1992 "Eight Character Green Mark" Aged Ripe Puerh Tea

This tea was very good over the course of sixteen steeps. There was no fermentation taste to this tea. You knew you were drinking a ripe tea and not an aged raw however. It started out with a strong and slightly unpleasant aged flavor. Not the leather and tobacco of an aged raw however. I am not sure how to describe it. This flavor gradually changed over many steeps until it was gone and replaced with what I would describe as a sweet note of sorts. Not the sweetness a young ripe exhibits however. It was different. This was a tea witih many layers as I went through sixteen steeps. I could have gotten a few more steeps out of it but sixteen seemed a good stopping point. Plus I was getting impatient with the longer steeps. This is an expensive cake but well worth a sample if you want to try a real ripe that you know is really from 1992. Not like many teas you see online that claim to be this old but are not really this old. I went into this cake the day after receiving it and didn’t let it rest because I wanted my 1500th tasting note to be a special tea and I couldn’t think of any better tea than the oldest verifiable one in my collection.

I steeped this tea 16 times in a 160ml Solid Silver Teapot with 14g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. 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, 2 min, 2.5 min, 3 min, 3.5 min, and 4 minutes. I definitely recommend this tea. It is worth a sample just to know what a ripe this old tastes like. Wile I am very fond of young ripe cakes this one is a nice change. And the leaves were not played out a sixteen, I could have gotten another 2 to 4 steeps I would guess.