Benshan clay pot, and how it performs

I have been looking for a Chinese clay pot to infuse my high mountain oolongs from Taiwan (and the little Anxi oolong from mainland China that I drink, as they are produced in a similar style). So far, I’ve brewed these rolled-leaf teas in a porcelain gaiwan, but I’ve been looking to expand the horizons of these teas a bit.

I have been facing two problems. One is that these oolongs are very high in aroma, often with lifted floral and exotic fruit notes, which tend to be slightly handicapped by brewing in certain types of clay (in my experience); the choice of a Yixing-style teapot usually aims at improving your tea’s mouthfeel more than anything. The mouthfeel of gaoshan oolong is important to me but so is the aroma.

The other dilemma is that some of those oolongs are very slightly oxidised and unroasted, essentially bringing them fairly close to a green tea, while others have higher oxidation and, importantly, a medium to high roast. My teapot of choice would need to work equally well with both types. Is it at all possible, I wondered?

Recommendation for rolled oolong teapot usually steer towards tighter, harder, less porous clays whose effect on the tea is a little more discreet and gentle. Zhuni pots are one match that seems to be recurrent among experts. But I already own a zhuni pot that I felt wasn’t doing a great job with the unroasted types.

Placing an order for 2009 puer recently with Yunnan Sourcing, I browsed their selection and found some green clay teapots made of Benshan clay (similar to duanni clay I understand, but more green-coloured). Green clay tends to get mixed reviews. Some people like it, while others dismiss it altogether even going as far to say it’s only good for display purposes. This ‘dragon egg’ shaped teapot was $35 so I thought I’d give it a go. It is not a masterpiece of craftsmanship but a solidly built piece of equipment with thick, temperature-retaining walls and a swift pour.

I must say it’s really performing well. I wasn’t expecting miracles but the difference in the quality of the brew is very clear from beginning to end. It actually happens to fit my purpose very well indeed, performing equally well with the unroasted and roasted oolongs.

Here are some summarised tasting notes from brewing two identical teas in both porcelain gaiwan and Benshan teapot. Parameters were 3.5g of leaf for 120ml boiling water, infusions of 40s and 20s (I didn’t continue the experiment beyond the second brewing).  

2008 Spring Fenghuang ‘Verger de Montagne’ oolong (purchased for Teamasters)
The gaiwan produces an unremarkable lid aroma and a simple brew aroma but the taste is very good, balanced, with plenty of yun sweetness. However on the finish there is quite a vegetal edge to this slightly stale 2008 tea perhaps. A second brew is again a very good quality cup, very nicely composed with floral-fruity sweetness and buttery density. Now more balanced, less vegetal than #1.

 In the Benshan pot, there is a considerable difference already in the aroma of dry leaves warming in the pot: while the gaiwan is emphasising the caramel and light roast, Benshan pot is exuding a lovely floral, clean, sweet aroma. Brew colour is also visibly darker. A sweet, fat, floral buttery lid aroma. The brew is obviously a little stronger than in the gaiwan, slightly more drying, less immediate and buttery-smacky but admittedly a little more complete. It definitely rounds off the vegetal edge. In a second 20s brewing, the difference is less pronounced, though the Benshan pot colour is still a little darker golden, and there is more dark honey spice sweetness, and obviously more complexity.  

Very similar colour of #2 brew in gaiwan (left) and Benshan pot (right).

2009 Spring Dongding ‘Classique’ [medium roast] oolong (purchased from Teamasters)  

Here again the gaiwan gives an entirely satisfying brew with a balanced roast, good creaminess both in aroma and flavour, and a bit of dryness on end. But the second brewing might have been just a bit too long here with 20 seconds, with the tea showing quite vegetal, drying and a little chaotic.  

In Benshan clay, the warmed dry leaf aroma before you pour water in is more exciting, with a more succulent roastiness and a touch of raspberry. And there is definitely more precision in the brew aroma, where the roast is mellowed and there are finer, subtler notes of white butter. It is a rounder, richer, more generous tea from this pot. A second 15s brewing is much heftier here, dark-coloured into orange, and dominated by roast, but seemingly less overbrewed and unbalanced than in the gaiwan.

Expired leaves of the 2009 Dongding Classique: what a skillful roast here.

