Mandala "Wild Monk" Tea - Mao Cha

I got this tea in my latest order from Mandala – oooh, it’s very nice!

After my monster matcha green smoothie, I decided to steep some of this up in my Yixing teapot especially for shengs. I decided to stick with short steeps of around 30-45 seconds. The tea flavor here is quite nice… there is a little bit of smoke but it also has a sweetish, thick almost lychee like quality. And yes there is a bit of sourness, a slight lemon flavor. It has a slight fizziness on my tongue in the aftertaste. Compared to the other mao cha I have had, this is considerably more mellow.

If you’re a fan of younger sheng pu-erhs you should really check this one out! I don’t have time for a more detailed tasting note today but I’m sure the 1 oz. of this I have will not last for very long.

I drank multiple steepings of this during the afternoon, while I was cleaning & rearranging my sun room, then watering all the plants. This is such a lovely mild & sweet tea, with a thick & creamy feel initially, & with an excellent mind clearing kind of energy to it. Later steepings take on a lemony quality as well. This is one of those that can be steeped over & over & over again in the yixing. I’d still be drinking it now, if I was still at home.

Man, I don’t know if I did something wrong with this tea, or if it is really THAT different tasting than the Wild Monk cake I’ve got at home… I brewed it up and treated it just like I would my cake, and I’m getting hardly any smoke or sweetness or delicous shengy tang. Mostly I’m getting a weird bitterness…I’m on steep #2 and I’m going to keep going for a couple more steeps and see what kind of flavors I can pull from it. Any suggestions are welcome!

I’ve been spending a lot more time outdoors with my pups, exercising and gardening lately. I’ve started a miniature container garden! We had a few days of fantastic rare sunny warm/cool days here. Now it looks like we’re going back to the usual disappointing weather in the NYC area. I hate humidity. And work days have been busy. This weekend, unfortunately, is busy as well. I’ve signed myself up for a party today, and then it’s Mother’s Day tomorrow. I’m going to enjoy some tea while I can.

I’ve tried a variety of puers in my life. I’ve decided that I’m not really a fan. While I can drink the cups down quite easily, I never find myself craving them as I do for oolongs, greens and blacks. I’d drink more white but they often make me shaky. But Mandala has a great puer rep so I thought I’d give this a try. I received this sample when I ordered a bunch of puers for my dad’s birthday. I decided to keep this to educate myself. Two months later, I’m finally diving in.

My first thought is that I’m shocked at the smokiness. I didn’t read any descriptions before trying so I was not expecting this aspect. It’s also lighter than expected. Oddly fresh, which is not something I’d expect from a puer. But maybe that’s just because I don’t have much experience with shengs. This is tasty. I don’t think I’ll be craving it ever, but I am enjoying this current cup.

this was included in my first mandala order by jamie, thanks so much!

i kept trying to place my order but the checkout system refused to acknowledge me as canadian! lol. i wound up calling and talking to jamie who said he’d sort it out for me which he did while including some lovely samples as well.

lately i’ve had some odd experiences with puerh…. off beat sweetness or an overpowering mossy taste leaving the sense of having been whacked in the tongue by something good tasting but somehow fluffy; a heavy feather pillow to mouth. that is not the case with this puerh.

it steeps up to be very light, very mild smelling: hints of grass and a baseline earth tone. natural sweetness!!! this puerh has also given me insight as to what i appreciate in a puerh… a mild astringency to cut through the fuzz. the good tasting fluff is still present in this puerh, but it is balanced with a very clever astringency that is neither bitter nor acrid— just the tiniest bit sharp.

excellent. i can imagine buddhist monks drinking this to boost clarity, lol. i just had the most awesomely ridiculous image: a room at some immense altitude of orange garbed monks, all sitting cross legged and speaking the mantra in one great voice, ‘teaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.’

very nice. a savvy sample indeed, jamie! next time i’ll buy…

This tea just helped me rock my finals. It’s no secret I have a lot of love for the folks over at Mandala, so last week I emailed Garret about a new thermos and some tea to go in it. Every morning this last week I popped about a teaspoon of this in the bottom of the new thermos, filled it up with water, and then topped it off when it started getting low.

