pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
2014 Bangbao Village, which has unexpectedly been my jam for the last couple of weeks. Extremely pure, sweet and green.
Full review from a couple weeks ago:
https://cuckoossong.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/2014-bangbao-village-ys/
Nice notes. I love your tea pet, I have a piggy that looks like he’s bathing in tea, love it.
Yes. Great start. Good pictures, and I’m a fan of the teas that you’ve reviewed!
Dreams of the little yellow mark…
Gonna try to go through my collection one per week… Also want to do Yunnan Sourcing’s fall 15 line, and eventually spring 16.
2015 Jingmai gushu sheng maocha from Bannacha. A very sippable daily drinker despite being very young. No bitterness or astringency of note.
Often Tuo from W2T. I started drinking this last night, I feel like this one still kicks my mouth’s butt a bit when I drink it. It has a strong bitterness of tobacco and refreshing herbs, there’s a definitive taste of mint/eucalyptus, in a savory, mushroom and buttery base. I love so many things about it and yet I have to step away from it for a while.
I continued brewing this morning before work. It was a bit mellower than last night, the body is very pleasing and thick, with a very refreshing and sweet finish that maintains some of that initial bitter note. One of my favorite things to do with this tea is to serve it in pitcher and then into my cup, only so I can take a deep ‘whiff’ of those amazing sweet and mushroom-y floral notes that come up from the recently emptied pitcher.
Today I drank a semi aged raw from Streetshop88, the 2005 Yunnan YiWu Wild Aged Tree Puerh Raw Chinese Black Cake Tea. This tea was a mixture of good and bad notes. The interesting thing about this tea was that both the good and intensely sweet note and the unpleasant that I can only think to describe as pine tar were both present initially. The unpleasant note persisted strongly for three or four steeps and the sweet note for all ten steeps. As to the age of the tea the color of the tea soup was decidedly darker than any young sheng so ten years is about right. In the end I enjoyed this tea. I’ve only been storing it for a couple of weeks. I will want to try it again in six months and see if the unpleasant note has dissipated.
2012 Huron Gold Needle and 2014 Huron Te Ji Shou, both from Whispering Pines. My friend and I did a bit of a comparison today between the two :)
2011 YS “Cha Qi" – Bitter apricots, strong, feeling that cha qi by second steeping. Moving on to some cooling in mouth, Dates? Bit of Cheek tingling. Over way too soon. I liked this one a lot, but it was over too quickly, both in taste and energy. But I’d certainly drink it again!
Had the 2014 Ai Lao Mountain Raw from YunnanSourcing yesterday and I’m glad I decided to get a cake sized sample instead of the usual 25g amount! At $30 for 400g it’s got really good value :D
Today I’m drinking Yan Luo Han Ripe grandpa style while running around at school.
Like so many of the nice teas in my collection, I purchased the 2009 Yong De Da Xue Shan Wild Arbor because of a note by Dignitea and as usual, it does not disappoint. I’m pretty sure I got the last cake. Sweet with overly ripe fruit and some top of the throat activity and laid back qi. Glad I have it.
…and I am very glad you were able to grab one. Great price for a great tea – I am quite fond of this one!
Oh and I thought I got the last one. I’ve left mine in the plastic. It is my one plastic wrapped cake, for experimental purposes of course.
@Cwyn – I tried to get two of them, but the site only let me have one, so I thought I got the last one. Since that cake came nekkid with no wrapper, I had to buy some wrappers so I could identify it in the pumi later when I forget what it is. I wish I had 5 of them.
Really? I haven’t opened mine because I use it for tea classes to show the full size leaf draped across the cake. People can see the difference between a puerh leaf and a regular leaf. Also I can pass this cake around and people touching it won’t affect the tea, I have another cake now with a big leaf from another factory in case I decide to open this one.
2013 Yiwu Xi You Gu Shu Ye Sheng Cha (Rare old tree sheng pu’er) by Great Horse Teas
I got this sample for review.
Dry leaves are nice,long,smell of hay and slight tobacco.
the brew was golden color, medium thickness. Smooth, barely detected any bitterness or astringency. some slight tobacco, honey and citrus. very pleasant and refreshing.
Today I got tired of sipping young sheng so I have now chipped or broke off some 50grams of 2006 Nian Yi Wu Shan Ye from one of the two cakes I have. Looking forward to try this middle age tea tomorrow and review possibly over the weekend at home.
Unfortunately today was a bit of a disappointment. Albeit the tea is very smooth, light rosy copper coloured and slightly sweet, it was very very smoky. I am going to store the rest of the cake in a clay pot to see if the heavy smokiness disappears.
Tomorrow I shall be trying a sister cake of the same tea but bought somewhere else. There are few differences between the cakes which I’ll highlight when I do a review.
The big tree one fron 2006:
http://steepster.com/teas/cnnp-from-finepuer-dot-com/51837-2006-cnnp-yiwu-wild-arbor-raw
Think the sample could have been from one already broke up? I looked back and read my review. I don’t think the smoke hit me from the sample.
My suspicion is that sometime in its life it was very badly stored as the other cake bought somewhere else does not smell of smoke at all.
Let me do a quick review of the two as I am quite puzzled about these two cakes.
I’ve had this tea too and own a cake. I like it for the really low price it was sold. Re-referenced my notes and didn’t see anything about smoke.
My suspicion is that sometime in its history this particular cake got wet as there are some large stains on the wrapper. Hopefully the clay pot storage will sort out this smokiness otherwise not much is lost as it was not an expensive tea.
I too have this tea and I did not detect any smoke. I read your Steepster note and noticed your opening line: “In 2015 I bought 2 cakes of this type in continental Europe from 2 different retailers.” You purchased from sellers in Europe? I believe the 3 of us (and others) purchased directly from FinePuer which means Asian storage throughout the tea’s lifetime. Also, we purchased the 2006. Is that what you have? I ask because I tried Puerh-sk’s 2004 and I find it rather different from my 2006 cake.
Yes they are both 2006 and they were both bought in Europe. One is fine while the other one is very smoky and that is the one that has some dry wet stains on the wrapper. Not to worry I’ll try to get another one from China as this is quite a drinkable tea.
@Rui I wouldn’t necessarily assume they’re the same cake unless you got it from Fine Pu’er. At this point, the Big Green Tree wrapper would be a very generic wrapper. Probably several different “BGT” productions from different factories in 2006.. Not to mention storage differences as well.
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