Maiden's Ecstasy

The dry leaves smell faintly sweet. The smell isn’t strong so I can’t really tell what kind of sweet. But it is pleasant. After a quick rinse, the leaves smelled like sweet tobacco. No fish though so we’re good.

I love the color of tea juice pu-ehr seems to make. Such a delightful dark ruby. I want to like this type of tea simply for that reason. Still no fish so that’s good. Not as fragrant as the last (and only other) pu-ehr I’ve tried but sweet… I can see raisin and maybe fresh cut hay?

Taste wise, this is remarkably inoffensive. I had always heard things about pu-ehr’s taste and my try of the fish pu-ehr (okay, not REALLY fish) pretty much confirmed the horror stories. (Well, not about the nails and bird feathers and cigarette butts because it was loose). So I was preparing for something I’d have to learn to like or look at with a different mindset to enjoy. I was all prepared to tell myself “No no, dirt is a GOOD flavor”. But I find I don’t have to. This is good without having to add qualifiers or adjust my thinking.

Smooth, sweet (but not so much like there is sugar in it though there is maybe a hint of that on the tail), a little dark/wild tasting at the end… maybe hay, maybe fresh, healthy dirt (you know, the rich dark kind with earthworms – and I need to stop that train of thought before this becomes the earthworm tea to me… and it might be too late), maybe some kind of fruit glaze – rum raisin glaze or something. Can’t quite peg it.

I can see the similarities between this one and the fish one I had previous. The sweetness is very similar as is the general expansion of flavors as I sip on it. But this one is much milder and the flavors blend together a bit better without any fish taste so unlike the last one, I don’t have to have multiple steeps before I figure out if I like this. I do. It’s good. I’m not sure if I’m going to be driven to ordering it when I finally place my Samovar order, but I will enjoy this sample.

Thanks to takgoti for showing me pu-ehr doesn’t have to equal fish!

I think by now that it’s official that I’m a fan of pu-erh. I find myself craving it a lot. The cooked version, at least!

takgoti sent me this, and I’ve been waiting to try this one for a while, since it’s supposed to be a really good one. I have to admit, the name really makes me giggle. It’s sounds like Victorian pornography.

But actually, the smell was a bit of a turn-off. For some reason, I was getting a bit of a smell of fishiness off my sample. Nothing strong, and the main smells were earth and super-dark sweet (think molasses), but it was kind of there.

Anyway, so I gave the super-dark-chocolate leaves a rinse with boiling water before allowing them to steep. I guess I should mention that the rinse water, upon dumping, already smelled pretty pu-erh delicious!

I love steeping pu-erh, just because its color is so dramatic. On the pour, it’s such a brown-black, practically opaque brew. Thankfully, the smell coming off the wet leaves and the cup was nothing fishy. Instead, there’s a deep earth smell, a fairly smoky smell (more gunpowder smoke than lapsang? It doesn’t really have a savory quality…), and a hard-to-detect sweetness. It’s very akin to other pu-erhs I’ve tasted.

The taste here is a lot smoother and light and refined than I was expecting! The only other plain pu-erh I’ve had is Golden Moon’s, which has a bit more body and intense flavor. Then again, it could be because of my lower steep time for this puppy. There’s a really nice earthy edge, mixed with a sort of smokey goodness. Pu-erh doesn’t really taste like dirt to me. It’s more soil-like. That smell of fresh-tilled soil in the sun. This develops into a subtle sweet note. It’s not overbearing or cloying or false. Maybe a bit raisin-like? It’s almost fruity. But a dark fruit. A fruit that I don’t think exists. The aftertaste is very autumnal. Wet leaves on a rainy day.

From the wet leaves, and sometimes from the taste, I’m getting this almost bake-y quality. I’m picturing something like a molasses bread. Even though I’m not quite sure if that even exists. I’m only getting it on a few sips, but when it happens, it’s unusual enough to take note. The complexity of this beastie is pretty amazing.

I’m hoping that subsequent steeps of this one are great, because so far so good!

