Mandala "Wild Monk" Tea - Mao Cha

I got this tea in my latest order from Mandala – oooh, it’s very nice!

After my monster matcha green smoothie, I decided to steep some of this up in my Yixing teapot especially for shengs. I decided to stick with short steeps of around 30-45 seconds. The tea flavor here is quite nice… there is a little bit of smoke but it also has a sweetish, thick almost lychee like quality. And yes there is a bit of sourness, a slight lemon flavor. It has a slight fizziness on my tongue in the aftertaste. Compared to the other mao cha I have had, this is considerably more mellow.

If you’re a fan of younger sheng pu-erhs you should really check this one out! I don’t have time for a more detailed tasting note today but I’m sure the 1 oz. of this I have will not last for very long.

I’ve been spending a lot more time outdoors with my pups, exercising and gardening lately. I’ve started a miniature container garden! We had a few days of fantastic rare sunny warm/cool days here. Now it looks like we’re going back to the usual disappointing weather in the NYC area. I hate humidity. And work days have been busy. This weekend, unfortunately, is busy as well. I’ve signed myself up for a party today, and then it’s Mother’s Day tomorrow. I’m going to enjoy some tea while I can.

I’ve tried a variety of puers in my life. I’ve decided that I’m not really a fan. While I can drink the cups down quite easily, I never find myself craving them as I do for oolongs, greens and blacks. I’d drink more white but they often make me shaky. But Mandala has a great puer rep so I thought I’d give this a try. I received this sample when I ordered a bunch of puers for my dad’s birthday. I decided to keep this to educate myself. Two months later, I’m finally diving in.

My first thought is that I’m shocked at the smokiness. I didn’t read any descriptions before trying so I was not expecting this aspect. It’s also lighter than expected. Oddly fresh, which is not something I’d expect from a puer. But maybe that’s just because I don’t have much experience with shengs. This is tasty. I don’t think I’ll be craving it ever, but I am enjoying this current cup.

This tea just helped me rock my finals. It’s no secret I have a lot of love for the folks over at Mandala, so last week I emailed Garret about a new thermos and some tea to go in it. Every morning this last week I popped about a teaspoon of this in the bottom of the new thermos, filled it up with water, and then topped it off when it started getting low.

Like the cake form of this tea, this stuff is good. This is really sweet, slightly sour, and not a very strong young sheng. I found even with keeping the leaves essentially steeping all day, it never gets overpowering either.

And if you need to get through finals week, this tea will give you a nice buzz. :)

I have a huge backlog of reviews to post. It’s almost daunting.

I received this tea as a sample with my first Mandala Tea order—and I will definitely be ordering most of my pu-er from them from now on. I was planning on saving this tea for tomorrow but my hockey team lost badly and I needed something nice to cheer me up.

1st Steep- 1 minute
Smelled very grassy. Usually this is quite the turn-off for me. It did taste a bit grassy but with a nice smoke flavor that I loved. I am a Lapsang Souchong fan so smoke is kind of my thing. There was also a nice spicy note that I loved. The first steep isn’t usually my favorite but this is definitely a contender.

2nd Steep-2 minutes
I can’t decide if I am getting apple or lemon in this steep. Some sips it’s lemon and some sips it’s apple. I think I prefer to think lemon because I don’t like apple and I very much liked this steep. There was still some smoke but it faded a little.

3rd Steep-3 minutes
The flavor completely morphed. It lost all of the smoke and citrus—bummer because I liked it. But this beautiful clover honey taste took its place. There was a lovely natural sweetness about this steep. This is actually a contender for my favorite steep. To be honest, I would have thought this was a completely different tea from the previous steeps.

4th Steep-10 minutes—It was supposed to be 5 minutes but I forgot about it.
This steep was lovely as well. It was still honeyish but a bit of floral flavor had snuck in there. This is definitely not my favorite steep but it’s good enough. I could have probably steeped this one at least two more times even with my timing fiasco.

Overall-I really loved this tea. I am almost beating myself up because I had it in my cart to buy a cake but I went with another one. I’ll buy a cake of it someday. Not near close to now because I did buy six cakes. But I am happy that I squirreled away half of the sample for tomorrow.

I am noticing a noticeable mood lift that normally would not happen on days where my team loses—I’m pretty obsessed I don’t know if it’s the tea but I’m feeling pretty peppy right now and I am most definitely not a peppy person.

This tea is wild alright – visually It looks like someone raked their tea lawn and put the leaves in a bag. The leaves themselves are actually purple too. How cool is that?

The sparse nature of the wild “lawn clipping” style leaves and deceptively faint aroma of the dry leaf brews a shockingly full bodied cup of tea with a range of taste somewhere between dry, herbaceous chinese green and smokey ripe pu’er. Its quite remarkable, this tea borrows from both sides of the spectrum while standing distinctly on its own. This was my first ever Mao Cha style tea… up to this point I have never tasted anything quite like it.

The energy of Wild Monk is penetrating, as is the flavor if left to brew for too long. I would suggest shorter steepings around a minute. The first few brews tend to be dominated by hay and a well balanced meditative smokiness while the later brews bring a bit of citrus and sweet shellfish to the mix.

Main notes to my palate are:

Hay
Smoke
Malty/Citrus
Shellfish (mild)
Sweet (mild)

While not a daily drinker for me, it is an enjoyable cup of tea and its nice to know I have it when i’m in the mood for something off the path of conventional flavors. Overall i’m rating this tea highly because it is so unique, wonderfully complex and for lack of a a more tactful word, powerful.

I’m not usually a fan of the smokey sheng puerhs, but this one is amazing! After a quick rinse in my yixing teapot this tea was ready to go. I had multiple short steepings each one more complex than the last. My first steepings were more of the smokey flavor but after the third it mellowed out and left me with the most amazing subtle lemon aftertaste. I really enjoyed my free sample and will be ordering more very soon!