Bottom line: the Benshan clay pot is doing a great job in removing some of the hard edges of the tea (though admittedly both teas I chose were extremely high quality and hardly in need of ‘correction’, so we’re talking minor fine details of aroma and flavour here). It works well both with the drying-tannic vegetality of unroasted types, and the throat-drying action of the less well balanced roast in the roasted types. At the same time the texture is enhanced, and the tea tastes rounder, more voluminous and complete. Importantly, my fears about the aroma being diminished found no confirmation. If anything, the aroma was more complex and precise from the clay pot than from the gaiwan. It was an interesting experiment and I think for any more inquisitive session, I will now be using the Benshan pot as a standard. 

In Tokaj (2): The grassroots revolution

Tokaj made its name on botrytised sweet wines, aszú, yet as mentioned in my previous post, these have fallen out of fashion and become notoriously difficult to sell both on the domestic market and export. As Tokaj has had to find a proper productive balance to survive at all – it’s actually a work in progress – the unthinkable has happened: it’s now possible to taste through several dozen Tokaj wines and climb to 90+ ratings without having a single botrytis wines on the table. It’s what happened to me last Friday when I met with the young up-and-coming vintners of the Tokaji Bormívelők Társarsága (that’s Tokaj Wine Artisans’ Society, you’ve guessed it, but let’s call it TBT hereafter).

Classified vineyards of Tokaj. © TBT (click for more info).

They’re a weird bunch really. Zsolt Berger was a business journalist before he came to Tokaj and started making wine out of the blue. Attila Homonna (see a brief entry about him here) was a successful marketing guy and then owned a wine shop in Debrecen but he got the Tokaj bug too; it’s all made remarkable by the fact that after 8 vintages made he’s still only 35. Judit Bodó (née Bott, which is the name of her winery) came from Slovakia without the merest experience in winemaking (though she’s travelled to vineyards in Alto Adige and South Africa to learn, on her own expenses); in the first couple of years of production her dry Furmints instantly propelled her into the regional superleague. There are arguably some very successful autodidacts in the wine world but nowhere in such high proportion.

The fact that it took a young generation with little or no background in winemaking to produce some of the most breathtaking dry wines in Tokaj is a paradox that one day, I hope, will become the subject of a sociological and psychological study. But it’s another fact that the heroes of the 1990s focused on the sweet wines and haven’t really come to terms with making world-class dries. (The situation is vaguely similar to that of port and dry Douro wines in Portugal). Sure, there have been some successful bottlings such as Oremus’ Burgundian Mandolás or János Árvay’s turbocharged (and excessive) single-vineyard Furmints, but it was not the breakthrough Tokaj needed to establish itself firmly on the great dry white wine map of the world.

Zsolt Berger tasting a luminous 2009.

It was István Szepsy, the region’s veteran and consistently the author of its greatest sweet aszús, who showed the way with his 2000 Úrágya Furmint. Old vineyards, low yields, ripe but unbotrytised grapes, oak fermentation, big structure (but balanced alcohol) and a touch of residual sugar to balance Furmint’s notoriously punchy acids: Szepsy’s recipe for success has now been developed by a large group of dedicated estates.

They all have a few points in common: they are small (‘boutique’ or ‘garage’ is a good descriptor here), own pockets of vines in Tokaj’s most prestigious vineyards (that were listed in 1700 in Europe’s earliest attempt at vineyard classification), make little or no sweet wine, and have an ambition of making Tokaj a great terroir white, rather than a FMCG marketable alternative to save the company cashflow. In 2006 the Artisans’ Society (TBT) was created: a list of classified crus was drawn, members meet, talk and taste together, agreeing on which submitted wines adhere to the strict criteria and the overall philosophy of the project. Those that pass the exam get the TBT logo. The system works a bit like the Grosses Gewächs one in Germany, and in due time will hopefully become the foundation for Tokaj’s official premiers and grands crus.

A happy TBT bunch: Hajnalka Prácser of Erszébet, Stéphanie Berecz of Kikelet, Sarolta Bárdos of Tokaj Nobilis with her 3-month-old daughter, Judit Bodó of Bott, and Zoltán Asztalos of Néktar. 

