Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Ways I Appreciate/Evaluate Bulang


I am finally getting around to replacing my dwindling stock of aged and semi aged Bulang.  I must only have around a cake left of aged Bulang at my disposal.  I have a few more cakes of some semi-aged that I dip into but that isn’t aged out enough yet to drink.  At this rate the drinkable stuff will be gone in a year or so- not good.  In a way, composing this post is also guiding or putting into print exactly what I am looking for in some replacement Bulang.

I do have a bit of experience with the Bulang area.  Interestingly, most of my experience with Bulang was around 15 years ago so the stuff I was drinking at that time was mainly 90s more humidly stored Bulang.  A lot of it was sometimes hard to for me to distinguish from aged Menghai.  What is going on now with Bulang is probably a lot different than what I’m used to.  It seems like not that much is actually going on with Western puerh vendors pressing fresh Bulang these days.  I predict a resurgence in interest in Bulang over the next few years for Westren puerh drinkers much in the same way Lao Man E experienced a surge in the West over the last 2 years.   New trends aside, I’m used to classic Bulang character anyways and that’s what I’m after…

The simplest reduction of the Bulang character for me is that it has a bitter profile in the first handful of infusions which then turn into sweet infusions around steeps 5-8 onward.  There is always a strong, alerting chaqi which is especially apparent in the chest.  There is always smoke even if just faintly or on the dry leaf but sometimes the smoke on Bulang can be a bit aggressive.  It is my understanding that the reason that (at least historically) Bulang had some smokey notes is because of the remoteness of Bulang.  The processing was done a lot more crudely by local minorities that were geographically isolated from puerh factories.    Anyways, most bulang are this: always bitter, then sweet, and have strong qi and some smoke.

When I think about Bulang I usually think about three different character types of Bulang puerh.  Bulang is a huge producing area and covers a lot of territory and there is much more variability in its overall character than some smaller puerh regions.  In reality these character types can overlap or can even contain a bit of each but for clarity’s sake I keep them separate in my head:

1-      The bitter and creamy sweet Bulang.


This bulang starts with a distinct flat bitterness from which a creamy often coco or milky sweetness emerges in the returning sweetness after a pungent coolness.  This profile is highlights the balance of bitter and sweet leaning to more bitter usually.  This profile seems to be accentuated by/ or as a result of more humid than dry aging.


2-      The herbaceous, woody, and medicinal Bulang.

This bulang has very little if any sweetness but still has bitter and tastes woody, herby, sometimes like cooking herbs and other times like medicinal herbs.  This profile highlights subtle medicinal nuances.  As it ages it develops Traditional Chinese Medicine like tastes.


3-      The fruity, floral and less bitter Bulang.

This Bulang has some brighter fruit and/or floral sweetnesses throughout the profile that are often brought out by the bitterness.  This profile highlights lighter and sweeter notes such as fruits and florals but often the flat bitterness is still the main taste.  This profile has a subtle and distant resemblance to the Ban Zhang producing area and some even reminds me of Lao Ban Zhang.  This profile seems to do better with drier storage, I believe.

Personally, I prefer mainly the first profile but that is mainly due to my exposure and purchasing that stuff many years ago.  This is my bias towards more classic tasting Bulang.  I think I would be open to the other profiles as well if it were done well or nicely integrated with the first profile.

Ok… we got some really great Bulang Mountain puerh coming up here... let’s start Bulang sampling…

Peace

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