The end of Mopar's Journey

Onward we press

Welcome back to the table. It’s been a minute since we’ve sat down together, and I’ve missed talking to you. I promised you that I would reflect on my blind tasting courtesy of mopar, and reflect I have. Coming to a tea blind is probably the best way to drink a tea. My mother-in-law is afforded this opportunity with me every time she has a cup. I bring the tea, she doesn’t ask what it is, but just drinks.

Working through the sampler, I wasn’t able to bring any prejudice to the table. There was no wrapper, terroir, storage, year, price, or anything else to inform me of what I should be experiencing. I simply experienced it. I do suppose that is what our drinking is all about. It taught me that I could do a better job of appreciating what is in my cup, when it’s in my cup.

I also learned (or shall I say remembered) that when I write coming from a place with nothing to say, the writing is less inspired and certainly less fun. At the tail end of the sampler, I was beginning to feel burnout with not only the writing, but also the tea. There is no final destination here. It is not a race. It’s certainly not a job. There is no reason for me to treat it as such.

Did I learn anything about puerh though? Well, some thoughts were reconfirmed. Storage matters. I won’t pretend to wax on what storage is better, because everyone has preferences. I have preferences myself, and this tasting reflected that. It’s also very clear that I continue to like bulang and yiwu. And of course, there is value to be found in cheap teas if you know where to look and how to look for them.

But, I learned that you can’t always bring your prejudices and expectations of a tea to the table no matter how sorted and learned they are. There were a number of times in this tasting where I was certain I was having something I wasn’t. There were a couple of yiwu for example that I was totally sure were not yiwu. It made my world a little bigger.

In the interim, I’ve been drinking lots of tea as per usual. I’ve bought a lot of tea as well. I’ve even ventured into the deep mystical world that is called Taobao. I broke some of my rules that I vowed to never break. Taobao being one of them, spending more on a cake than my self-imposed limit the other. Some rules are meant to be broken if the goal is growth, I guess.

So here in the future you’ll be hearing more about teas I own, teas I’ve bought, teas I’m looking at, etc. For now, I’ll leave you with how my journey with mopar ultimately concluded. Out of all the teas I sampled, including the love forever paper tong (which was not blind), I ended up buying the LFPT and the 2008 CSH Green Mark. I’m very happy with those purchases. Mopar being the cheeky devil he is decided to send a sample of a 1989 red mark. I’d like to give some thoughts on it.

This was the oldest tea I’ve had the privilege of tasting, and I don’t see breaking that record anytime soon. The storage is light on this tea. Perhaps HK at some point, but not recently. It has the old taste – fall leaves, petrichor, earthiness. It is sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. A bit of funkiness that reminded me of buttered popcorn. My sessions yielded lots of camphor. It was in the mouth, nose, throat, chest. As the tea was pressed, notes of dates, Chinese medicine, and a very strong beet note came about. The longevity was great. I actually preferred it in the gaiwan over clay because the storage was clean enough. The camphor became more muted in clay.

Now, the feeling? Most everyone who has had this tea notes it’s a qi tea more than a taster’s tea. People drink it and tend to feel stoned, sleepy, zonked, etc. I myself felt very happy and the tea put a smile on my face. I think it had more to do with my tasting than it did the qi though. I loved this tea, and what a privilege it was to taste it.

Thanks again mopar, and thank you all for joining me at the table again. The journey continues: with no destination in mind, and at no set pace to get there.