2003 Farmer's Cooperative (Mt. Banzhang) Wild Arbor Sheng

Woke up with a cup of Zhu Rong and now I’m a few cups into this and it’s really helping wake me up nicely.

This is a nice, creamy, sweet and slightly smoky sheng. There are hints of spice and aromatic wood along with a slight mustiness and fruitness. My favorite part about it is the creamy texture and sweet aftertaste. This is very nice. I’m feeling ready to tackle my interview now.

Update: I GOT THE JOB!

I have to admit I’m somewhat new to the world of Pu-erhs. My first taste of Pu-ehr was the Kim Fung Brand. I knew when I bought it that it was going to be very different. I am now trying to expand my tea horizons by delving into the 2 samplers that Verdant offers. It will be trial and error I’m sure. How much tea and how long to brew it?? I have been watching numerous videos on YouTube to learn. For this tea I washed it once in the Yixing. The first steeping was a lite orange liquor with a lite aroma. I broke the leaf up which I did not do with my tasting of the Artisan Revival. Verdant states that the samples are good for 2 or 3 tastings. Maybe I should increase the leaf in my brewings. The second steeping was a darker liquor and the aroma was more intense. When I was pouring the water on the leaves for the 3rd I could tell I was in for a treat. I was getting the Redwood and the numbing which Geoffrey spoke of. When I brew again I will definitely not be as stingy with the tea. Each sampler will yield 2 brewing sessions for me to better evaluate these precious teas. Until then, I can only say I am still too Green to render a rating. One thing I can say is when I do brew again I know I will be in for a treat….

I was surprised at the recommendation to only use 2.5 grams so I tried 3 and it was still too light for me. For this review I used 5 grams in a 120ml gaiwan (I usually use 7 for sheng) and it was much more to my taste.

Smell: This tea has a very strong, assertive smell when it is wet and dry. It has a mustiness all throughout combined with a deep peppery and mushroom aroma. When I close my eyes it smells a lot like a miso soup that someone spilled their pepper shaker in :)

Taste: This tea is one of the few that tastes much like it smells. It is like the broth of a very mushroomy miso soup. It still has the peppery taste and has a very creamy sensation. There is a slight musty flavor that reminds me a bit of a traditionally stored puerh but a lightness and tingling on the end.

I’ve been drinking a lot of Puer lately. Truth be told, they sometimes run together or are remarkable for the wrong reasons. Much to my relief and happiness, today I’ve found a puer that is a standout because of its high quality.

I thought I might have had a wrong ratio at first. The first couple steeps lacked that typical puer “bite” that I have come to expect. I fiddled around with the amount of leaf in my small Yixing until I was sure I had to be on the max amount. Even then the brew was as smooth and mellow as any puer. Only when I left it sit in the pot an unthinkable amount of time was I able to find any trace of bitterness.

The first few steeps produced a very flavorful tea with a significant tingle and very pleasant throat. I was left with impressions of marinated grape leaves smoked over a campfire. The smell of that same campfire deep in a misty forest early in the morning is coming out of my little cup right now.

I’ve been drinking this pot for more than 4 hrs now. The taste has evolved immensely from when I began. What began as direct, slightly wild, and smoky has become a very, very pleasant mellow sweetness. I started drinking this with a nice European chocolate laced with cayenne, which worked nicely, but switched to lightly salted almonds and pistachios now. Both of these combinations really made this puer “pop” or maybe the other way around.

I think Verdant has a stellar line-up in their stable of tea. Although this puer probably isn’t at the top of their list of stars, it surely deserves significant recognition for quality, in my opinion.

In keeping with my mom’s interest in pu’erh, I brewed up a couple from Verdant to see what she thought of them.

This one was a winner!! She likes it much better than black tea, and commented that there was a bit of a smoky flavour. Of course, she didn’t try it until after midnight, so didn’t want to finish the whole glass, which works out well for me because I haven’t drank this one myself either!

I’m sitting in the kitchen and the TV is loud, so I’m having trouble focusing on the flavours here, but it’s really enjoyable. Somewhat sweet, mildly smoky. Nice sweet tea-ish aftertaste. I gave this about a 10 second rinse in water straight from the tea kettle prior to brewing it. Definitely a tea I’m glad to have tried! Can’t believe it took me so long, though. I might reduce the infusion time just a touch next time, as I feel it’s a little stronger than necessary, but still pretty good.

November’s tea of the month club package from Verdant arrived a few days ago. I would have jumped right on it, sampling and babbling incoherently about the wonders of the teas they sent, but I was busy then and wanted little more time to really focus on the teas.

