food which is one of my favorite things. the city i grew up in had so much good food and so much variety. some of that food is what first made me want to be a chef. and now, here i was in a quirky city with a surprisingly good free jazz scene but no good restaurants.

 

since moving away form seattle ive enjoyed the city more as a visitor. i still have friends there and i would stay with them when i went up for concerts i couldn’t pass up (such as Shabaka Hutchins in two of his bands or seeing Sun Ra’s Arkestra led by Marshal Allen at the Columbia Theater). now my seattle trips were focused around eating Chinese food, searching for good tea, walking around smoking splits, going to free museums, hanging out with friends, and skinny dipping in lake Washington or loitering around capital hill.

 

for this trip, i planned on going to Noodle King and then to New Century Tea Gallery to buy puer for my first time.

 

when i got there, i acted my usual awkward white person self where i was too shy to sit down at the tasting table and too shy to ask to try some teas. this was my first time, i didn’t know how it works (cue vogue beat— 'first time, its hur first tyme'). i shyly mumbled that i was interested in some sheng puer and stumbled over my words explaining that i didn’t want to spend a lot of money. don’t i sound like a proprietor’s dream customer?

 

suddenly, in walks my friend who i haven’t seen in a year since i left. for real. apparently, she comes here all the time and i never knew. the owners recognize her and are all smiles and usher her to the tasting table. the male owner  starts brewing some green tea that is from his family’s tea farm in China. that’s all they say about it. i think the New Century tea owners are not known for being chatty but they do have a great selection of tea and tea wares and a beautiful large wooden tea table full of twisted knots and glossy trunk rings. 

 

the green tea was great. it was fragrant and lush and it brewed up sweet with no bitterness and was surprisingly full bodie. in walks another customer and the male owner, who was pouring the tea, got up to to go drink tea with his friend who just entered the shop. the woman who owns the store, i assume they are married, sits down to continue pouring the tea.

 

suddenly, in walks an additional person (another white person) who used to live in Seattle and who the owners also recognize. he sits down at the table and asks to try some aged sheng puer. bingo. my friend has to leave so now it is just me and this stranger. turns out, he studied acupuncture when he lived in Seattle and we start to talk about foraging for PNW plants and about Traditional Chinese Medicine (which i happen to know a little bit about because i am a plant nerd and much like my affinity for Taoism and modernist literature, i am a big fan of TCM’s allegorical mapping of the human body and plant energetics. i used to work at a land project that grew lots of Chinese medicinal herbs and had a huge Chinese medicine apothecary that the local middle-of-nowhere-acupuncturist would send her clients to. the owner of this land project also taught botany at a nearby college for Chinese medicine. while there i started reading Chinese material medicas for fun… which i still do including ones for western herbs too…).

by now, i am starting to get a touch litty on all this tea and am getting very chatty (i would only later learn the term ‘tea drunk.’ im not really a fan of that word. it feels too fratty for me).

 

these bings we were trying were going for $130 each. they were out of my price range for what i pictured that day. i am still a puer baby and i was just there to dip my toes mind you.

did i know what those cakes were? i remember one being wild purple sheng and it tasking like a good whiskey and that seemed legit. but was it worth $130? was it from a large factory? what region was it from? how old were the trees? were they plantation trees? how long was it aged? where was it aged? all of this i did not know and only until recently would i consider asking about this.

 

sure i drank tea, but what did i end up buying? i bought some 2019 spring ‘ancient tree’ green puer maocha. from where? don’t know. did i ask to try it first? no. i was new, lay off.

what else did i get? a little 100g bing that cost $18. did i ask to try it first? no. was the cake good? probably not. i did not get to find out if this was good puer because i kept it on the desk of my bus and tried it a few weeks later only to find it flavorless. i then chucked it into the woods and thought: ‘this is gonna be a long learning curve, isn’t it?’

 

the young unaged puer was actually very good. it was my first time having young puer. i remember it being strong, sweet, not too bitter, a little floral, grassy, and in the final steepings its aroma had a hint of urine (ah, just like a fine wine).

 

sadly i have not had a chance to go back to New Century Tea Gallery or seattle because of covid. but once life is on and popping again i am making sure i go to seattle to drink some lots of tea and eat some great food.