2011 Xiaguan "Golden Memory" Aged Mao Cha Raw Pu-erh tea cake

So I began drinking this for breakfast while at my cousins and I was 100% confused…
This tasted like a lot of the early 00’s teas I’ve had so I was curious what the heck I was actually drinking. Insanely dark for a 5 year old raw pu’erh and a lot of age in the taste. Well, I did what I normally don’t do when I sip away at a pu’erh; I read about it. Turns out it was meant to taste like this! Whew, I’m not crazy then.
This still has some smokey/camphor to it, but it brews out around the sixth steep. The longevity of the brew is quite well depending on what you are eating or drinking with it because it can dry your mouth out in roughly 10 steeps… but I was going hard on my drinking as I am just chillin’ here :)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFBrmH0RYCc/

I admit I have very limited experience with raw puerh, but to me it was easy to tell this is the most aged one I’ve had yet. The color of the liquor was much darker than younger raws I’ve tried, and the aroma off the wet leaves reminded me more of ripe puerhs I’ve had than of other raw ones. The taste was mostly leather and wood, with some bitter notes up front. Most infusions were sweet, though it was almost exclusively on the back end of a sip, like in the back of the mouth and the aftertaste. Very smooth throughout. The woody flavor I tasted in most of these steeps was not the moist, forest-floor flavor of shou puerh, but a more aromatic and dry wood flavor. The tea became more drying as the session went on as well. An interesting tea, tastes much older than the date it was pressed.

The Yunnan Sourcing description says that this was pressed from aged mao cha. It doesn’t say how old the mao cha was but judging from the color of the tea I would say six or seven year old mao cha. This does taste and look like a ten year old tea, at least. The initial notes were somewhat unpleasant, tobacco and leather, an aged taste as I like to call it. It took a while for this taste to fade. What was left behind, somewhere around steep eight I would say, was very smooth. It also was sweet after a fashion. Not the apricots of a young sheng but something more subtle. As to qi, I did get a little off this cake, relaxing but not in your face qi like a Yangqinghao tea. Don’t let the year of this cake fool you, it is aged more than other 2011 cakes.

I steeped 8.2g of leaf in boiling water in a 120ml gaiwan. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec , 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min. The leaves were not done at twelve. If I wanted to continue I’d get a few more steeps out of the leaves. For someone who wants to try a semi aged tea this is a good option as the price tag is not that high. I think it was $54. It was as aged as any tea I’ve had from 2005 at least.