Fengqing Ripened Pu-erh Cake Tea 2018

Another Fengqing to try!  The dry leaf here also doesn’t have much gold — only an occasional deep red leaf among all the darker leaf.  The fragrance of the dry leaf is only a hint bready.  The flavor on the first steep is lovely — the sweetest of rye breads.  Very starchy mouthfeel to go with that bread flavor.  NO negative qualities here.  The piece has hardly unraveled on the first steep.   The second steep, I did notice while brewing that there was definitely a fishy fragrance — very rare for a Teavivre puerh!  But the fishiness was not at all in the rich, persistent flavor -only while the cup was steeping.  The second steep also lost the starchy quality but now it is almost like a drying, chalky quality, though not in a bad way - just noticeably different from the other shou samples.  The third and fourth steeps don’t lose that element of chalk, but it also doesn’t lose it’s strength! Another sample in which the first steep is the best, though I think I’m being tame on these steeps until the fourth. Four strong steeps here.  I feel I am mostly failing at describing flavors within these puerh samples, but there is usually one tiny element that separates them from the other Fengqing puerhs, while mostly just being very awesome puerh cakes that have consistently great flavor. It will be amazing to try these again with further aging, as these samples have been spectacular even now. 
Steep #1 // half sample (5grams) for medium sized mug // 20 minutes after boiling // 7 second rinse // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 11 minutes after boiling // 3 min
Steep #3 // just boiled // 3 min
Steep #4 // just boiled // 10 min