Xingyang 2007 Shu Pu’er

I noticed that I was reprimanded by Invader Zim for not reviewing this tea earlier (all in fun)!
Sometimes, don’t you feel like drinking a tea more than once before writing a review though?
You want to give the tea some time to settle and roll around a little in your thoughts before you do anything with it?

This is what I did. For weeks, I let the packet sit after I tried the tea.

The first time I brewed this Pu’er, it was strong and I was faced with a disconnect at the Verdant description of the taste and what
I was tasting. I talked it over with myself.
“It’s possible that my ratio of water to tea was off, and that’s why I had steeped the Pu’er to an expresso strength.”
“I tend to like strong brews. I wasn’t paying attention. I got distracted on the timing.”

Was this all true? I wanted to find out.

Paying stricter attention to detail, I went a different direction and followed my own usual steeping guidelines for Pu’er.

Knowing how strong this Pu’er could become made this brewing easier.

I rinsed the leaves 30 seconds in boiling water once.
The scent can be a little off-putting for someone not used to Pu’er and rinsing is really necessary. The scent of the leaves and taste of the tea are not the same.

The steep time was 40 seconds and produced a liquor that was as dark as coffee. (I personally wouldn’t go darker than this.)

The taste was luscious, almost creamy it was so smooth. I could taste the raisin-spice cake but it was very light and ethereal. Another thing that I noticed was that the tea isn’t too sweet. Some Pu’er’s tend to be overly sweet but this had a hint of vanilla and just enough of a savory quality to make it enjoyable. At any time of day you could drink this tea.

When I say that this would be enjoyable any time of day, I mean that this can be your morning cup with milk and is delicious (I tried it), or an afternoon pick-me-up…equally good with a sandwich or at dinner because it’s not overly sweet.

There was an initial energy that I felt right away.

The subsequent steepings were more savory than the first and I enjoyed the light mushroom flavor.
Sweetened, the tea is caramel with a spicy finish.

Personally,I like the shorter steep time of 30-40 seconds.
I made this in a small pot Western Style which is how I usually brew loose (non-chunky, nugget or tuo cha) Pu’er.

I highlighted the timing because mine is different than Verdant’s.

No one, not even Bonnie, has made a note about this one yet??? Bonnie, you’re slacking!

This one was odd to me because upon opening the sample pack I was greeted by what looked like loose leaf black tea, not nuggets or any sort of pressed cake. It smelled very pleasant with notes of light earthiness and mushrooms, raisins, caramel, and a hint of jasmine.

The wet leaf smelled of caramel, raisins, whole wheat flour, and a slight mushroom note. The infusion was a nice rich dark color with notes of mushroom, caramel, with a hint of salt and a hint of jasmine.

I brewed this gaiwan style with two quick rinses and started off with a 2 second steep, adding a second for every steep, working up to 10 seconds. The taste was really nice and different. It was light, but note weak. It reminded me of the way the Huang Zhi Xiang Phoenix Mountain Dancong was. How it was a dancong, but it was lighter, not POW in your face. That’s how this puerh is, nice and light, not aggressive at all, very pleasant.

As for the actual notes I got, and I’m not going to go through steep for steep, started with light notes of earthiness, mushrooms, raisins, and caramel dominating. There were lingering notes of cinnamon and other spices, with a musty note coming and going. The aftertaste of the first few had a salt note to them.

Somewhere around steep 5 and on I started to get a cake note in the tail end of the sip that was very fleeting. It was similar to angel food cake without the sweetness. It’s hard to explain, it was a plain cake taste, not those vanilla or chocolate or icing covered cakes. Just a plain sponge-type cake.

Further on a tingling sensation crept over the sides of my tongue and a nice wildflower honey note came through. The honey note was more texture than it was taste, but even at that it wasn’t a very strong texture, just enough to let you know it was there and be pleasurable.

I never did taste the jasmine note I had found in the dry leaf. Aside from that, this was a very nice mellow puerh. It still had those earthy notes that I found to be characteristic of shu, but they were mellowed, making it a much more pleasant cup.

