2007 Organic Banzhang Tribute Pu-erh Tea Cake

I did start airing this out at home in my cupboard to see if I could get the weird odor to dissipate. From what I have read it isn’t a good idea to store pu-erh in plastic anyway. It does seem better than it did when I first tried it – I am upped the score a teeny bit today. This is not a world class pu-erh but it was very affordable and benefited greatly by a hot water rinse and short steeping times. I will probably finish the cake someday but will not be in a big hurry to do so. I think it needs more time to air out, frankly.

Mediocre pu-erh is just so sad…

I wanted to like this tea, because it was a free sample that I received with an order, however, I just couldn’t.

The dry leaves were very chopped and very tightly compressed. They had a typical pondy, off smell that one associates with shu-puerh. The tea soup was a deep ruddy-brown with the aroma of wood, chocolate, raisins, and sewage. Honestly the flavor was not bad: sweet chocolate flavor with notes of wood, wet leaf, and raisins; but right after I swallow heavy notes of pond water show up, making the tea taste incredibly…odd.

The ‘pondy’ taste remained through the 4th infusion. I couldn’t bring myself to drink anymore so I called it quits. I should also note that I don’t like the flavor of chocolate, which was heavy in this tea. On the other hand, the mouthfeel was incredibly smooth and thick. Full-bodied and very rich. There was also a minty-cool quality to the aftertaste. I just couldn’t get over the chocolatey-pondiness of it, but if you’re a fan of that then I guess this would be a good tea for you.

Brewed from a free sample from the vendor which was unfortunately too small of an amount for my larger ripe puerh yixing so I brewed this one in a gaiwan. The sample also contained a lot of dust and crushed leaves which I am not sure is at the fault of the cake or the person who broke up the cake. Even though the vendor claimed that rinsing was not needed for this extra clean puerh I started out with a quick rinse anyway for consistency purposes. The first infusion was clean and very light with a slightly fresh minty taste to it; which I think I might have under brewed. The next infusion I brewed longer and it was still on the light side with some smoothness and a light taste that reminds me of being a bit like Liu Bao. Depending upon one’s overall preference Liu Bao either comes off a as a cleaner taste than most ripe puerh or as a more plain and boring taste. Personally I am not that fond of Liu Bao overall so unless you do or you are curious about it I would not recommend this cake to you. I’m guessing that it probably would have been possible to get 2-3 more infusions out of the leaves but I had no desire to drink more of it so there was no third infusion.