Like the cake form of this tea, this stuff is good. This is really sweet, slightly sour, and not a very strong young sheng. I found even with keeping the leaves essentially steeping all day, it never gets overpowering either.

And if you need to get through finals week, this tea will give you a nice buzz. :)

I’m surprised I didnt review this. very pleasant,some faint spiciness, no bitterness,sweet and juicy like bell peppers. rinse 5 sec, multiple short steeps 5/5/5/10/10/15. keeps going strong

This tea is crazy juicy, a bursting-in-the-mouth quality that reminds me a bit of standing over the sink peeling lychees and biting into them one by one. I reckon it’s going to be a lot of fun playing around with temperature over time. It feels like summer with its abundance of ripe clean-tasting fruits, and there’s a hay thing going on too. I don’t get much smoke yet but that might be down to my steeping parameters or the fact we just had dinner and my taste buds are a bit impaired/tired. Regardless, I can definitely see why this is such a favorite. There’s an easy-going sourness that makes one think of fresh fruit; it’s not unpleasant at all because it feels very fresh and there’s that juicy quality to go with it (Amanda posted a ton of tea articles recently and I really related to one about how the author is dismayed “astringency” has become a catch-all term with unpleasant connotations when there’s many types of astringency and how each interacts with the other aspects of a tea can make it good or bad!). As the juicy flavor builds over time a mysterious, sharp-bite-in-a-good-way element emerges that makes me think somehow of exotic fruit (You know how pineapple can make some people’s mouth tingle later? It’s kind of like that) and wet spicy wood (I’m sure that sounds weird but I don’t know quite how else to describe it…the exact thing is eluding me…). The texture is a bit like when you freeze grapes on hot summer days and then bite clean into one while it’s still frosty, the way there’s some thick pull to go with the juiciness. I really like this and it’s not like any pu erh I’ve tried so far.

After enjoying the puerh yesterday, I was hopeful to find another one that I enjoy too. This one has stellar reviews and i had it on hand, so i gave it a go.

It definitely smells like puerh, but is surprisingly sweet and not fishy at all. As it cools the more hay like notes start to take over, but there is a sweet spot right around 5 mins after cooling where it is perfectly sweet and delicious. I’m on my 4th resteep, drinking it between other cups of teas. Glad I have a bit more of this!

I have a huge backlog of reviews to post. It’s almost daunting.

I received this tea as a sample with my first Mandala Tea order—and I will definitely be ordering most of my pu-er from them from now on. I was planning on saving this tea for tomorrow but my hockey team lost badly and I needed something nice to cheer me up.

1st Steep- 1 minute
Smelled very grassy. Usually this is quite the turn-off for me. It did taste a bit grassy but with a nice smoke flavor that I loved. I am a Lapsang Souchong fan so smoke is kind of my thing. There was also a nice spicy note that I loved. The first steep isn’t usually my favorite but this is definitely a contender.

2nd Steep-2 minutes
I can’t decide if I am getting apple or lemon in this steep. Some sips it’s lemon and some sips it’s apple. I think I prefer to think lemon because I don’t like apple and I very much liked this steep. There was still some smoke but it faded a little.

3rd Steep-3 minutes
The flavor completely morphed. It lost all of the smoke and citrus—bummer because I liked it. But this beautiful clover honey taste took its place. There was a lovely natural sweetness about this steep. This is actually a contender for my favorite steep. To be honest, I would have thought this was a completely different tea from the previous steeps.

4th Steep-10 minutes—It was supposed to be 5 minutes but I forgot about it.
This steep was lovely as well. It was still honeyish but a bit of floral flavor had snuck in there. This is definitely not my favorite steep but it’s good enough. I could have probably steeped this one at least two more times even with my timing fiasco.

Overall-I really loved this tea. I am almost beating myself up because I had it in my cart to buy a cake but I went with another one. I’ll buy a cake of it someday. Not near close to now because I did buy six cakes. But I am happy that I squirreled away half of the sample for tomorrow.

I am noticing a noticeable mood lift that normally would not happen on days where my team loses—I’m pretty obsessed I don’t know if it’s the tea but I’m feeling pretty peppy right now and I am most definitely not a peppy person.