This is my first straight pu’erh! A big thank you to David Duckler for including this in my last order, haha definitely a hint that I need to try pu’erh!

So this tea, I didn’t know exactly the best way to steep it. I read through Verdant’s site and the reviews on steepster, and decided to go with Bonnie’s parameters as I was worried it would end up pretty strong after a 2 min steep.

So I rinsed with boiling water for 30 seconds, then steeped for 40 seconds. I can see why the smell can be off-putting to some people, I found it actually not bad! Reminds me of Port Alberni, with the slightly fishy scent and a hint of musty woods.

Ehhh, I’m not sure about the taste yet though. I think I may have done something not quite right with the steeping, maybe my leaf ratio or something. The water may have been a bit too hot too? I get the caramel taste and saltiness in there, but mostly near the end of the taste. The initial taste is a bit musty and hard to describe, not quite what I was expecting, but this is my first pu’erh, so I’m assuming this is a normal thing, or I may have done something weird? Haha, it’s not unpleasant, but I have no idea how to rate until I try a few more steepings and maybe play with the leaf ratio and steep times a little bit, although I think this was a good steep time rather than the 2 mins to begin with, it’s definitely not too strong :)

Overall, very interesting, this tea intrigues me. I want to experiment and be able to distinguish a few more flavors. I just need to extract that caramel aftertaste a wee bit more, and this will be rockin’. It’s probably more my untrained palate that’s messing with this tea. I’m very happy I got the nerve to try it though, and will re-steep this afternoon and keep you posted on further developments. No rating for now, as I am new to this type of tea and don’t know what to rate it.

ETA: I tried adding a little wee dab of sugar to the latter half of my cup, this made the caramel more pronounced and definitely brought out the sweetness of the tea. Not sure which I prefer though, I think it was more interesting without sugar!

ETA again: Second steeping (also at 40 s) is a lot better, in my opinion. More smooth and mellow, and a bit more of the caramel flavors poking through. Maybe next time I will try 2 rinses just to see what that does for the flavor. Also, I am feeling quite excellent drinking this tea. It is calming me, maybe grounding is the word. I am pleased with this tea and am excited to explore further into the world of pu’erh.

I haven’t been on Steepster most of this week. Our modem died, so we were without internet all week, which was really a drag. It was a fairly new modem, so we got a free replacement, but it took days to arrive. How spoiled we are!

Of course, I’ve been drinking tea like a freak all week anyway, just didn’t document any of it, & it was mostly teas I’ve already reviewed.
Today I’m finally getting around to sampling this shu, which looked very interesting to me. I actually love the look of it, don’t ask why, but it’s a warm cocoa brown, & it appeals to my visual sense.
I decided to go with the Xingyang workshop brew suggestions: 5 g of tea, 4 oz water in Gaiwan, quick rinse, steep 2 minutes.
1st steep: whew, now that’s some intense tea! It is strong, but still amazingly smooth. There is a bitter edge, but no astrigency at all. I like it.
2. The leaves smell of shrooms & old things (musty), making me think of an old cedar grove. The bitterness is gone from this 2nd cup, and although the flavor is still strong, there is a brightness around the edges of my tongue that is leaning slightly to sweet.
3. I’m not really getting the rum raisin taste, but I’m a little unfocused, as I have to leave to play at a wedding shortly. I probably should have waited until a less busy day to sample this, but that’s ok. I have enough for several samplings, so another day.

When I get home I’ll carry it through some more steepings.

The puerh drinking from Terri HarpLady begins…I could try a new puerh every Saturday for almost half a year.

I moved everything back into my bedroom, which is in desperate need of being cleaned again, as is my entire apartment honestly, so I might get started on that while writing.

I did two rinses first.

First steep: I always love how puerh has that taste that you think is straw, but then you think hey this really seems more like flour. At least for me, that’s what I always get. It always tastes like all sorts of cake components, that eventually come together as cake.
This one tastes like that flour, plus just a hint of raisin.

Second steep: I notice mushrooms mentioned, and I hate them with a passion due to the texture, so honestly in tea I’m not gonna be able to tell a mushroom taste, probably, though maybe that’s more like without the weird sponginess the flavor is okay? I really haven’t ever thought about it, haha. This one has a good bit of earthiness along with the flour and raisin…maybe a hint of caramel.

