Wow a Teavivre Pu Erh that no one else has reviewed. I feel honoured to be the first :)
I’m full of Chinese food now and I rummaged in my bag to find my sample of this. It’s in a rather large silver sealed bag instead of the usual Teavivre sample bags and I can feel that the tea is a large piece of cake. That sounds nice … a large piece of cake. It would see I have more than one stomach, one for Chinese food and one for puddings.
Anyway I opened the bag and pulled out this large piece of broken off cake. It weighs 21g so I’m going to have to half it. There we are I now have 10g in my Gongfu. It’s a mixture of dark and medium browns in colour with a rich and slightly smoky fragrance.
Tea:10g 5 steeps:30s,1m,2m,3m,4m 100ºC/212ºF
The table above was taken from the Teavivre website so I will try following those rules, if it’s too strong then I will lower the steeping times.
Steep 1 – 30 seconds
The colour is reddy brown similar to mahogany and it smells sweet, woody, earthy but fresh. The flavour is actually quite subtle, it’s fresh and light but it has a mature sort of taste.
Steep 2 – 1 minute
The colour now is almost black and looks like cola. It tastes earthy and thick, a little sweet and woody to. Despite it’s strength it’s still fresh and smooth. The quality is starting to make itself known and I’m impressed so far.
Steep 3 – 2 minutes
It still keeps increasing in strength but remains smooth and rich but fresh. For being ripe there is still a sweetness there and no harshness at all like some lower quality Pu Erh has. This is smooth all the way with that sort of caramel finish. Smoky, woody caramel.
Steep 4 – 3 minutes
The caffeine has made me a little tea drunk, it’s pretty awesome. It’s still the same colour as cola. The sweetness is increasing but not as much as some Pu Erh, this really has balanced perfectly.
Steep 5 – 4 minutes
In a few words this tea is: rich, sweet, woody, earthy, smooth, light, fresh, mellow, smoky and a little fruity. The strength has weakened a little in this steep but I think it would easily hold for another few.
I think this is the best ripe Pu Erh I have ever tasted. It’s not heavy or bitter which is what I was expecting and it was also very consistent throughout. Delicious.
