Puerh Junky Occasions Forever Zen and Ox
Puerh Junky Occasions Forever Zen and Ox is a drive-by missive on two productions from ’09 and ’10 respectively. We’re now in the spring of ’23 and the tea is beginning to waken from the winter hibernation. Winter poses quite a challenge for many of the treasures, though it’s not possible to ascertain which. One solid point of note emerging from winter is that the items receiving oppressive humidity over the warm months improve from the respite. In fact, the cold gave these brutalized buggers a chance to dry out and brighten up. Such conditions did not apply to either of the abovementioned. Puerh Junky’s general take is variance in storage is actually a good thing, but it does make for seasonally variablity productions Thence, when a treasure is imbibed upon will elicit wildly varying results that may not necessarily reflect the intrinc charm. The challenges of winter in short are a good thing, but must be appreciated within seasonal context.
Forever Zen
An order for the ’09 Forever Zen during the week of April 9th greeted the opportunity to pull a new cake from the Yiwu storage bin, one which is rarely opened. Clear humidity had settled and panic set in. Getting Goldilocks storage is the Puerh Junky’s raison detre. As mentioned previously, the Forever Zen hailed from conservative storage, still quite young but likely to mature relatively quickly. It’s been in LA better than two years now. The idea behind the Yiwu storage is beyond just preventing the tea from drying out. There needs to sufficient humidity to allow for transformation to continue, whereby sweetness and flavour will continue to evolve. At the same time, the ole Junky doesn’t want humidity to settle into the flavour.
Initial impressions where that that humid aroma was undeniable. Frantically, I tried the FZ and boy was it ever humid. Fresh from storage, it was too humid. Perhaps too hastily a total revamping of storage began, while leaving the lid of the Yiwu container off for a couple days. The rearranging changed little, but it will necessitate more frequent visits to each container. The greatest advantage of this approach will be that there will be next to no difference between samples and cakes. This will come at the cost of sustained humidification. C’est la vie.
This 16th April Forever Zen received a second visit. A huge sigh of relief. The vanilla shines through and the Manzhuan minerality emerges with subsequent infusions. Sweetness is now deeper and the course of treatment appears rightly Los Angeles. I regularly see the posts about storing in the States that are wholly perplexing, a kind of view that presumes that storing in Seattle is the same as Olympia, Phoenix, or Augusta. I don’t get such takes. There’s a vast difference between Oakland and SF. What gives with conflating Omaha with Tampa? Ho-hum.
Forever Zen is for those who know their Yiwu, specifically know their Manzhuan from their Yibang. FZ is not the product of sheisty processing. The sugars have emerged in a manner consistent with proper processing. It’s getting sweeter. The variegated color of the leaves reflects what appears to be layered transformation. Uniform aging doesn’t altogether make sense, as the cake itself is layered.
Where the FZ will go is anyone’s guess. Manzhuan typically do not turn to wood. They just evolve to ever more aged expressions of Zen. FZ is now is sweet vanilla with slight minerality. There is an faint undertow of green, but which could only be detected when tasting side-by-side with the wet-stored Ox.
Cashed leaves.
Ox, 6FTM
The Ox, 6FTM no longer possesses any of the humidity of its early storage conditions. It’s actually moving into the heicha zone. An apricot note, heretofore absent, is now front and center. It’s a surprising development but a tribute to the masterful stages of storage. A marked difference between heicha and puerh of a certain age is zing, a fizziness. Heicha never zings, but zing is a trademark of puerh enjoyability. The Ox is beyond its fizzy stage, particularly because it was previously wet stored. It’s not flat and the qi is characteristic of the 6FTM Lunar Series of being remarkable, but it doesn’t zing.
None of the other Lunar Series have been humid stored. It’s plausible that the Ox was a singular year of experimentation by the 6FTM. All Ox versions purchaed have been humid, caveate being that the Tiger has never been sampled and those before the Year of the Rat have tended toward conservative storage. Compression from year-to-year has varied in this series; the composition has remained the same. By ’11 Rabbit, compression had morphed to qualitatively looser.
The pressing of the Ox is not a compressed as its predecessor, Rat. Given its age and storage, Ox is now more rarefied. None of the humidity presents itself now. It is clean and fruity, reflecting an offering about ten years older than its age of production. All of the offerings of the 6FTM Lunar Series represent collectors’ items. There’s maybe one more Ox left.
Wrap Up
The Forever Zen and the Ox represent two qualitative different puerh productions in terms of terror and in the eyes of the market. Forever Zen is a Manzhuan, an Yiwu terroir probabably more Zen than an any other. The condender is Mansa/Yiwu Zhenshan. With Mansa the transformation is decidedly toward petrol, where Manzhuan maintains its Zen nature. I have a late 90s Manzhuan that has only transformed into a chrystaline Zen, and this may be the long term for the FZ.
The Ox is a recipe comprised of material from three terroir, Fengqing, Simao, and Menghai. It is now supercedes any of the other productions in terms of aging. This has manifest as apricot. The character is of an aged heicha. The qi is uplifting and immediately present. For serious quality aged puerh drinkers, it’s undoubtedly next level.
Both productions have great longevity.
