pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

2014 Mangfei (ancient tea gardens) – bannacha
Just finished some Ban Payasi (meh) and decided I need something nicer and went for the Mangfei. This is more my thing, nicey balanced profile, strong kuwei and qi, great viscosity, mouthfeel and aftertaste but the best thing about this tea is that I’ve never had any tea that gets so close to wild honey (minus the extreme sweetness) – pretty amazing.

2007 Bangwei from Tea Urchin. Seems to be hitting with similar power to the 2011 I have previously tried. Good flavor too – very sweet hay, hints of pine, fruit, maybe floral. Thick texture and a bit of mouth-cooling.

2004 CCNP 7542

This stuff certainly delivers more than a decent kick to my nervous system but flavor wise I’m slightly underwhelmed. Nice storage, yes, tastes like the real deal (I’ve sampled more than enough different 7542 over the years), there’s some complexity, nice mouthfeel and huigan but anyway. The best thing I can say about this 7542 is the aftertaste – covers the entire cavity, there’s some licorice sort of cooling and it lasts a good while but I’d take any decent aged XG, no matter what (well, almost) over this stuff any day of the week – YMMV.

Next please …

2012 Xiaguan Te Ji FT #6

Somewhat of a standard to keep me awake and energized at night. Some time ago I took one of the tuos and steamed it for about 10s, allowed it to cool for a minute!, steamed it again and so on and so forth until I could easily take it apart. I let the result dry, put it into a caddy and 3 months later it has aged considerably.

Pretty thick and mellow, almost oily, decent kuwei, with an unusual flavor profile, dominated by herbal (lovage) and spicy notes (madagascan pepper) and a bit of the usual XG smoke for good measure.
I have some nice pu in my stash but for some reason I always come back to this stuff and other XGs, can’t help it.

a coworker just gifted me (from his recent trip back to visit family in China) a 2013 beeng with the words “Luo Luo” and thats it really. he said that is the brand name. he isnt quite sure about much else.

200X Traditional Storage Raw from W2T (club). I definitely could have let this one air out longer, but when I transferred this from its sample bag to air it out I realized that I enjoyed the storage smell on this one, so I decided just to drink the storage (still did get ~5 days of airing).

This is impressively dark, on the black side of red. As expected, I enjoyed the storage taste, and by the back half of the brews it was gone. Super smooth and thick, but not particularly flavorful. Surprisingly energizing: I started this in the early evening and persistently tried to steep it out; I now wonder how easy it will be to fall asleep.

Drinking a 2013 Lao Man’E sample from Chawangshop. This stuff seems to have aged quite nicely in the bag. Quite pleasant, but I brewed up a lot of broken bits, so quite bitter.

Just bought 60 Xiaguan JiaJi tuos for a good price…2010s. Gonna put them in a box and let them do their thing for ten years!

I’ve been hitting on old teas for the last couple of days… W2T ’90s HK-style yesterday, and two dry-stored ’90s CNNP teas from Beautiful Taiwan today. The BTTC ’92 CNNP is kind of a disappointment with the memory of that W2T fresh in mind.

1990s HK Style Raw from W2T. I’ve been seating on this one since it came out, I wanted to air it because it wasn’t my cup of tea back when it came it, though I could respect the notes. I think now I like it a lot more and I can actually enjoy sort of oily texture out of it. Its enjoyable, even more now with the cold weather out. My gf pointed out that the just emptied pitcher smells just like a freshly opened raw pumpkin. It did!

I finally bought Oli’s (greenteaguru) last 2004 CNNP 7542 for comparisons sake and like it a lot better than the CCNP from the same year I mentioned above. Like any other 7542 though (and not much else) the first couple cups give me the jitters but I take my time and this tea really deserves some extra attention. Seemingly cleaner and drier storage, there’s more of the original character left and I get more complexity, dynamics and oomph plus a nice oily, almost sticky texture, great mouthfeel, decent kuwei and huigan with a long, complex finish. The empty cup smells distinctively of wild summer honey but unfortunately that impression doesn’t last long.
Nice bang for the € but sold out now.