The Essence of Tea

Finished my sample off with only a small quantity of it left, in a small glazed gaiwan. It has an earthy, forest-floor, mushroom background, mild sweetness and hints of spice & herbs. Very nice stuff. Still only about 10 infusions into it, but because I only have a small quantity left—fully hydrated, they take up only 1/4 of the gaiwan volume—I expect it won’t go as many infusions as it did the first few times. But I can’t hold that against the tea. I was the one who only bought a tiny sample!

Surprised I didn’t write a tasting note for this one already….I am already almost done with my tiny sample. Tonight, I’m preparing infusions in a very small yixing pot, about 40 mL per infusion, with about 3 grams of tea. It is earthy, sweet, spicy, a little fruity, delicious. It stood up well to a mixed cheese plate, cutting the richness wonderfully. Water is about 205 degrees, infusions from 30" to a minute or so, fairly long right from the start, because this is a tea that can take it, and keep taking it, without getting bitter or unpleasant in any way. I’m now up to about 15 infusions, and suspect I can get in a few more before the flavor gives way entirely to sweet water.

Opens with a soft perfumed must of old hardwood seasoned with incense. I love tea that evokes a monkish atmosphere. Calm, austere, and beautifully contemplative.

The taste is amiable and sweet with hidden florals and finishes with an interesting mineral hardness which spikes gracefully providing structure to an otherwise plush experience. The hui gan is shallow and simple but the mouth is left coated with a light and airy sweetness. Later steeps slide down effortlessly seemingly lubricated by the lingering silky mouthfeel.

While the ’97 Menghai 8582 was heavy on the flavors imposed by the place of storage to the point that I felt they departed from the realm of natural tea flavors, this tea really holds onto the essence of earth and decay. With more natural humus-like, decaying leaf matter and old pine needle flavors, I found this more attuned to my palate. The nuanced and gentle mushroom, moss, and tree bark characters of young sheng puerh have aged gracefully and have descended the flavor profile of this tea from the tree tops into the sub-leaf-litter level, highlighting the natural warm embrace of a forest floor. Some of the basement notes are there in the form of talc, medicine, and ointment, but they’re not overbearing to the point of disgust.

What I struggled with in this tea, in the first three or four steeps, was its texture. Leaving me with a sensation that greasy, damp lotion had been smeared across my tongue, I found the palate initially murky, slightly sour, and hard to get past. I did not drink much of the first three steeps. Fortunately, this clamminess departed and revealed a thick, sweetness that made it intensely pleasurable to drink from the fifth steep on.

If this tea is supposedly somewhere been wet and dry storage, than I guess I’m more of a dry storage fan. This flavor profile was much more to my liking, and I’ve learned that the first few steeps of a tea such as this are not as meaningful as the middle steeps. This was a bit of lore I found early on in my readings on puerh and something that I did not experience with young sheng puerh, but is something that makes sense in light of an aged tea such as this.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=392

Fantastic tea for the afternoon, after dinner desert tea or as a kickstart first thing in the morn. Loads of body with a great natural sweetness. Strong flavours of malt, sugarcane, caramel and molasses. Fairly forgiving if oversteeped. Overall a very strong but smooth tea. Easily my favourite black tea at the moment.

This one opens up really sweet with candied yams, a hint of creamed spinach and a fresh ocean breeze. There is a deep and lasting vegetal taste that somehow attains a childlike playfulness throughout and is not gassy at all. Kind of like shiso and sugar. There are floral underpinnings and a dusting of cinnamon on the finish.

The thick mouthfeel and sweet, sweet base translates into a contrastingly bright and fruity hui gan like eating a cold white peach on a hot summer day.

Yeah. The aroma has a goji berry tartness and the decadent sweetness of a strawberry and rhubarb preserve. At first I am met with the sweetness of dark honey and clove but there is a subtle flavor of sugar cane and a definite flat fruitedness I can only describe a tasting like persimmon. The hui gan of flaky fruit pastry and a subtle hint of mild curry powder is sweet and complex.

As I progress through the gongfu session, the structure of the tea is revealed and the dryness of good bourbon comes out to match the color of the liquor. There is revealed an underlying flavor of sweet tobacco and rich spice pushing the fruit flavors into a withered and warm mulled cider.