So, the Second Steep (4:00, boiling) was a bit thinner than the first, but a lot of the earthy and smoky complexities were still present. Still very nice, indeed. The infusion was a bit lighter than the first, but it had the smell of a typical pu-erh. Which I take to be a good sign, since once the liquid doesn’t smell like it’s supposed to anymore, then it’s done.

The Third Steep (4:00, boiling) is even lighter than the second. We’re approaching something that looks more akin to black tea than to coffee! The smell is still soil-rich, but now the taste has evolved significantly. The smoke and earth elements have taken a back seat to the sweetness, which has evolved into a raisin taste, perhaps dusted with a bit of brown sugar. I can’t get out of this molasses theme. Let’s see how long this baby can go on! I should note that this might be the best resteep I’ve had thus far in my tea adventures.

It’s time for the Fourth Steep! (5:00, boiling) My wet leaves smelled a bit sweeter now, and but the infusion still smells like good-old pu-erh. The color of it is definitely akin to a black tea although something about the under-tint is off. A little purple, maybe? Whatever. Anyway, the taste on the first sip was kind of… WEIRD. Like charcoal, followed by intense sweetness. Serious sweetness. Sweet like white tea or green tea sweet. Well, actually it’s a bit muskier than that, but it’s lingering on my tongue in a similar way.

Now, here’s where it gets really weird. As it cooled, it started to have this kind of rotten taste to it. Really, really off-putting and very off. Like ripe garbage. Or like really, really over-ripe and blackened fruit. Not cool. Really, really gross, actually. Not cool at ALL. So I had to dump the cup, and I’m dumping the leaves as well. I also can’t get the sweet flavor out of my mouth. Maybe the leaves picked up a smell or something? Or a taste? But it’s seriously one disgusting flavor.

Yeah, no. Dumping the leaves. But at least the first three infusions were pretty good!

Thank you so much to LORI for sending me a sample of this tea. I can understand why many drinkers rave about it and I can also understand the audacity of the name “ecstasy”. The flavors are very complex and in some ways contradictory:

The aroma and taste remind me of an exotic market where one is besieged by a plethora of odor. The fish stand abuts the chocolate-covered fruits and the artisanal breads are next to a display of dripping honey. The garden soil is adjacent to the herbs and spices. It’s a mélange, and a very good one at that. I would say that the “earthy” aroma and taste predominate over the others. I could close my eyes and be carried away to the exotic bazaar of world flavours and foods.

I’m looking forward to multiple steepings.

In my book, anything with the name ecstasy in it can either be discounted immediately as puffery or has a very high level of living up to do. Ecstasy is, after all, not just a run of the mill, mild feeling. It’s sheer rapture.

The fact that I have had a four for four success rate with my Samovar samples thus far (I am intending to order more of all of the ones I’ve tried, something unsurpassed in my admittedly limited experience) left me doubtful this name could be discounted fully, so I had very high hopes for this one. And I haven’t been disappointed. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to state that drinking this left me ecstatic (wouldn’t that be cool, though? maybe one day I’ll find a tea that really does leave me ecstatic and then I’ll know all the secrets of the universe and more), I can say that I’m now five for five.

My only pu erh experience before this has been the Numi bags. They’ve all been varying degrees of enjoyable with the chocolate out in front. But because they’re bags, there’s a visual component to the experience that is missing. I’m finding more and more that I really enjoy examining the dry leaves of the tea I’m about to drink, and watching how they change after they’ve had their steep.

The Maiden’s Ecstasy leaves are brownish green, dark and pretty. A little on the small side, and not overly curly. Dry, they smelled to me as they smelled to Auggy after rinsing — like sweet tobacco, right from the pouch, with notes of leather and earth.

After rinsing, the leather aroma came to the fore. This, I think, is what I smell where others might smell fish. There is something slightly fishy, but not in an unpleasant way, about the smell of certain kinds of warm, pliant leather. I’ve had belts and shoes that have had a fishy note to them that body heat brings out and I know I’ve smelled this in horse saddles. It’s not always the case, but common enough. The smell of this steep makes me think of a new, buttery smooth, black leather English saddle.

