2006 YiWu Mt. Raw Puerh

I am once again taken to school and instructed as to what tea should taste like. My goodness.

I implore all of you to purchase some samples from this guy. Please! Seriously, your minds will be blown. It’s that good!

edit: now that i’m a little more versed in the world of puerh, i can honestly say that this one is a cut above, like pretty much all tea from this shop. if hindsight serves me there was a distinct cleanliness and clarity to the flavors which, at this point, i won’t be able to extract from memory. they were good ones though.

The wet leaves opened with hot cotton, warm dryers and some bursts of intense ashy smoke. The first flavors rocked between cantaloupe and cooked strawberry and freshly smoked whitefish.

Middle steeps produced a light tartness in the vein of white cranberry flesh – but never intensely sour.

This yiwu proved dazzling in the finish, with a lovely, terse, complex bitterness holding long and giving herbal satisfaction. I enjoyed this tea’s understated, complex, and composed beauty. Wrapping up with fermented cocoa nib dryness in the throat, it was hard not to be impressed. This is my kind of sheng.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=275

Tried this tea for the 2nd time tonight, and it was wonderful. 2.5 grams of tea, 60-75 mL of water in the gaiwans, temps near boiling, and 30" first infusion. Somewhere around the 3rd and 4th infusion there was something a bit bitter, but it started sweet, smoky, spicy, earthy, had that slightly bitter interlude, and carried on for another half dozen plus infusions with the sweetness and bit of earthy and spicy. It is a wonderful tea, one I’d be happy to have more of in my cupboard, but the cupboard is already overflowing with puerh.