My first taste of Pu erh
Greetings,
I am fairly new to the world of Tea and have been primarily exploring Oolongs.
I would like to try Pu Erh (specifically a cake) but have no idea which to choose. I live in Queens NY. There are many large Chinese supermarkets that have a large selection of cakes. I’ve also been visiting some of the Tea shops in NYC that have higher priced Pu erh. For my fist taste, I’d prefer to keep the cost down so..any thoughts on a decent raw Pu era cake I can locate in NYC?
Thanks.
Well first I would direct you here:
http://steepster.com/discuss/12879-new-to-puerh-and-bad-experiences-with-puerh-a-helping-hand
Raw pu’erh is a massive world of its own, with a ton of variety, so I’d really recommend trying samples of different ages / regions before committing to a cake, especially if you don’t even know what puerh tastes like, a decent cake will set you back quite a bit, and if you don’t happen to like that specific cake it might set you off pu’erh altogether.
It’s almost definitely going to be easier to do that online than in a shop, unless you have a good, small, Chinese local tea shop you trust that’ll let you sit down and sip on some stuff/get samples. Good websites to start with would be white2tea, yunnansourcing, bitterleaf, puerhshop, essenceoftea to name a few.
Also, buying tea from supermarkets can be risky for sure.
Hope this helps a bit :) good luck
^ what mackie said ^
With sheng the taste-types I encounter a lot are leaf-green, floral, fruity (apricots to raisins), cooling, rounded/milky, bitter, tobacco or woodsy.
Thats such a wide range of flavours, recommending just a cake I would find hard – do you want a rounded milky yiwu, a strong bitter young bulang or something aged where the dominant notes are raisins & wood?
Because of this crazy mix of flavours there is a steep(ster) learning curve due to some (quite a lot) of these tastes being acquired – so as mackie said samples of ages/regions etc to get your knowledge of whats on offer first.
There is a New York City tea drinkers Facebook group, still really in it’s infancy now, but those few people might have some input:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1816927835213393/
I just tried a nice shou tuocha I bought in New York City two weeks ago, from Sun’s Organic Garden shop, but then that’s not what the question related to. I bought some sheng too, just not a whole cake, and I can let you know how that goes when I try it. It’s great when local sources and face to face purchasing works out but I’d agree online options might work out better in this case. You might also take a look at the Farmerleaf site, although again I think I’ve got a pu’er sample from them I didn’t get to yet at home since I just traveled instead of reviewing for a spell.
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