My first steep at 2 minutes delivered a beautiful mahogany colored liquor.

The taste. It has that Samovar thing going on for me, an almost preternatural smoothness that makes their teas taste like velvet feels. I love that. To me, it is the difference between something that is nice and well made, like a shoe or a car, that you wouldn’t mind having, and the same thing delivered by a luxury brand. There’s a little luxury in every sip.

Within the smoothness, there is also a flavor that verges on leather — but is kept from being a stark leather flavor by its sweetness. I’m not getting raisin here, but perhaps a pre-raisin (i.e., grape) fermented sweetness, as though the tiniest drop of a fine port has been dropped into the tea.

The second steep at 2:30 yielded a similar flavor. The nose became more sugary, more carmelized.

OK. I’m about ready for my third steep and I am going to stop now and just go enjoy this for a while. I want to sit with it and see how it changes. I have all kinds of time for this tea.

I am determined to make myself like this tea, because it’s not a bad tea. In fact, I can even say that it’s a good tea, and I just don’t ever want to drink it, for all that this contradiction is utter nonsense.

I’ve seen the information shared around steepster (by Ricky via someone else, I believe) about doing much shorter infusion times, and I will fall back on that if I have to…but I also saw something somewhere about Takgoti recommending to someone else that they steep longer to bring out the sweet part of this tea, so that’s kind of my plan today. Fact: I am scared.

There is just no reason for me to NOT like it, though. Nothing about it is bad. If I were asked to cite the reasons for finding it overwhelming, I would be unable to. It is tea.

It’s not even like it’s a strong liquor and likely to light up my nasal passages. So, wtf?

I completely refuse to be beaten by this tea. If I were able to point to anything about it and say this is what I don’t like, I would be content to let it go…but I can’t. I even find the smells and flavors interesting. So why do I not want to consume them?

The lack of logic there is vaguely offensive, somehow.

I will cultivate a taste for pu-erh if it kills me.

It’s so pleasant out right now and here I am trying to catch up on some work =(
Since I didn’t have much time to sit down and enjoy the tea, I decided to brew myself up some of Samovar’s Maiden’s Ecstasy. I’m on to my fourth or fifth infusion now, not really sure which one. I’ve been doing various steep times from 30 seconds to a few minutes. Just mixing it around to see how the tea changes.

So my first steep was a failure as the cup that I emptied the tea into wasn’t exactly clean. I think the cat licked it beforehand since there were bits and pieces of fur floating around .. BAD KITTY!

I believe my second steep was for two minutes. It tasted like a standard pu-erh to me. Nothing really extraordinary that set it apart from other pu-erh’s that I’ve drank, but this is the type of pu-erh that I like. The coffee black, earthy, just all around decent tasting pu-erh. I did notice one slight difference, it’s a bit nutty… It’s like the same end taste that I go from Numi’s Chocolate Pu-erh. I remember it cause it makes me feel a bit queasy.

Steep three was for 30 – 45 seconds, somewhere around there. Basically the same as steep two, but a bit lighter. The flavors are still there, but it isn’t as intense.

Steep four, I went for two – three minutes and this was where it got interesting. Still coffee black, but it’s starting to shine here. That weird aftertaste is gone and now I’m getting the raisin sweetness. It’s sweet, it’s raisin-y, it’s delicious. Now this taste makes it worthy of purchasing.

Overall, this was a good pu-erh, but nothing remarkable until the later steeps which made it different from others that I’ve drank. Samovar sells this for $29 (4oz), but I felt this tasted remarkably similar to Bana Tea’s Denong Wild, which sells for $12 for 3.5oz. Honestly, I don’t think the comparison is fair seeing as Bana Tea Company specializes exclusively in pu-erh.

For this pu-erh, I’d say follow Samovar’s instruction and steep two to four minutes per infusion.

Another tea from Samovar-pusher Takgoti. ;P

So this is the first genuine pu-erh tea I’ve had the chance to try (Numi’s Chocolate Pu-erh was nice but not really the same thing) and I was really excited about it. I heated the mug and I gave the leaves a rinse with boiling water before steeping it. At first it smelled like fish, and not fresh fish either, but several weeks old rotting fish. Yeah, ew. Thankfully as the tea steeped the scent slowly changed to something earthy-smelling.