We’ve tasted some impossibly limpid, pithy, stoney-mineral 2007s and 2008s from Attila Homonna, and a very idiosyncratic 2008 Palandor Furmint from Karádi & Berger: peppery, violent, very volcanic indeed, with a rare expressiveness (the 2007 is a touch shier and there is also a 2003 Dry Szamorodni, essentially a mildly oxidative version of the same wine). We’ve tasted the impressive 2007 Öreg Király from Károly Barta, vinified by Homonna from high-perched terraces in this, perhaps Tokaj’s most majestic and uncompromisingly mineral cru. Béla Török showed some fun wines including a 2008 semi-dry Muscat of rarely seen minerality. Stéphanie & Zsolt Berecz from the Kikelet estate poured a delicious sweet 2007 Late Harvest but also my favourite expression of Hárslevelű (Tokaj’s second grape variety), zesty, witty, springtime-refreshing instead of the chunky, alcoholic, oxidative thing it so often becomes. Sarolta Bárdos and Péter Molnár of Tokaj Nobilis also make an excellent Hárs as well as a pure and limey 2008 Furmint from the cru of Barakonyi (and an intriguing semi-sweet Spätlese-styled Kövérszőlő, from Tokaj’s oldest, almost extinct variety). Judit Bott surpassed herself with a 2008 Csontos Furmint that has about the best mineral and structural balance I’ve seen in the region.

I tasted 60 Tokajs on that Friday and there was hardly a sweet botrytised aszú in sight. And yet it was as exciting as if I’d been in, say, Chablis or Rüdesheim. Revolutions always start quietly but eventually turn our world upside down. This one is no exception.

In Tokaj (1): Wounded heroes

For the visitor from outside, wintertime Hungary is depressive. The derelict villages are desert and the atmospheric depression coincides with very harsh economic times for Tokaj. A mixture of unwise business decisions from the late 1990s and Hungary’s suicidal governmental policy of the last few years has resulted in a complete standstill of sweet wine sales. Large companies are reporting hundreds of thousands €’s losses, and many small estates are struggling to survive.

 

It’s an irony that this decadence is coinciding with the production of the world’s very best sweet wines. I apologise to those Yquem or Kracher or Egon Müller lovers out there but they cannot really equal the sheer sensual bliss of a Királyudvar Lapis Aszú 2002 or István Szepsy 2003. This simple truth found more than a few confirmations during my short stay here in Tokaj.

Vineyards on the eastern slope of Tokaj Hill.

 

It is also becoming clear that after the royal duo of 1999 and 2000 and some extremely convincing 2002s, it’s 2003 and 2006 that are now delivering Tokaj’s best wines of the decade. (They will need to last a few years; there was almost no sweet wine made in 2009 to due adverse autumn weather). 2003, Europe’s hottest and driest vintage on record, gave birth to some mildly atypical but fantastically tense and driven botrytis wines that will live the life of a generation, or two. My tastings have been far from exhaustive but István Szepsy, Zoltán Demeter, Úri Borok’s Szt. Tamás, Royal Tokaji’s Mézes Mály, and even the lesser-known Erzsébet’s Aszúeszencia provided the most excitement; Demeter’s 260g-sugar, 10.5g-acids warhorse might well be the wine of the vintage. 

Tokaj, as mentioned, is in crisis. Thousands of bottles of botrytis aszú going as back as 1998 remain unsold, and the obvious vineyard buying & planting overenthusiasm of the late 1990s has now become a serious hickup. I’ve seen one winery where dry whites from 2007 are still in tank because there’s no cash to buy bottles. Those estates that debuted on more realistic business estimations later in the 2000s are faring better, basing their turnover on dry wines, but it’s still far from an easy game: in a region where low yields and long ageing is a prerequisite of quality costs remain high, and Furmint is hardly an automatic selling card on export markets.

Tokaj needs some cleaning.

But moments of crisis are a good time to make friends. Although Tokajers seem keen on keeping their prices where they’ve been (I’ve seen almost none of the unsold stock discounted), they'll appreciate your purchase and especially your fidelity. Next time you’re after a solid mineral white with lots of terroir identity that goes brilliantly well with food, forget those Mâcons, Rheingaus and Savennières for once, and ask for Hungarian Furmint. You’ll be surprised – and might well be hooked for life.

Attila Homonna Furmint Határi 2006

Attila Homonna building his winery in June 2005.

I’m on my way to Tokaj to get updated on the latest vintage (and an overdose of residual sugar). In my habit of tuning up my palate to upcoming tasting I opened this bottle from microproducer Attila Homonna. He’s a mildly crazy fellow in his early 30s who started a 1-hectare estate out of the blue in 2002. The first wine he ever made, the Furmint Ordinarium 2002, was one of heck of a mind-blowing late-harvest Furmint that gave Zind-Humbrecht and Marcel Deiss a good run for their money. (I remember roaming around Vinexpo 2005 giving people a taste of the stuff and trying to spread the word, including to a politely uninterested Steven Spurrier). 

Homonna’s breakthrough came in 2005 when his high-perched, ungrafted 80-year-old vines in the vineyard of Határi produced arguably the best dry wine of the vintage in Tokaj. Now Homonna is known to the cognoscenti and can charge 25€ for a bottle.

