pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
The Pubertea 2.0 begins. First challenger is the 2006 Yiwu from Tea Urchin.
I drank the rinse on this one, which is always a bit risky for aged teas, but all is well; this tea is perfectly clean. The flavor reminds me of chocolate and wine (merlot), but of course, it’s not really at all like that. Actually, I really dug the flavor on this one, it’s quite chuggable. Good huigan and smooth. Nothing too exiting, but it would make a nice easy drinker.
Second Pubertea contestant today: The 2006 Silver Medal Banzhang from Wistaria Teahouse.
My first thought on this tea, before it had even hit my lips, was to wax philosophical on the idea of an ‘award winning puer.’ Presumably this tea got the award close to its pressing date, and how do you know if a puer is worth its mettle until it’s had a chance to age? But I digress. . .
This tea is nice and strong, with a huigan that won’t quit, that delves into the back of the cheeks. It’s not really bitter or sweet, more savory I guess. I got up to move some laundry over and attend to my bowels after a few steeps, and when I sat back down to return to the tea, it took me a minute to realize that I hadn’t taken a new sip; dat huigan. Unfortunately, the tea went downhill from there; there were plenty more fine steepings, but they weren’t the same. It’s an all too common failing – the later steeps are just fine, but they can’t help but be diminished by the tea’s former glory. In that sense, this tea makes puer-sk’s 2017 LME seem appealing in comparison. Its opening steeps may not have been as great, but that LME could really go the distance.
Do you ever find that if you let the tea sit for 1/2 or for several hours that it takes on a more lasting quality?
I’ve heard of this, but I can’t really comment on it from my experence. Usually, if the tea would be interesting/long lasting enough for a second go at it, then I thermos it.
I remember the thermos brew of this one having prominent qi, which is impressive for a thermos brew.
The Pubertea continues: The 2006 XZH Black Wrapper Lao Banzhang.
Weird tea. I would’ve expected a Banzhang to have flavor. I started pushing this tea on the third steeping (second if you don’t count the rinse) to try and get something of interest, but to no avail. I managed to find a touch of qi in this, but I was really focused on looking, so that my have just been placebo. What a complete waste of a focused tea session.
On the plus side, LP did a fantastic job of breaking apart this cake – the leaves are beautiful.
Evidently bergamot and petitgrain are very similar, though they seem quite different to me. The reason for the digression into the nuance of citrus is because the taste and aroma of the ‘14 Zhong Cha Jade Mark Round is decidedly of petitgrain. It is an excellent production: thick, sweet, aromatic, and distinctive. One of their best young productions I’ve tasted.
2014 Rui Gong Tian Chao, Chadao.de
This tea is good. It tastes less fruity than it first did (maybe my dry house) but there is still a magic hidden away.
Yiwu characteristics with soft fruit, good huigan which leans towards the leafy but has an aroma I can only describe as flat Schweppes lemonade.
It has a classy magic about it I like, isn’t bitter and zappy but soft and colourful
Also got my ‘If you’re reading this its 2 late’ out of the box. Went in heavy with 8 grams and its absolutely lovely. The huigan is special, sweet with wisps of fragrance and tingling bitterness on the tongue. I cant describe what the taste is because its so weird but great. This one has aged well in my dry house
???? Tea today.
I’d set aside a ripe to air out, and kept putting off drinking it, and I decided today is the day. I wasn’t 100% in the ripe mood, so I decided to add a pinch of raw to spice things up a bit. Brewed it up and got a nice orange approaching red color, with a lovely incense aroma; whoops this a raw. And it was very good. Thick, tasty, interesting huigan, long legs, and a solid teadrunk. Maybe this is a Wistaria sample from Pubertea 1? Well it was surely good, whatever it was.
Chen Guang-Ho Tang’s 2006 Autumn “Yi Wu Yeh Cha” sold by Hou De.
The common perception of Autumn tea is that it does not age well. With 11 years in, this was a perfect opportunity to put that idea to the test.
Early steeps brought forth much what you’d expect from a tea of this age and with clean storage. Smooth and earthy, with notes of aged paper and charred bell pepper braised with vanilla. This transformed into spice,honey and tobacco with hints of brisket in the nose and a decent finish.
Throughout there was a slight papery coating of the mouth, which felt a little strange. This tea had some good steeps, but seemed to fall off a little sooner than an aged Spring tea. Energetically, it felt a little subdued.
All said and done, I did mostly enjoy the cups I drank. My personal experience with this tea would not have me write off good quality aged Autumn tea in the future.
2007 Bamboo Naka from CWS today. I intended to brew something else with a bit more age, but realized after the rinse that I had accidentally put this sucker in my teapot instead. So it goes.
Despite having steamed this open a couple of years ago, the little tea chunks take a while to give out their juice, and I go from thinking “that’s it?” in the early steepings, to later feeling a nice teadrunk. This tea is a nice little feels delivery device, I just wish it had more age on it.
I’m making a cws order, it’s been put off till Monday now as it got out of hand.
Did you have any favourites?
I keep telling myself I should pick up more of the 2011 shou mei. I’ve also considered getting more of the 2014 Bada Lao Yu, but that’s more of an age-r.
I also like the Jingdezhen teacups, e.g.: https://www.chawangshop.com/tea-hardware/tea-cups/jingdezhen-vintage-hand-painted-tea-cup-butterfly-and-melon-green-90cc.html
I decided against the shou mei after reading its a bit malty? Malt is not my thing – moonlight white yes, yue huang bai not so much
Been caning the white2 terroir set.
I really like the menghai, then jingmai, Yiwu, then lancang/mengku.
Really only the mengku I don’t like – the others are good – menghai & jingmai are half gone. Yiwu is Yiwu so it’s steadier with my preferred profile being fruit and flower forward, there’s a time & place for yiwu in my house
The mengku & lancang is the opposite of what I want, it doesn’t seem to assert itself in any direction apart from from kinda bitter and puerh-y.
But as my housemate (who is studying bach) said – ‘sometimes the ones you think you hate you like more once you understand them’
How familiar with sheng do you think one needs to be to get the full experience from the terroir set?
I think the whole idea of sets like this is to help you gain the familiarity you’re talking about. I haven’t tried this set but I bought the Basics raw set when I was getting started. 100g of each of 4 teas is a fair chunk of tea, enough to drink nothing else every single day for a month and then some.
You wind up drilling down into the tea in a way that you can’t with 25g samples. It helps make you more a sophisticated drinker. When you first start drinking raw puer, it’s like subjecting your taste buds to blasts of random noise. The smells and tastes are very foreign, and it’s hard to disentangle them enough to recognize individual notes. You just have to keep pouring lots of tea into your mouth until things start coming into focus. With the Basics set this wound up with me never quite finishing it, because before I used it up I moved on to better things.
I have a notion that the terroir set is better tea than the Basics.
Exactly as mr avcl said. I have been drinking Puerh for 3 years now and it still came in handy. Some of the terroir is quite obvious early on, (yiwu vs menghai with me, for instance) but some of the other areas are more subtle.
Also I imagine its good if you dont know your brewing preference, the tea has some pretty good flavours & aroma in there.
Thanks for the replies, I forgot to check back in. I think I might go with the bitterleaf’s taster set first to see if my palate is sophisticated enough to tell the difference between regions yet. It is quite a bit cheaper but it only consists of three regions.
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