Third steep: seems sweeter, more caramel then I suppose.

Fourth steep: seems even sweeter! still got that cake thing going on for sure, also making me feel really weird? Floaty.

Fifth steep: Took a break to eat lunch and get rid of the woozy. Rum cake for sure.

Sixth steep: Sebastian has taken interest again in the sound of water boiling. He perked up when I turned the kettle back on, cracks me up. This is the last one because I was getting tired of the person who lives above me (I guess his girlfriend was coming over or something so he vacuumed THEN blasted horrible music). It tastes like cake still but I was finally figuring out mushroom and I am not a fan.

This was really good, I wish I could spend more time with it but I was also getting kind of tired of drinking it especially with the floaty tea drunk feels.

review of Xingyang 2007 Shu Pu’er by Verdant Tea

Date: 11/08/2012
Company: Verdant Tea
Tea Name: Xingyang 2007 Shu Pu’er
Tea Type/Varietal: pu erh
Region: Simao, Yunnan, China
Steeping Vessel/Amt. Leaf:
Plucking Season: May 11, 2007
Liquor Color: reddish brown, cinnamon
Leaf Characteristics: Xingyang Tea Co Pu’er KH9200, small leaf and bud mixture

1. Steepings

1st Steeping:
Water temperature: 180 Fahrenheit
Time: 3 minutes

Note: I don’t have fancy instruments for fixing this pu-erh. I opened the pouch sample and took one teaspoon of the tea and put it in my cup, adding the boiling water to it, I let it steep for several minutes.

I am always taken in by tea’s color and aroma in that I know if it is something that I will enjoy and indeed this would be the case with this pu-erh. It is a lovely reddish brown cinnamon color and I want to say more like stewed raisins or prunes when tasting of this tea. First sip is textural aspect of moisture/dampness reminding me of raw earthy wet ground and as I take in more of the tea I find sweet, savory, and distinctly warm sensation to ground the tea. I get a wonderful sea-salted caramel flavor on my palate with an earthy-sweet aftertaste.

It is good with multiple steeping; I simply add more water to my cup and let it sit, enjoying the tea hot always. I would say for me this tea is reminiscent of a cup of raisins/stewed prunes with the second steep and third being more-so. First steep is too musty and dampness in the taste to truly enjoy the tea.

It is an enjoyable pu-erh.

I steeped this for a good 5 minutes, thereby ensuring that the the earthy, forest-floor flavor would be emphasized at the expense of any subtler flavors. That’s fine by me—what drew me to ripe pu-erhs in the first place is the muddiness. I’m more likely to do short, multiple steeps for green pu-erhs. This 2007 tea is very easy to drink: smooth and sparkly.

I want to like pu’erh tea. I really do. But until today I have been trying and failing miserable at making any that didn’t smell like rotting fish (I don’t even like to eat fresh fish). I even bought a flavoured pu’erh from Davidstea that I ended up pouring down the drain and returning the rest of the bag. Having read a bit more about ways to brew I decided to give it a try again.

I actually love the earth smell of the dry leaf, but I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out wet. I made sure I did a rinse, but then I couldnt remember how long the first steep should be. I went by colour and stopped after about 20 seconds when it was starting to get dark – it actually had a very beautiful rosy tint to it as well. I thought I could smell a little bit of fishyness at first, but that seems to have disappeared entirely.

This is delicious. It is so different from anything I’ve had before, and it makes me want to keep trying different pu’erhs. I am still only on my first steep, but the wonderful earthiness really reminds me of warm moss on a hotter than normal spring day. I wish I had ordered more (I got a sample size of I think every tea Verdant tea had in stock when I ordered) but that just means I’ll have to place another order soon!

Overall, this is a nice, albeit standard, Puerh.

At first I was slightly put off by a faint fishy odor, but upon tasting my fears were allayed. It brews up to a wonderfully dark red-caramel color. It’s got nice earthy tones and a roundness to it. But, beyond this roundness, I don’t get too much.

A good, standard Puerh.