Picked up a sizable sample chunk and got right to it. The compressed dry leaf is unusually attractive in its appearance and immediately smells like it’s going to be a good puerh. Word. The warmed wet leaf aroma is complex and pleasant with no in-your-face mustiness. Moist tree bark, cocoa powder, a subtle hint of smoked paprika and sweet soil.

The liquor is stiff and dry on the palate and not bitter at all. Very woody and full like chewing on a lightly roasted coffee bean, again, without the bitterness. There is a soft talc flavor on the edges that gives roundness and the hui gan is a satisfying dark, dark chocolate. An obscured sweetness blushes the otherwise austere experience into a generous though still serious warmth.

The immediate wet leaf aroma is a very pungent sweet must and plum tartness with notes of truffle oil and malted vinegar. In the cup the liquor is sturdy and complex yet surprisingly light. Wafts of bleu cheese and saffron mingle with cidery sweetness and a malted vinegar acidity. White wine marinated mushrooms. The hui gan is ambrosial, a definition of umami, enveloping the palate more so than the actual taste of the liquor.

When brewed stronger, a delicate and entrancing malt is mingled with the fruity must and peculiar acidic flavors. This one gets sweeter as you go. Bumped the score significantly.

silky, sweet, earthy, but still with a bit of bite on an early infusion when I forgot it and left the room for a few minutes. A very nice evening tea with a rich dinner.

First try with this aged puerh. Using tap water, small porcelain gaiwan, 2 grams of tea, and 60-75mL water with each infusion. Water is just off the boil.

Dry leaves smell of sweet rich soil.

First a flash rinse, then 20 second first infusion: sweet, earthy, anise, a hint of herby/spicy but no bitterness. The liquor turns my golden shino cup to deep red-orange.

30 seconds 2nd: sweet, earthy, thick, liquor and a little bitter
30 seconds 3rd: sweet, earthy, little bitter
30 seconds 4th: still sweet, earthy, no bitter, bit of fruity
45 seconds 4th: sweet, earthy, little spiciness/resinous but not bitter
60", 60", 60", 90"—color lightening, still sweet, mellow, earthy, bits of caramel and raisin or plum
2’, 2’, 3’—starting to lose it, heading towards sweet water. Going to try one more at 5 minutes—and there is still something there, even earthy and sweet coming forward despite having just eaten a mint. It’s not strong, but not quite just sweet water yet. Nice pu!

The big question I was trying to answer with this order from Nada was how much better aged puerhs are than my current young shengs and shus. While this is a very smooth and pleasant tea, I can’t say that I love it 5 to 10 times more than some of the lovely but quite inexpensive young pus I’ve gotten from other sources. It’s definitely smooth and mellow in a way that has no parallel in my young shengs, but it is approached by the better of my young shus, and the young shengs have other attractions like smokiness and umami that are absent in teas like this.

I’ve been enjoying a terrific session with the last of this sample, brewed up in my newest miniature yixing pot. The pot is small enough to be truly stuffed with the leaves—the lid doesn’t quite seat properly, being held up by the leaves. The tea is spicy, sweet, earthy, never bitter (even when I forgot one infusion for a very long time), just delicious. I am certainly at least 20 infusions into my session, and after the leaves have waited patiently overnight, I expect many more, because I was not having to lengthen the infusions yet—15-30 seconds was still yielding plenty of flavor at the end of last night. I’m not going to drop 700 euros on an entire cake of it, but I can now understand why someone else might.

This is a very expensive tea, so I wanted to be well prepared. I finished lunch 30 minutes before tasting, brushed teeth without toothpaste, rinsed mouth with plain water—didn’t want anything to interfere with the taste of the tea.