This is the first one, and David’s notes suggest drinking them back to back, to enjoy the contrasts, etc

I have to admit, after my mind numbing puerh experiences recently, I’m a little nervous about trying pu’s that are new to me. Oh well, onward through the fog (yes, I just quoted the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, but if you aren’t a child of the 60’s, you probably missed the reference.

I like the idea behind this tea: In 2003 a rebellious group of farmers started their own pressings and told the big tea workshops to take a hike. It’s the locavore movement in China. As a person who eats seasonal produce out of her own backyard and tries to buy as much stuff from local producers as possible, I love artisans who produce genuine things, whether it’s tea, clothing, food, or whatever. I like people like that, I am people like that, and I love it when people find their passion and just go with it. I honestly believe that the Universe supports individuality, expressions of creativity and passion, and that all of our needs, desires, and dreams are abundantly fulfilled when we go for it! Of course, I can’t buy tea from local sources, because there are none, just like there are no bananas. So when it comes to things like tea, I aim for companies that truly support real people, wherever they may be, instead of big box companies.

This Sheng is very savory, with a strong green kind of a background flavor, like aging alfalfa and clover, and there is a smokey woodsy quality to it as well.

I’m starting to feel the ‘skull shining’ effect, so I’ll set it aside for now & try the other one.

My first puerh from verdant… surely not my last.

I love the smell of the dry leaves, slightly bitter scent that should be present of a good Sheng with sweet undertone that I can’t really identify yet, maybe vanilla/caramel. The brew accentuates the scent of the Sheng, it almost made me think if would be bitter tasting but it is slightly bitter with an amazing creamy body, it becomes slightly fruity and musky like a cedar forest that just got rained on. The after taste is floral and fruity with freshness.

I love smelling my cup, the sweetness is more apparent and you can really smell the apple and caramel. The pepper is apparent right between the initial tasting and before the floral and fruity aftertaste appear. The aftertaste stays in the back of your throat for a while.

I haven’t been able to really taste the Hazelnut notes, that was a bit disappointing to me, since is one of the reasons I got this puerh. Non the less, this is a great puerh, it reminds me of the Aged Mao Cha (I think they are about the same age). It is well balanced with many notes/flavors that has nice bitterness, almost no astringency, balanced sweetness and freshness. I would recommend it and I bet it would be great to continue aging.

Smoke, wood, nuts, and burnt desert vegetation.. I think I may be more into puerh teas when the weather is not as nice and I want to transport myself into a place of dry heat. Although, this may have a place during the hot summer evenings too, cicadas abuzz. It’s dry but it’s also strangely refreshing and clean.

I did a really quick rinse and then steeped this western style today for an excessively long period of time (my gongfu is packed up for the move out tomorrow). I don’t think my methods hurt it today, and the more I sip away at this the more flavours I’m finding to fall in love with. There’s a lingering taste of sweet Nutella (roasted hazelnuts) that is freaking amazing. As it cools there is something spicy sweet like apple pie. Maybe I could drink this particular puerh all the time.

I think this may be my first-ever straight pu’erh. If not, it’s at least my first sheng. Excited! The Verdant site says that this was picked in 2001, when I was 10… it’s strange to think about.

The dry leaves have a pleasant musty smell that makes me think of venturing into my grandparents’ basement when I was a kid. It’s almost eerie how spot-on it is.
I’m using my gaiwan and after two rinses, the leaves smell amazing. I tried really hard to think of words to describe it, but I can’t. You’re just gonna have to try it yourself, lol.

First steep – Definitely nutty, and there’s something spicy about it too. Something leather-like in the taste. I can’t help but feel calm with this tea. I feel a lot of stress slipping away while I drink it.
2nd – The texture is silky smooth and there’s a surprising sweet aftertaste! I actually did a double take. It takes longer to emerge on some sips.
3rd – The musty-ness is receding slightly and giving way to a clear, light kind of sweetness.
4th – The best steep yet. This is definitely a complex tea and probably one that I’m not really experienced enough to comment on yet… I feel like I’m trying to play a song on guitar and messing up all the notes. It’s amazing though!

I got up to around 12-14 steeps (I lost count). I want to try more pu’erhs after having this! Maybe after experiencing a few more I’ll be able to give better reviews.

Staring the New Year off with some serious tea! ;)

Soft mint and licorice-like aroma…slight notes of cardamom. At first sip, the flavor is like fresh moss and mushrooms. Hints of bark and sap. More sips..loamy-clay, black licorice, pine…and more mushrooms. There is a “baked” quality to this which I find very comforting—baked in a savory way—like a favorite quiche or casserole. And the back of my tongue feels slightly numb—may be the combination of the heat and the tea’s latent astringency.