This 2006 Határi is very impressive in that it comes from a very difficult vintage. Excessive summer heat produced unbalanced dry Furmints with high alcohol and burnt fruit. The high elevation of Határi was no remedy. But Homonna judiciously picked early and made a wine that is a gem of vibrancy and mineral structure. It needs airing though, being dominated upon opening by dusty-varnishy oak of not very high quality (a recurrent problem in Hungarian white wines, that I attribute to poorly seasoned oak). In fact it’s easy to dismiss the wine as unbalanced and drying on the palate. Decant in a tall carafe and chill for 5–6 hours and you’ll be astonished by the change: a core of appetizing tangerine fruit, Furmint’s iron-cast acidic structure, a pure crystalline minerality, length, length, depth, solidity. It’s not a perfect wine in terms of winemaking but the stellar quality of the terroir is strongly shining through. The wine easily surpassed a 2006 Furmint from regional star István Szepsy that I opened alongside.

Stay tuned for live reports from Tokaj over the next few days. 

2006 12 Gents Dabaihao

Time for more puer today. Here’s the 2006 Dabaihao cake from the 12 Gentlemen company, available through NadaCha for £28 / cake.

I reviewed four teas from 12 Gents back in March 2009 (see links below and archive link on the left). I have a weakness for their productions: they process some impressive leaves and have a very elegant, subdued, sweet style I enjoy very much. That being said, these are pricey teas, and brewing this sample from Nada made me realise they more often than not lack a bit of expression and oomph.

The dry leaves look very similar to the 2006 12 Gents Yiwu, and quite different from the 2007 Yiwu and Menghai: while the latter have small leaves and tight compression, both 2006 cakes are loosely pressed and consist of impressively intact, large, healthy leaves that have a glorious sweet tobacco & vanilla smell. Contact with the uninfused sample couldn’t really be better.

I’ve had several sessions with tea, both in porcelain gaiwan and in yixing clay pot (the latter surely more successful, with more body and juiciness). No matter how high you dose (I’ve reached 7g / 140ml which is about as much as I can put into my pot without squeezing the leaves) this tea is fairly unintense and light-bodied. The initial infusions are particularly puzzling, very simple, light-coloured, low on fruit, dominated by a beany profile, with a smokey hint on the finish the only real point of interest. Yet there is also notable patience in the xiangbei [aroma cup] which is one of the lovelier I’ve encountered of late, starting with sweet tobacco and evolving lengthily into caramel and candies; it’s really a very ‘long’ smell.

You have to push this tea quite a bit, with a high dosage and brewing times as long as 1 minute by infusion #4 to coax any intensity and character from it. A bone-dry tea, broad-shouldered, architectural, mineral, smokey, never too bitter though with more than a hint of dryness at end (emphasised not the lack of much flavour at mid-palate); notes of mushrooms, a bit of wood, white beans throughout the sessions, a mere hint of smoke.

I really wanted to like this tea in order to keep my positive feelings about the 12 Gents production. But in all honesty, as much as I was looking throughout the session for the tea to finally reach a satisfying extraction, it never happened. It just lacks content; it’s thin and vague. On the positive side it’s clean and noble in aroma, and both the dry and infused leaves are a joy to look at. But it’s just not enough to justify a £28 cake. 

Guest tea

Went to a friends’ house today. We’ve had cakes and Saracco’s 2009 Moscato d’Asti, and tea. I brewed my 2008 Otowa Karigane (it’s going stale now, but people enjoyed it nonetheless; a tricky tea to brew in a large pot, though) and 2008 Teamasters’ Oriental Beauty. The hosts also offered their own tea, and this is where the surprise came. They’ve been to China for business in November and brought back a pressed bing [cake] of puer tea, and a gaiwan with assorted cups. 

Well, it might not sound so romantic but I’ve never seen a bing of tea in Poland before. Even tea aficionados in Poland focus exclusively on black and green tea, and ‘puer’ here denotes a rock-bottom commercial loose-leaf ‘slimming tea’. So it was quite some fun to play an away game of brewing puer in someone else’s equipment. 

The tea turned out to be a fermented [shu] tea from CNNP: the ubiquitous Yellow Mark, most likely the latest vintage on sale (2005?). Fairly ordinary tea, though well-made with a reasonable leaf grade, and tolerant in brewing. Being unfamiliar with it (and drinking almost no shu at all) I’ve dosed a bit too high, and several 10-second infusions came out dark and concentrated but not too bitter or earthy; a good sign. Bonuses came in the form of the hosts’ porcelain kettle (first time I’ve used one; it actually yields a nicely sweet water) and some good exercise at pouring six cups from a 140-ml gaiwan (at home, it’s two or three). We learn every day. 