1.4 grams of tea in tiny gaiwan
30mL water per infusion (used a very small measuring cup)

Water boiling or near boiling (205-212 per the thermometer when poured from the kettle)

Flash rinse

Wet leaves smell like forest floor—sweet clean compost scent

first infusion 15 seconds
earthy like the scent promised, but surprisingly strong sweet and spicy notes right up there with it

2nd infusion 20 seconds
earthy, caramel, sweet, spicy, very very very nice

3rd infusion 25 seconds
About the same as the 2nd infusion, a bit stronger is only difference

4th infusion 30 seconds
earthy, sweet, spicy, caramel

5th infusion, 40 seconds
Still strong and lovely

I have to admit to an ulterior motive here: I was hoping I might find that I actually prefer my young sheng puerhs to the ‘real deal’ of very aged sheng, since I have come to prefer them to most of the ripe shu—ripe shu designed to mimic the aged sheng. So I was hoping to find this would be a rather bland experience like eating dirt. And it wasn’t. It is lovely. It is very, very lovely.

Is it lovely enough to want to invest $$$ in drinking it regularly and in larger volume? Maybe not. I think stuff like this will remain an occasional tea, because even as it is sitting net to me in the cup, and the water has just boiled again, visions of Lao Ban Zhang loose mao cha are dancing in my head.

But do I understand why some stuff like this is praised and prized so highly? Yes. I get it now. It is subtly but dramatically different than the best of the shus I have had, because it manages a wonderful balance of the elements of spicy, sweet, earthy, fruity, more complex than I’ve had yet from a shu.

I’ll report back later when I see how many infusions I can get. Now up to 7, no surprises, still going strong.

Edit: got up to 12 with signficant tea flavor; by 16, it was slightly sweet water, still nice, but not a lot of oomph left.

I had this side-by-side with the Manmai this morning. See that note about how it made me realize that aroma and flavor aren’t all there is to a tea. The flavor and texture in this tea were again overwhelming, but the energy is crisp, satisfying, glowing, and heavy. Mmmmm.

These leaves edged smaller, with more variety in color, but the same healthy sheen. Unlike the Manmai, the aroma wasn’t a bellowing tropical fruit, but instead a mellow, more typical dry sheng smell. Rinsing the leaves, classic woodsy characters emerged: damp moss, birch bark, and distant cedar shavings. The color of the soup was an opaline scallop-color, speckled with bud fur.

Despite the pale moon-colored soup, this tea had a great thick, gloopy texture early on. I found the overal flavor profile fleeting: light-colored uncooked mushrooms, maple wood, and cotton candy. In the gaiwan, the leaves looked larger, darker green, and more mature than the last two Essence of Tea samples, giving me pause that older leaves may have less immediate potency to them.

The middle and later steeps got a touch soapy and thinly astringent for me. And, despite what I consider to be another light tea, this had less quick bitterness, and a better texture and structure than both the Manmai and the Bangwai, hinting at a potentially bright future for this tea.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=245

A re-visit to this and the Mansai made me realize how aroma and flavor are really not the only characters of a tea to consider. Texture is important, as is qi or energy, or simply how the tea makes you feel. This tea makes me feel amazing.

Flavor-wise, I’m still really focused on the flinty, grassy, greenness of the tea, and find the texture a little light, but this tea has powerful, golden, glowing energy to it, and that’s just something that’s hard to consistently find.

Updated blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=498

Of all aspects of this tea, the most stunning was the initial wet-leaf aroma. Goodness. A rich, intoxicating push of licorice root and star anise, following by a bundle of tropical fruit: persimmion, jack-fruit, rambutan, and banana. Absolutely illustrious. A lot of aroma came out of a small amount of dark, large, well-dressed leaves that were dark and had an excellent sheen.

Hot steeps and long ones produced surprisingly light tea. I kept my chubby yixing only partially filled in an attempt to concentrate the flavors, but for the first few steeps of treating this tea like other young sheng pu’er, I felt as though I could taste the minerals of the water and the clay more than anything from the tea. An ephemeral and ethereal gauze of apricot, straw, and honeydew made brief appearances. Otherwise, the water extracted light green bitterness, a not so subtle reminder that pu’er, in its early days, is really a form of green tea. Maybe I should have treated this sample as such.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=239

I think this was my favorite of the three I tried last year and again this year, it is my favorite of the three. It’s got all the elements of puerh I like, big leaf purity, a bit of sun-dried fruit wildness, a wonderful returning flavor, good texture, and a solid afterglow. This tea doesn’t need me to attach copious sensory descriptors to it today, it just works (although, I do agree with buttery and nutty, per Hobbes). Unlike the Manmai, it’s not grassy nor flinty, and to me it has more overall depth than the Mansai.