The taste is quite earthy too, but not like just regular dirt – it’s a rich, loamy dirt full of decaying plant matter…I made it sound gross didn’t I? Sorry, it’s the ecology student in me talking. It’s a powerfully strong, ‘dark’ tea that I find I can’t drink quickly, but small sips seem to work – problem is, it’s getting cold. I am noticing that as the tea cools a bit of a sweetness creeps in aswell.

This is a fascinating tea and I’m glad I got the chance to try it. Do I like it? I’m not sure to be honest. I think pu-erh might be an acquired taste, though I’ll certainly strive to acquire it! ;)

Not a bad pu-erh. However, I just gotta say that for the periods of my life where I qualified as a maiden, I doubt my ecstasy was much like this.

Warm, dark, earthy, and not fishtank-y. (Always a bonus). I am not getting the sweet that others are, but I’m enjoying my cup.

The depth of the color on this one is amazingly dark and wonderful.

I have had this tea for at least a month and I finally closed my eyes and went for it…I steeped this one for a timid 1 minute. Suprisingly, I liked this one. It was warm and earthy and not fishy at all. The taste was full and to me, slightly sweet…I think this is on one of my favorite’s list…possibly…..

Today felt like a pu-erh day; I’ve had a few more since the last time I drank this one, so I’m appreciating the strength of flavor a bit more. This is smooth, and sweet, and rich, and goes really well with the chocolate bar I’m currently nibbling on. We’ll see later how it tastes with leftover curry – I’m optimistic. Definitely bumping the rating, but keep in mind that that’s relative only to other pu-erhs

ETA: I’m on steep 4 or 5 and going strong; it did indeed taste good with a curry :) and is as forgiving of steep times as any puerh. I’ve tried everything from 1 to 10 minutes today with little variation in flavor.

This was my first ever tea from Samovar and I was quite excited to have this experience!

I rinsed the leaves like Samovar suggested, then let the 2nd infusion steep for 3 minutes (Samovar suggested 2-5). The resulting liquid was deep, deep brown. Unfortunately, I smelled the fishiness that some people have talked about. Not so much just fish, but a whole seafood store whose air conditioning broke in the height of summer. And some seaweed.

From experience, I knew that smells can be very deceiving when it comes to tea, so I wasn’t afraid to take a sip.

This one is a bit difficult to describe, as well as being surprisingly tasty and very complex. It is earthy, dirty, but not in bad way at all. It works for this tea. It doesn’t taste sweet right up front, but the aftertaste is lovely and lightly sweet, just enough to make you want to take another sip. And of course, the fishiness isn’t a part of the actual taste, but the seaweed is.

Overall, this is probably the most complex tea I have tasted to date. And I like it.

Oh, and if your immediate thought after hearing that the tea tastes like seaweed is one of revulsion, don’t be turned off! Seaweed is an ingredient of ice cream, after all.

Brewing a darker tea from my collection to get ready for my last final! Maiden’s Ecstasy is the first puerh I’ve ever bought but my stash is running low and I’m looking into trying out other puerhs. Any suggestions?

yummmmm ecstasy!

This is my “tried and true” tea that I always go back to after sampling different types of teas or even novelty ones. I think it’s kind of a taste that you have to learn to love — as with most pu-erhs — because it’s not flavoured and is simply earthy and dark. I like it because it gives me a very interesting and sustained energy boost for a few hours without any sort of crash at the end.

It was one of the first teas that I ever tried (I skipped the bagged teas) coming from being a coffee/latte kind of guy, so I guess that explains my liking for the pure darkness of this one.

I’m still playing with the steep times though. Sometimes I only leave it in for 45 seconds (the first two steeps) but then with later steeps I leave it in for longer, sometimes 5 minutes. I believe most of the caffeine comes out within the first 2-3 steeps, and the strength starts to drop after the 3rd or 4th steep. It’s good enough to last me through a long day.