pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

2013 Wymm Tea “Jingmai Ancient Arbor” Spring
I’ve been working on this sheng over the past three days. This is Wymm Tea’s most expensive offering and I have been curious about it for some time. I was delighted to receive a sample with a recent order during their Mid-Autumn Festival sale. High quality, carefully rolled beautiful whole leaves. Mild but solid aroma coming from the dry leaf. After two quick rinses, the wet leaves offer a dark earthy scent. First cup or two seem bitter and tart but the tea liquor smooths out and turns sweeter in later steepings. Thick mouthfeel. After three cups, my mouth is left rather dry. Nice longevity. This is a strong tea with a bite to it. I do believe that it is made of very good raw material but for my tastes, it will need to mature over the next few years. At that time, I am quite sure I would find it very appealing.

so i find that i like drinking teavivre’s fenqqing raw tuocha that’s been rinsed and steeped in hot a few times but this time just adding water from the filter. the gaiwan gives the experience a nice feel :)

Hey hey hey friends.

Just letting you all know our Autumn harvest is now available :) It will go live online at 1030 am PST Today, October 7. The tea was picked about one week ago, so ridiculously fresh.

Use CODE steepsterfriends at checkout for a FREE $15 off.

Organic, hand-crafted from one family, green Pu’er.

Hope to share and see how you all love it. It was a VERY rain year so the harvest is so smooth and a bit sweeter than normal. You will be very pleased :)

Today I drank a ripe tea from Teavivre, the Menghai Palace Ripened Puerh Cake Tea 2008. This is a really tasty ripe. One of the best ripes I’ve had. It was sweet in the beginning. Then some bitterness crept in. Then it became sweet again. There were no unpleasant notes, no sour notes or wet storage taste. There was a moderate amount of fermentation flavor to the tea, it had only partially cleared. I had had a free sample of this from Angel at Teavivre a while ago but finally got around to ordering a cake when they had their sale a couple of months ago. This is one that I definitely recommend. A high quality ripe at a reasonable price.

I tried the 2006 ripe mini cake from the October White2tea tea club. It was decent, but I didn’t find it all that great. Nicely aged, good basic flavor, but it kind of fell flat for me when all was said and done.

It’s a two tea day! Going through some more of my Chawangshop samples. Today it was the 1998 Gan Xiang Jiu Yun Raw.

This was a very interesting and quite enjoyable aged pu erh. It was quite different than what one might expect, it really didn’t fit the expected profile of an aged pu erh. The broth was amber colored and clear. The taste was very fruity, with upfront flavors of raisins or plums, almost like an aged oolong. But underneath the dried fruit was a light shu type flavor, or maybe even something like a straight black tea; very smooth. It also had a bit of sharp bitterness, but it was an unusual bitterness, not astringent. Almost like burnt. In many ways, it reminded me of Slumbering Dragon from Crimson Lotus, particularly in terms of what the bitterness was like, though that tea doesn’t have much fruit upfront (at least right now). High qi! I was flyin’. The leaves were large (but often in pieces). I found this to be a very unusual tea, and I really like it a lot. Unfortunately, only samples are available, and it is $25 for a 25g sample. I found an old review on the internet from 2011, when this tea first became available, and a 400g cake went for around $30 back then. Man, those must have been good times for pu erh collectors!!

Today I drank a somewhat bitter but tasty raw from Yunnan Sourcing USA, the 2013 Yunnan Sourcing “Yi Wu Gu Shu” Raw Puerh Tea Cake. This tea was fairly bitter at the start. It slowly evolved into something more sweet than bitter. When I put up my review on this tea I said I hadn’t felt much as far as qi. Well the qi has caught up with me now and I am feeling an effect from this tea. I would not quite use the term tea drunk but its close. I gave this tea twelve steeps in a 60 ml gaiwan and it was quite good. At only $67 it’s a good price for gushu tea. Because I trust the source I believe it is gushu. A lot of sellers I would not trust at that price. Too many try to take advantage. In the end there was still a bitter aftertaste to this tea but it was quite taste. It seemed high quality but that is hard to define. It is still a young sheng. It hadn’t aged much having a light yellow colored tea soup to it. Overall this tea is worth a shot. I think if I wanted to continue I would get at least four or five more steeps out of this tea.

Today I drank a ripe from Berylleb King Tea, the 2010 Yunnan Menghai Dayi Yunding Ripe Puerh Tea. This tea was fairly bittersweet. It took a number of steeps for the bitter taste to go away. Despite this it was tasty. It also had a lot of fermentation flavor to it. It had only cleared a little. Overall I rate this tea quite highly for value. It was only around $50 or so for a good quality Dayi ripe. I didn’t notice any qi to it.

Time for a special tea today! The 2015 Gushu Rareness by pu-erh.sk
This is an excellent tea with a high price tag from pu-erh.sk. I got a sample of it with their 2015 sample pack (which I wish other vendors would offer!). The first couple of steps were slightly smoky and savory. Then it got buttery, a little floral, a little bitter, and somewhat fruity. Very powerful, thick, and hearty. It has some of that burnt bitterness similar to Slumbering Dragon, possibly because this tea also is made in part from giant old wild trees. The pictures on the website are cool.

Anyway, very good tea which I would buy in a heartbeat if it weren’t over the top in price. Currently this sells for 309 euros for a 250g cake.

Today a 2010 V93. Not the best shou but is a good daily drinker.