Incredibly fresh bright fruity aromas leap off the leaves. They smell just like every in-season fresh fruit skin all at once…grapes, apples, pears, peaches, cherries. All wrapped up in that delightful woodsy and mossy musk. The leaves are large and tightly folded into both broad and twisted shapes. They all have a nice even green-brown sheen with a many edges of white fur.

This tea starts off with a fairly thin, relatively bland and textureless soup, despite the leaves appearing to go through agony early and quickly. The third and fourth steeps really start to pop with fresh apricot flesh, aspen boughs, and pleasant balancing bitterness. While the product description at Essence of Tea include “goopy” as a property, I find the texture never gets there – maybe I did not use enough leaf to elicit that character.

Evident that this is a “green” tea, it is also the youngest pu’er I have tried. It doesn’t have that raw, fresh gum-numbing youthfulness that others have, but instead, it reveals its roots as a green tea, feeling more like fresh bi lo chun than musky, wild, funky pu’er. Such youth might allow me to more readily detect the near-Jingmai essence from this tea, as I think that particular terroir has a fresh, juicy lychee or apricot sensation to it.

The most enjoyable sensation this tea provides is after it has been swallowed. Big cooling mintiness rises and a long lingering herbal licorice flavor spreads across the palate.
Not unexpected for a tea lacking the wisdom of a much older one and having opened its bright green leaves so early, it empties itself by steep seven or eight and collapses into dry minerals and bark. That being said, such vibrant, high-quality leaves will likely prove to be quite outstanding in many years time.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=220

not as complex as the 1996 Orange in orange, but a nice aged tea nonetheless

Nicely aged & thick in the mouth. This is what a good puer of this age should be like!

This is a real pu-erh tea that holds nothing back.

If you are one who likes to walk into a deciduous forest in fall after a light rain and lick every surface clean, then this tea is for you. Robust, bitter, and unrelenting. It may have been because I steeped it in a gaiwan or maybe my greenhorn taste buds are not mature enough for such an aged pu-erh, but my god was this tea bitter. Bitter in the woody, leaf-pile, pine needle, stick, compost heap kind of way. I truly felt like I was walking through a forest after rainfall. It was also very dry in the back of the mouth.

I’ve drank it twice now, both times from a gaiwan. I’ve only steeped it for a total of 5 infusions each time, only because I couldn’t bring myself to drink anymore. However, there was enough strength in the tea for at least twice as many infusions, if not more.

Even though I did not enjoy the tea very much, I could tell that it was something special. Very complex in flavor with great strength, mouth-feel was OK, and it was still very calming and warm; however, definitely not for the faint at heart.

UPDATE: I’ve taken the advice from Nadacha and decreased the amount of leaf I used and steeped it this time in my yixing pot, the results? Simply fantastic.

The harsh bitterness is gone and what is left behind is a soothing, earthy, woody piece of delightful drinking. Impeccably smooth and creamy without a hint of dryness. It has a deep and complex flavor with notes of earth, wood, wet leaf, vanilla and leather. The aftertaste is full and coats the back of the mouth with a vanilla and wood-like bitter-sweetness.

Amazing what 14 years can do for a good tea!

Quite mature for its age, with slight wet-storage, which doesn’t seem to manifest itself in the cup. Of course, as a person partial to wetter-storage, YMMV. The tea itself sits very firmly and thickly in the mouth, leaving an aftertaste that sticks around for a while. What’s most surprising about this particular tea is how much bitterness it has left. It’s definitely not astringency or sharpness, but a sort of herbal/medicinal bitterness, reminds me of a bitter herbal tea that my parents sometimes drink. In other words, bitterness in a good way and with an interesting flavor profile/“texture.”

Tasted better than all the other samples I got from Essence of Tea (except for his 80s Liu An which I haven’t tried yet), which is surprising since all the other teas I got were older than this one. Alas, I bought the last cake and it may not be re-stocked for a while. Currently hunting for it online as a back-up plan.