pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
Drinking YSYX Pursue ripe tuo from puershop. This is a great little tea, and very cheap. Just a few bucks. I really had to pack the leaves in there, but the flavor was nice, sweet and smooth. The leaf quality looks good, too.
Today 2014 White2Tea LaoMan’E. I like this tea for all the reasons I never though I would. I got it because the name promises an unparallelled bitterness(pleasant), but it offers much more.
Dry it is straight forward with faint bitter/medicinal notes and a hint of sweet on the back. Wet, it offers a new complexity of medicinal-bitter notes, an almost citrus-y fruit note and tropical fruits in the back, there’s some herbaceous and mineral notes at the end scent.
The liquor is surprisingly mellow and subtle, not weak, rather gentle int he first few steeps with very apparent huigan that appears in a flat sweetness set on a bed of gentle mineral, medicinal and fruit notes. The bitterness starts to become apparent as you drink(gentle cumulative), but I would say it doesn’t really “show up” until after the 3rd-4th steep, it can get harsher or more aggressive then, but still remains pleasant. Treating myself at work today :)
Yesterday I drank the 1990’s Hong Kong Style Storage Raw Puerh from White2Tea. Marcus Reed was generous enough to give me the sample. This tea was impressive in various ways. It had a dark brown color to it, looking more like coffee than sheng puerh. It had a very strong taste of wet wood or bamboo depending on how you want to characterize it. I would say it took some eight steepings for this taste to really go away. I gave this tea twelve steepings, more than my usual. In the end I don’t think I would buy this tea. The wet storage taste is just not for me.
Today I drank the 2009 Menghai Dayi Golden Brick. This is an expensive but very good tea from Menghai Tea Factory. It started out bittersweet and with a fair but moderate amount of fermentation flavor. After about two steeps the bitterness disappeared. It took a little longer for the fermentation flavor to clear. There were a variety of notes to this tea but I was not really paying close attention. It was as good a ripe as any I have tasted from Dayi and much higher quality than the average Dayi brick.
Still drinking on the 1997 7582 sample from white2tea. 20+ steeps. The color is really light now but still has honey flavor. This vintage cake is well worth the price. More details on my blog.
Having a 2013 Bangma Ancient Tree Sheng from Tribute Tea.
I got this out to brew tonight. Time to get after things again. It has been a hiatus but time to brew again. I got 10 grams of this out. The leaf is very full, not many broken pieces just good looking dry leaf. Dry leaf has a musky, and damp grass scent to it. I gave a quick rinse and let it sit a bit to open up. I brewed in the Gaiwan for this one short steeps to start. The brew is a light golden. Taste is much thicker than the brew. It seems to be an almost cross between Lao Man ’e and Mang fei. It has a great punch to it. Some bitterness can be expected as it is still young. It takes a few sips to get the full effect. The bitter and bite seems to go and lingers with evergreen and wood notes in the background. Very clear brew on this and the strength of this makes me enjoy it much.
Flavors: Bitter, Grass, Wood, Evergreen.
The YS 2011 Man Tan Hong Teji was revisited yesterday. It is my fav under their label. Sweet is the prevailing essence, seems to yield quite a number of infusions. The colour of the brew is gorgeous, dark burgundy and clear. A hint of astringency, some earth tones at the front of the tongue. Overall, light and cheery ripe, really easy drinkin’ with a decent head-buzz.
When I first got the 2013 YS Jingmai sample from a fellow Steepstarian I wasn’t too pleased. That was more than two months ago but after letting it sit a bit it exhibits classical Jingmai characteristics: floral, sweet, bitter. Leaves are rather tiny, which is good, as I’ve noticed that the larger leaved Jingmai aren’t as floral and can exhibit entirely different characteristics. The aroma of this one is a winner, a very likeable offering under this label.
When i opened the pouch it smelled smoky, grassy and sweet.
This tea is delicious. almost no smoke detected in a brew. just faint to make things interesting.
I enjoyed it a lot. many steeps yesterday and i continue today.
7g 80ml gaiwan 200F rinse/short steeps. few secs, i didnt time them.
its easy to drink, no harsh bitterness often associated with young sheng, no astringency ( but again i kept my steeps short). lovely tea overall.
Our Bai Ying Shan from last year is noticeably more smoky. They were still roasting in their home. They used a tea leaf only wok, but there was no chimney. The walls are black from 30 years of smoke. It does make the hanging salted pig legs taste great though. We convinced them to build a simple tea processing house next door with proper smoke chimneys. They’ve done that now and it has helped a lot!
I have no problem with smoky teas but some people do. So i believe this tea is very safe for those
Agreed, if I had a problem with smokey teas I wouldn’t love Xiaguan as much as I do. That said it is a quality we attempt to keep out of our teas. Whispering Sunshine has a bit more smokiness because it was raining during the sun drying stage and he had to put the leaves indoors until the rain stopped. We’ve given him some ideas about how to build a retractable sun roof thing but he hasn’t had the time yet.
Lol… that amuses me highly with the name. But I agree with Boychik, it had a delicious level of smoke!
The sun stopped whispering when the clouds came by for a listen. “Sometimes Whispering Sunshine” was too long though.
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