Overall, this has been a very restorative, calming cup. And a wonderful start for this new day and new year. :)

I’m very happy that Verdant told me to rinse twice :)
My first ‘real’ infusion – post rinses – was quite pleasant – but still full of natural flavor! The aroma wasn’t overwhelming and the taste was a bit nutty with a tad of sweetness for a pu-erh. There was a slight earth-green type taste in the background, too.

A very good Pu-erh!

More infusions coming soon…

Yay! I was so very excited to receive this order a few days ago from Verdant. After reading what seems like volumes of reviews and snippets around the web, I was finally going to try my first Pu’er! Now enough blabbering, it’s time to set the tone..

Mid-mornings in Colorado during this time of year are very centering in and of themselves. Warm sunlight that basks without baking and the slightest of constant breezes are enough to turn my feet into lead when I am sitting on the back porch facing the front range of the Rockies. It was on just the right kind of in-between sort of morning that I came to know my first Pu’er.

Measuring 2.6g into the glass gaiwan, I let a rinse course through the leaves twice. 4 seconds and zero breaths later I sat holding a cup of the lightest of amber colored odysseys. And then it began.

The first steep coated my mouth in ambience, it was an overture of something indefinable. By the second, there was a sparkling tingle that held what I can only describe as a memory of a vanilla wafer. Not the taste itself, mind you, but the way your mind creates a flavor when you think back on having tasted something. The third, fourth, and fifth took the memory and made it real. A taste that matches what cedar planks smell of continued to build just behind the vanilla and overtook it by the sixth, as the vanilla wafer retracted into a wider sweetness that lost any defining characteristic but presented most openly on the exhale. Seven through ten were muddled in my mind as my thoughts strayed from concentration on what I was drinking to chasing fleeting ruminations on the patchy cloud patterns and a passing squirrel. Strange how this cup makes it both incredibly easy and incredibly hard to focus!

If this is what I can expect from Pu’er going forward, I believe I will have to examine it in a far different light from other teas. No rating on this one though – seems like bad form to rate the first.

EDIT After trying several others and gaining even just a small amount of perspective, it doesn’t seem fair to Verdant not to rate this one as it really is worth your consideration!

“Well, this is interesting,” I thought as I opened the little sample packet. My experience with pu’er is extremely limited (I guess that’s what inspired me to step out and order the samplers from Verdant Tea). The dry leaf was, well, chunky, as one would expect from a tea that had been chipped off a compressed cake, but it was exciting to my pu’er-noviceness.

My first impression of the leaf smell was…wood. Like the wooden desk I had when I was a little kid that for some reason, I enjoyed licking. I don’t know why, I was a weird kid, but that’s the first thing that came to mind.

After two rinsings, I had a bit of trouble getting this down for the first couple of steepings; it came off very astringent to me, despite near-instant steep times. But there was a nuttiness that was very apparent, along with more of that woody-flavor. Happily, a few steepings later the overbearing astringency subsided a bit. The emerging flavor is one I’m not quite sure how to describe; seeing as I have so little experience with teas like this I’m not really sure what to compare it to. There is sort of a light sweetness, almost like that in a white tea, and maybe a sort of whole-grainy flavor, like a hot breakfast cereal.

Overall, I’m not sure I’m exactly wild about this tea, but it’s certainly something I’d like to revisit later after I’ve had more experience with teas of this sort. Pu’er really is a whole world of its own.

On a side note, occasionally when I drink tea, I get this weird heady, cloudy, relaxed feeling that I half-jokingly refer to as “teahigh”. So far it doesn’t seem tea-specific; it seems to be pretty random. It’s not strictly caffeine or tea-related either, since I’ve experienced the feeling with herbals as well, and occasionally even coffee. But when trying this tea, almost as soon as the cup touched my lips I started getting that heady feeling, and much stronger than usual. I actually had to space out the steepings throughout the course of the day because I had some projects I needed to focus on. While I’m still pretty sure the feeling isn’t tea-specific, I figured I would make note of it anyway, just in case.

I was so thrilled to receive my first tea of the month package from Verdant yesterday! I had a long day and night of studying and these teas kept me company. I am terrible at keeping count of how many infusions I’ve got out of the tea. I just keep going as long as I’m enjoying it. I think this must have been in the range of 15-20.

I’m quite inexperienced with puerhs and they are overwhelming and frightening still. But, I managed to enjoy this one rather than just thinking “yep, that’s puerh” at least part of the time (especially in later infusions). I brewed this in my gaiwan and, I think, used too much leaf. It was a touch bitter through the first several infusions. I also think I will take up the suggestion of two rinses next time.

