King Tea

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Recent Tasting Notes

82

A black tea cake made by Xiaguan? I couldn’t resist giving it a try.

Comes in a nice box, cool wrapper, good looking leaves.

In the cup it’s a good quality, strong, pretty “standard” example of a Yunnan black tea with malt, cocoa, and sweet potato notes with a hint of Xiaguan smokiness. Nothing super special, but it’s a solid, affordable daily drinker black, especially for those who like a bold brew in the morning.

Flavors: Cocoa, Malt, Smoke, Sweet Potatoes

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 15 sec 8 g 5 OZ / 160 ML
Sqt

I have had my eye on this for a while. Good to see someone try it. I’m generally not a big fan of black tea cakes as it leads to unecessary leaf breakage, but this would be handy for a longer trip in terms of saving space while packing.

tperez

Yeah I hate tea waste/dust. Luckily it’s pressed on the looser side, definitely not like Xiaguan’s tuos haha.

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87

A tea has most classical characteristics of YiWu tea.
Orchid fragrance mixed with flavor of honey.
Appealing on both aroma and taste.
Well balanced mounth feeling on every aspects and varies naturally along with every steeping.
Compare it with same tea from last spring,
the aroma and fragrance become mellower like melted into every part of tea leaves,
but when poured by boiling water,
these will come out soon without any hesitation.
Tea liquor turns to golden on color and comes with more fermented flavor.

Flavors: Floral, Fruity, Honey, Orchid

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 6 tsp 150 OZ / 4436 ML

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64

This gongting cake is wonderfully fragrant. I brewed it up in a 100ml gaiwan, using water just off the boil, and very quick flash steeps. The warm leaf is soothingly sweet and floral. After giving the leaves a quick rinse, I took a whiff of the lid. The aroma was the most pungently floral (in a good way, but WOW powerful) orchid and honey smell. The tea soup was silky smooth, and had some wonderful bitterness up front. This tea produces a very strong huigan. A wonderful aftertaste of honey/honeysuckle stayed afterward for a very long time. I am a big fan of long lasting fragrances. I must say that while I don’t know exactly how long all of these teas have been stored with John in Guangzhou, I must say that I am a fan. Similarly aged teas from kunming (which I am also a huge fan of) while very floral, aren’t quite as smoothed out as John’s GZ storage appears to be. This same cake stored even dryer might be a wonderful experience, but I might caution a few more years to round it out. Dayi’s gongting qingbing is a bombshell of fragrance. I wouldn’t say for me this is a daily drinker, but something I want to visit often.

Flavors: Flowers, Honey, Honeysuckle, Orchid

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 6 g 100 OZ / 2957 ML
looseTman

Excellent, concise, and yet very thorough review! Your review sounded very positive, yet you rated it a 64?

Nug

Hi looseTman! The way I rate teas may seem a bit abstract, but let me post a ranking system that I follow pretty closely to give some insight. Please PM me if you have any other questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
http://mgualt.com/tealog/rating-system/

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64

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Im very surprised, because my experience is very diferent to Thomas one…
Infused leaves have honey flavor and a very balanced not very bitter soup..i didn’t feel artificial like flavors, intead this tea is that could be expected in a good or average Yiwu tea…The tea last about 8 infusions…It would be great if other people tell us their experience with this puerh…!

Flavors: Honey

Preparation
3 g 2 OZ / 50 ML

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I received a free 10g sample of this with my King Tea Mall order. Opening the bag it smells very fruity… like too fruity. I pressed on though and loaded 5g into my pot. Brews a very light yellow and tastes artificially fruity and floral. Beyond that it has the generic gasoline-y taste of low quality sheng. No bitterness, no thickness or lingering qualities. I did not finish my cup or brew any more.

I’m pretty confident that this is just low quality sheng maocha that has been doped with artificial scents. Very disappointing given King Tea Mall’s great customer service and excellent prices on factory pu. This won’t stop me from buying Dayi or other factory products from them in the future, but I will definitely steer clear of their house brand “Bokuryo” products.

Flavors: Artificial, Fruity

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 15 sec 5 tsp 3 OZ / 90 ML
Sqt

Interesting, I quite liked their Naka maocha. I think I have a sample of the Yiwu somewhere too, will have to check to see if my experience is the same.

tperez

Ok, I’d be interested to see what you think

Sqt

I’ll definitely report back after I try it.

