pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

Today I drank one from Liquid Proust’s 2016 Sheng Olympics sheng sampler, the 2011 Bang Wei Spring from Tea Urchin. This was one good sheng. It was sweet from the beginning and smooth. There was virtually no bitterness to this tea. It was filled with notes of apricots and stone fruits. This is definitely one I would buy except I want to participate in the Yangqinghao group order and that will tie up all my cash. So I think this one will have to wait a few months.

Having a 2009 MengKu Silver Buds tea tonight. I feel I am in a bit of unexplored territory for this producer but some good friends drink from this factory and others are interested in it.
Seems to be a nice little cake. The leaf in this one when breaking of the cake are really small, almost tiny compared to most of what I drink.
I got about 10 grams off the cake and tossed it in the gaiwan. I gave it a rinse and opened it up just to inhale a bit of the steam. The steam came across as almost a steamed snow pea aroma. I let it sit for about 15 minutes before brewing.
I started with 5 second brews on this one. The color comes out golden meaning it has aged a bit. The aroma is a bit hard to pin down on the brew. Tasting it A bit tart with maybe a whisper of bitter and smoke in the background. That quickly fades out and goes slightly sweet. It has some of the tobacco in there as well. For a second or so I thought this may be a bit thin but it comes in subtle at first and washes across the tongue. I will not say oily but thickening as the sip lingers in the mouth. I would almost say a bit of grape skin in there somewhere. I thought this might have been a bit delicate but it is much stronger than that. There is aso a bit of pepper in there as well as the sip fades.

Flavors: Bitter, Grapes, Peas, Smoke, Sweet, Tobacco

2nd day in a row I’ve tried to have a sheng and run astray. Yesterday the rain told me it was an Oolong day instead. Today, I grabbed a little bag from @LiquidProust’s amazing tea-gift-sample box labeled Green Miracle. Ahhhh…Green my brain said, young, raw, sheng. WHHOOOAAAAA. Not what I was expecting. But fantastic. Bold, dark, funky, chocolate, and it went on, and on, and on. Got me good and mellow stoned for most of the day. Good times. I’d search this one out again.

11 Ban Po Lao Zhai Autumn. It’s all sweet pipe tobacco and stone fruits. Really excellent tea, still pretty cheap iirc.

Spent time today with Yang Qing Hao’s 2006 WuYangCha. Sweet and mellow sheng with a full body and a soft texture. I’m a fan! I was working with a sample of this and the 2006 Yechawang so that I can make a purchase decision. I am fairly certain I prefer the Wuyangcha.

I’m drinking Yangqinghao Tejipin, and I do not possess the vocabulary to articulate just how incredible this tea is. sigh

Been sipping on the 2011 Menghai Tea Factory 100 Year Century Shou cake sample that mrmopar generously sent me a year ago. This tea has improved within the past year although Ive done nothing special with it. In fact it has been in a ziploc bag the whole time. Well, with shou all it needs is time. Still has a bit of fermentation flavor left. I get 8-10 steeps with the last two rather light unless I leave it to sit.

The cake is very twiggy so I boiled the steeped leaves and twigs for 5 minutes in about 16 oz water in an enamel pan to extract the remains. Twigs do not release much via steeping, they need to be boiled. Tibetans boil their tea, so border teas often have a lot of twigs and that doesn’t matter so much if one plans to boil.

The brew has a thick brown quality, some mushrooms and just a bit of wet earth, and stone fruit. Surely will have more notes once the fermentation flavor has completely disappeared. A very calming shou with no worries on the gut as Menghai factory always has extremely clean shou, one good reason to pony up the dough for their productions. This cake was selling for around $80 a year ago, if one can still find it I’m sure it costs that much or more now. Thanks to mrmopar I’ve still got a few sessions left.

Drinking the 2007 Bang Wei Spring from Tea Urchin today. This is from Liquid Proust’s Sheng Olympics sheng sampler. If I wasn’t about to participate in a Yangqinghao group buy I would be tempted to buy this. It’s quite smooth and has begun to develop an aged taste. No wet storage taste to this tea.

I just finished a side-by-side steep-off of the three Verdant “old tree” shengs from the #2016ShengOlympics group buy that LiquidProust organized. The tasting note was just posted under “Random Steepings”. In summary, all three were quite mild and for the most part fell into the sweet, tart, fruity category.

To celebrate the Chinese lunar year, I happen to be a fire monkey, at the moment I am sipping tea from a sample of 2006 Lao Ban Zhang.