Otherwise, this was quite smooth and had a touch of sweetness. I definitely found it nutty, maybe a little woody, and smokey but not in the way smoked teas are. More in relation to whatever woodiness I mentioned. Very complex, and full of flavours I don’t think I’m able to grasp yet!

Dry Leaf: There was a earthy aroma with a faint sweetness in the background.
Wet Leaf: There was a warm earthy aroma with a lingering sweet aroma.
Liquor: Was like a amber color but in the light you can see it is a orange color. The tea had a nice brightness and good clarity.
Taste: What I get is a smooth earthy, kind of nutty or smoky taste with a some spice in their and a touch of sweetness. This tea has a nice complexity to it.
My Score/Over All Opinion: 92, When I first tried this tea it had a bit to it in the first infusion then I experimented a little with this tea and did 2 rise’s instead of 1 and the 1st infusion improved a lot but there was a slight bit I got in the first infusion. Over all this tea is very nice.

OK. Finally time to taste the sheng.

I have to say, I’m a bit surprised with this first steep. When the leaf first got wet there was actually a kind of a flowery aroma. Not the kind of deep floral you get from jasmine or osmanthus, but certainly a “I used to be a living plant” kind of smell — something you wouldn’t expect sheng to remember about itself, if you know what I mean. There are some other typical sheng notes, but there are none of the baritone earthy tones one typically thinks of with pu-erh. No loam, no tilled fields, none of that.

But then the cup itself is pretty typical compared to other sheng I’ve had. Strong camphor in this first steep. Sadly, none of that “hot cabin wood in the sun” type notes I’ve had with others and enjoyed so much. Maybe they will come out in later steeps, but I’m going to post these steeps one at a time because my morning is very busy and it may take a while (sadly).

The rating will go up as I get more comfortable with the tea.

This Sheng Puerh certainly brews up to a beautiful golden color and one tasty cup of tea. But I get ahead of myself… you really should take a good inhalation of the dry leaves and smell the aromas of heaven and earth. Redwood forest, eucalyptus trees, and the smell of a distant campfire all come to mind. The first infusion brings out such a brilliant color, and definitely is assertive in it’s flavor. Smooth, bold, robust without being overwhelming.

Subsequent infusions are lighter in color and flavor but bring a new sweetness and aroma. A fascinating tea that leaves me wanting more to brew up. Too bad I only had a small sample bag to try!

This is a giant ball of tea!

It’s very walnut-y, and reminds me of chewing on a pistachio skin. You might think this would also make it bitter, drying and overly tobacco-ey. Not so! In fact, it is very creamy. As you move through later steepings, it reminds me more and more of some sort of whipped, creamy nut-flavored ice cream.

I am very very excited to see what this will turn into as it gets older. I’ve still got half of a ball hidden away and out of my reach so that I can see how things get creamier and more whipped.

If you haven’t made this before, start with less leaf than you might with other teas. The tastes are definitely assertive, and if you pack your gaiwan or teapot too full of leaves, you might be overwhelmed in the first steeping or so (this is especially true if you’re making the tea for people who are in the mindset to dislike tea because “all tea is nasty and bitter and drying..bleh!”).
That being said, I wouldn’t ever agree with someone who calls this bitter. I’ve even tried making this in a big pot as an experiment; I feared this would become temperamental brewed in a big pot, but I was wrong!

A fun sheng to try now, especially for fans of bolder flavors.
An exciting tea to age for the future, especially with it’s notable creamy flavors and textures. I’m telling you, whipped nut butters…

I was extremely excited to find this one! This enormous 1kg ball of tea comes from a farmer who has grown tired of the big factories dominating the Banzhang tea market. Her family used to sell their hand picked wild leaves to Dayi, and said that Dayi would do 1000% or more mark up and cut the farmers out of the profits. This family has been struggling since branching off on their own because their tea does not have the certification that big factories like Dayi can afford. I hope to introduce this tea to America and help start a movement on Banzhang mountain to return to quality and small farming.

This is my first unflavored sheng and I’m incredibly excited to try it. I had the sticky rice sheng from ctg which is great but it’s not a great introduction to sheng tea. First steep after initial rinse was for about a minute. This has such a wonderful light nuttiness. The nuttiness ends with a wonderful citrus lime aftertaste. After having so many shu teas its wonderful to try a naturally aged pu erh. The taste is a lot more subtle and reminds me of Darjeeling.

2nd steep: The flavor has morphed into a ginger and clove blend with a sharper tartness at the end. The licorice root comparison is totally appropriate and it reminds of those Italian anise crackers I’ve had at whole foods. A fascinating sheng and I can’t wait to try more sheng pu erh.