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81

Overall this is a nice ripe tea. The fermentation taste has nearly completely faded despite the fact that there is no taste of wet storage. The tea liquid stayed a nice clear amber throughout all seven steeps. I am going to brew some more for photographs with my two flash setup but probably won’t end up drinking the rest but who knows sometimes cold shou tastes good. This was not a spectacular tea but was overall a good performer. I didn’t get any chocolate notes but there was a distinct fruity taste even if I can’t pin it down to a specific fruit. This was overall a sweet tea with little bitterness. At only $35 this one is definitely worth the price. I would not be surprised if it could be found cheaper on Taobao but then you have to pay an agent.

I steeped this tea seven times in an approximately 180ml Yixing teapot with 11g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. This one I gave a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, and 25 sec.

Flavors: Fruity

Preparation
Boiling 11 g 6 OZ / 180 ML

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80

This is a reasonably good ripe tea. But it did not taste as good as I expect an $85 tea to taste. There was a strong bitterness initially along with a mottled sweet note. The bitterness was noticeable for about three or four steeps. There was a fair amount of fermentation flavor. I would say it lasted five steeps. Only gave this six steeps so far as I was steeping it in a big tea pot. I have been buying teapots lately that are too big for gongfu but look good when I photograph them. My endeavor in tea photography is going quite well. I have not bought many new teas lately because I have been spending my money on upgrading my camera gear. The new camera I am waiting for has nearly medium format resolution. In the end I did enjoy the tea and will probably go back for more after I photograph my tea session. The pictures I release on Instagram do not do justice to what I am able to print in large 13 × 19 format in very high resolution.

I steeped 14.8g of leaf in boiling water in a 200ml Yixing Teapot. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, and 20 sec.

Flavors: Bitter, Earth, Sweet

Preparation
Boiling 14 g 7 OZ / 200 ML
tea123

13 × 19 cm or inches?

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83
drank rou gui by King Tea
91 tasting notes

To start, I found the Rou Gui from YS to be much nicer.
Nose; mineral, roasted vegetables and grains. The roasted notes pretty much obscured what else was there, though later steepings revealed the spice flavors.
Palate; light and delicate, roasted barley, sweet spice showed up later…
Not bad, just not great.

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 0 min, 15 sec

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I got a sample of this tea from LiquidProust (thanks for letting me try!) and had a surprisingly amount of steeps from it some time ago. Thinking back about the taste, one flavor and word stands out: leather! I was drinking leather ;-) Not that that means it was a bad taste, just very special. I also encountered the dryness LiquidProust mentioned in his review.

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After drinking this multiple times, I think I am finally able to make the remarks I’ve tried to but couldn’t in the past.

First, I got suckered into buying this because it has the leaf pressed on top. The aesthetics of that kind of pulled me in as well as the 500g size. I was looking for a cake to buy and send to many people on Instagram and decided on this. Now, to be honest, King Tea window shopping is fun but making a purchase is rough. They have THOUSANDS of puerh items so I had no idea what to do. I ended up choosing Mengku because I have yet to come across someone who reviews a lot of their products so I decided to try my luck on finding something amazing.
https://www.instagram.com/p/9J8gIPRYDL/

My findings are as follows: The tea has been stored well, but the characteristics that the liquid brews is not my type of sheng. This raw material brews medium smokiness to it. This is also a medium soupiness; I actually prefer my sheng to be light rather than thick. The taste for me, with these two qualities, ended up being semi dry and as the sessions went on it became more dry at the back of my mouth. I’m unable to say this is bad or recommend it. Since the smokiness and soup type sheng are not my thing, it’s hard to know when one of the ones I come across might be something considered ‘high quality’. Thankfully, I have figured out my preference so I know which samples to accept from people rather than take all the tea as I did before

p.s. I think 20+ people have a part of my cake somewhere :)

Rui A.

If you like please let me know how much would you like me to pay you for a 5 grams sample of this tea and send it to me when you post me the teas of the 2016 Sheng Olympics

Liquid Proust

I can send some out for a swap tomorrow if you’d like; or just free.

Rui A.

To save on transport costs please don’t. If it is possible please just include the sample with the Olympics lot as I am not in a rush. I am more than happy to pay for it and if you ever come to this side of the pond I am more than happy to give samples away from my stash.

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I opened up a 10g sampler of this tea and was surprised by how many little needle dudes were in there.
This https://instagram.com/p/3XYJeaxYHr/ is only 3g!

The taste of this tea was quite smooth and very fresh. I don’t understand the aroma as it smells like salami… however, the taste is great. I just didn’t like warm meat aroma coming from my tea cup. I really want someone else to verify this because I am not joking the least bit. Regardless, I had a nice session of fresh green tea with this :)

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