A 1983 for 2010

Remember my post about the 1976 Baozhong? To my delight Stéphane Erler of Teamasters recently sourced another old vintage tea from Taiwan: the 1983 Spring Baozhong from Pinglin village. 

This tea is exhilarating from the very moment you open the package and smell the dry leaves: bursting with dried fruits mulled orange spice and dark honey. It’s a noticeably higher grade than the 1976: the leaves are very large and nearly all intact (on the photo below, the 1983 is to the right):  

Courtesy of the intact whole leaves, however, this tea needs an ever longer brewing time. Brewed gongfu style or even with a 5-minute competition steep, it pours a fairly pale colour and a simple, low aroma of dried fruits and apple; the palate is very pleasant, dried fruits-driven again, but not very expansive, and ending on a somewhat drying note of roast.  

The secret is to dose low (for the 150ml pot you see on the photo above, 1.5g of leaf was quite enough) but brew for as long as 20–25 minutes. (You’ll need to be periodically pouring boiling water on your pot to prevent it from cooling). In this way, the tea acquires a totally new dimension. Its texture becomes dense and oily, and the aromatic spectrum is very complex: apples, raisins, dried fruits but also grape gelée and candied exotic fruits, dark honey (there is a strong note that reminded me of the Polish buckwheat honey I reviewed here), followed by a dry roast-driven aftertaste that even has a bit of charcoal to it. (It’s possible to overbrew this tea and exasperate this dryness on the finish, hence the importance of low dosage).  

1976 and 1983 Baozhong: the former is just a tiny bit lighter.

It’s a gorgeous tea, rich yet elegant, mature yet tonic and spritely. Its profile is very typical of an aged Baozhong and much reminded me of that good old 1976 I enjoyed so much. But brewing the two teas alongside, this 1983 is revealed to be better by a margin. It is fuller and broader on the palate, and the intensity of the fruity and honeyed notes is impressive. Brewing it alone, I thought it was the drier, more roasted of the two, but actually the 1976 develops an even more pronounced dryness, and is less complete, though it’s still excellent. (Teamasters have now restocked this tea, too). The 1983 is a little less expensive, too: 36€ per 100g. It’s very affordable compared to similarly aged puer that would set you 100+€.  

This is skillful roasting: healthy green leaves open fully even after 26 years.

I take this opportunity to present you a lovely new porcelain cup: this tiny Shan Shui (‘Mountain and Water’) is a Yingdezhen-styled cup I received as a gift from Teamasters. It’s described in more detail here.  

Happy New Year

Dear Readers, best wishes for the New Year!

 

I’m not very fond of self-referential blogging but want to say on this festive occasion how rewarding it has been to run this blog and receive comments and encouragement. As I’ve topped 10,000 visits to this modest diary in exactly one year of sharing my wine and tea drinking with you, it’s proved a great experience overall. 

No big New Year’s Eve celebrations chez Bońkowski this year: we’ve been babysitting and so Champagne has been limited to a few glasses of the Pierre Moncuit Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Cuvée Pierre Moncuit-Delos – a crisp, driven, even slightly greenish Chardonnay that proved just a bit too young (though with over two years of disgorging), and a babysitter’s best friend – Moscato d’Asti. Paolo Saracco’s 2009 is a gorgeous glassful of fresh grapes, citrus and spring flowers, with balanced sweetness and great acidity, too. With 5% alcohol it was harmless to down the bottle between two, and that’s a great asset on New Year’s Eve if you ask me.

It’s my personal habit to open the best sweet wine I have (or one of the best) on New Year. Dessert wines lend themselves well to the relaxed late-morning pace I adopt on this day. This year, it was the Alois Kracher TBA No. 3 Scheurebe 1996. The late Alois Kracher was one of the greatest champions of botrytis wine in the world. Whatever the vintage, grape variety, and sweetness level he always managed to make a wine taste balanced and complete. This bottle is no different. It pours a deep amber and opens with an exhilarating liquid peach gelée nose, followed by lovely notes of toast, poppy seed and minerality. It’s really positively Tokaj-like both in the bouquet and the very good acidity that enlivens this 150+-grams-sugar wine. The palate is expansive and mildly mature, with that unmistakeable autumnal, fallen-leafy, honeyed character of great botrytis wine, and a finish that is growingly dry. It’s an auspicious wine for 2010. Happy New Year!