pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

2012 Bulang Gushu from Crimson Lotus. Burning my Japanese incense and listening to my nature relaxation Pandora station while wearing my Kimono robe.

I. Needed. This.

2012 Shuangjiang Miao Dao Chan Cha – as perfumy as it gets but I really like these leaves.

2008 Menghai Hong Yun Yuan Cha ripe. This little 100g cake was decent enough when it came in. It’s improved greatly over a year since it’s gotten some heat and humidity here in HK (and elsewhere in Asia—the little cake has been to Cambodia and Vietnam with me) and I get baby powder like soft, sweet notes from it. It is a caffeine bomb, though, since it is made from smaller leaves. I bought six more a few weeks ago and I’ll let those age and sweeten for a few years. Older dry stored tea really transforms well when it hits HK. Snapping up 2000s Kunming storage teas for aging since the prices are often not much higher than for new tea (and sometimes even lower)!

Revisited the 2016 “Lazers” from the sheng olympics sponsor box again today. The strong off-putting flavor I noticed during my “airsick” tasting was gone today, and now the tea was just plain good.

I must admit, when I first herd about the idea of tea being airsick, it seemed kinda absurd to me; but my experience with this tea (and a few others) has shown so much change after a rest that I have trouble chalking it up to an expectation bias.

Before I leave on a flight I have a tradition of enjoying my current favorite teas. It’s more of a superstition thing, so if the plane blows up I would have had my last good tea session. Tonight is WMD 2016, 2013 Bangwei 33, and Xinshia 2016. I wanted to throw in some of my aged favs, but I knew I couldn’t handle it.

Honestly, I’ve never had this much qi…

FarmerLeaf 2016 Jingmai Gulan. This stuff is still very new, of course. Distinct smoke in the pot, but that doesn’t carry over into the pot too much. Very little char—this tea was definitely carefully processed. Good, strong, clean flavor. Very smooth on the palate and on the swallow. I wonder what this tea will be like down the line? Working my way through this session and it definitely seems promising.

tonight i drank some 2004 yangpinhao (w2t) in the western style. even though i lost track of time and way over steeped it, it tasted pretty good. kind of sweetgrassy and with some menthol type of cooling effect, but just barely, i notice it when the air hits my tongue. nice tea, it deserves to be brewed gongfu.

Lancang Ancient Tree ‘10 Year of Tiger, a 250g tuo。 Gifted by a buddy. Has the after taste of a granny smith without being exactly sour. Typical with their productions there are hints of dianhong in there, though overall a mellow medicinal brew with mild astringency and bitterness. Even when the leaves are pushed, it doesn’t get astringent. Supposed to be wild.

2005 7542. Broken up in 2012, then four years of home storage in HK. Significantly darker and no astringency or bitterness left. Smoke entirely gone. Just sweet black tea flavor, fresh milk notes and tropical fruit! Very drinkable now, but I’ll try to make it last as I’m enjoying the annual changes to it!

Today I drank a phenomenal shou, the 2009 Jin Yu Xuan Black Puer Tea Brick 1000g. This tea was absolutely as incredible as it’s price tag was high. It cost $550 and is the most expensive tea I have ever bought. It was sweet from the beginning with very little in the way of fermentation taste. What taste was there was neither unpleasant or fishy. There was no bitterness to this tea. It had a fruity note from the beginning that I would interpret as dates although other fruit interpretations are possible. I steeped the hell out of this, steeping it 18 times. I’m going to go back and boil the leaves in a little while. I had decided to take a risk and buy this tea as I know Larry only has something like three or four in stock. I figured if I continued to wait I would not get one. Despite the price I don’t regret buying this tea. It is just that good. When you work it out to the price per gram it doesn’t sound as bad at 55 cents a gram. I figure this tea session cost me about $5.50 as I used about 10g of leaf. As I still like shou better than sheng I was willing to go for this. If it was the reverse I probably wouldn’t have paid that much money. This tea is also from ancient trees from the age of 500 to 800 years. While it is impossible to prove that claim I do trust Larry and believe him to be telling the truth. He was after all selling this at ancient tree prices. If he was charging $30 a brick and claiming it ancient tree is when I begin to suspect. As to qi, there seems to be some. I am quite relaxed after 18 steeps but no tea drunk sensation. I almost never get that from any tea. If anyone wants to try teas from Purepuer.com I believe he sells two oz samples of most of his teas, just not this one. With this one you have to buy the whole brick. I was willing to do it because I knew just how good the other teas I had bought from Larry were. Before this purchase my favorite tea from him was the 2010 Tong Qing Hao ripe tea cake. Also an incredible tea that is not cheap but far less expensive than this one.