2015 Sheng – 300 Year Tree

It’s so nice to see so many Steepster olds coming out of the woodwork, seemingly or coincidentally after the announcement that Steepster will rise from the dead after the Adagio takeover. Welcome back to you all!!
Another from JakeB – embarrassed to admit I didn’t even try it yet.  But thank you again!  I must have been less than enthused about the “300 year” claim.. meh.  It seems all the tasting notes for this have been from four years ago.  So possibly I’m not the only one avoiding this tea?  The one Steepsterer who seemed to love it used about four times the leaf than I would typically use. I’m going to try to be very patient and really cool the water down to see what happens with this sheng.  What happened was a very consistent flavor of very plain sheng.  It wasn’t bitter, it wasn’t unique like Poundcake was ridiculously unique the other day.  Simply very plain.  If you want to know what typical sheng tastes like, here it is.  So I guess the “300 years” is the “selling point” here.  It’s not bad, it’s not very interesting, but at least it’s consistent.  But that could be from waiting 50+ minutes to cool this water, which I usually do not have patience for.  So possibly there was no chance here to oversteep. Maybe I should try using a ton of leaf next? But I can’t imagine that going well for my tastebuds.
Steep #1 // 54 minutes after boiling  // rinse // 45 second steep
Steep #2  // 55 minutes after boiling //  45 second steep
Steep #3 // 52 minutes after boiling // 45 second steep

This tea responds well to a firm hand. I steeped 12g in 160ml for 40 seconds and it delivered a heavenly elixir that was bursting with kuwei, huigans, a long-lasting cane sugar sweetness, and the most potent cha qi that I have ever experienced. Do not operate heavy machinery after drinking this tea!

Part of my goal for 2017 is actually making my way through my Sheng sample stash, so I finally got into this tea. I was not a huge fan, nothing bad, just very much so not my thing. I like my shengs sweet, thick, vegetal, fruity, or floral…any bitterness I want it to be more like eating kale or zest, not the bitterness of hops which is what this one gave me.

I must be spoiled since shengs I have had lately have been loosely compressed, this one took six steeps (not counting the rinse and the like five minutes I let it steam out in the gaiwan) before it fell apart into chopped up, occasionally blackened leaves. It starts out vegetal, like cabbage water and brussels sprout with a bit of sweetness at the back of the throat. After the leaves fluffed up the bitterness really kicks in, very hoppy and beer like (and there are few things in life I hate more than the taste of hops) meaning I could only tolerate this tea for a couple more steeps before I moved on to something else.

This was apart of Verdant’s 5 for 5.

10, 10, 20, 30, 40,

Dry leaf: smokey, mild honey
Leaf after a rinse: cabbage? broccoli? very vegetal, not much of a floral aspect to this.

I’m very surprised no one else commented on the smokiness of this. The beginning of the sip is more floral but the flavor that lingers is pretty smoky. Upon inspection of the leaf I found a few leaves that were blacked on the edges. Maybe I just got a particularly smoky sample. The flavor is pretty consistent with young sheng, nothing that really jumps out at me. Not much sweetness, though later steepings became more palatable.

Overall, this tea isn’t awful. I can’t say I was terribly impressed

Not a fan of this. It smells a bit like formaldehyde, so it was taking me back to my high school days and science class. Surprise! You get to hack into a fetal pig! So I was already traumatized before I took a sip.

It’s extremely vegetal, but whatever kind of vegetable it is, it’s one I don’t care for. It’s a little bitter and sour.

Just…no thank you.

This is supposedly a very late autumn tea, picked November 6, 2015. Typical northern profile, floral but with decent bitterness. The tea is very young with thin stems, can’t say these trees or bushes are very old at all. But the tea is clearly different from the 1800 cake with the thin stems and fragile leaves, compared to the thicker stems. Not much thickness here in the brew at all, color is a yellow tinging to orange which seems consistent with an autumn picking.

I brewed all six grams of the sample generously provided to me by Steepster pals in the recent Sheng Olympics group buy. About 100 ml or less. Did about seven steeps and our unseasonably warm weather turned my leaves a bit mucky on day 3 of sitting in the gaiwan, so I decided to toss them after getting a murky looking cup.

Couldn’t find any information on the price tag as the tea is now sold out and was available on pre-order only. Still, my benchmark remains the Chawangshop Hekai at $36 for 200g. This Verdant tea is not a bad autumn brew, pleasant enough and would have steeped much longer than the seven steps I gave it. Can’t see any reason to complain about it as a drinker, aside from the thin brew. But spring tea can be had in the $30 price range for 357g from places like Yunnan Sourcing, so the budget-minded have better choices than this. The 300 year is a boutique romp for people with cash who already have everything they want from the 2015 season.

This is the last of the Verdant Tea 5 for $5 sampler. There seems to be a void of tea space in my cupboard. I might cry…or not. However, these were all pretty nice flavors. I must say that purchasing the sampler did me good. It opened my eyes to great quality tea, and helped my palate understand tea in a different way. As I’ve written in my Bio, I’ve been drinking teas for a long time; however, these were one company’s tea—for three years! I haven’t stepped any further than that, and I felt kind of dirty calling myself a genuine “tea connoisseur.” I thought that I “belonged” in the tea world because I tried ALL 99 flavors from this ONE place.

It was my job to think that.

I started drinking other teas; I figured that someone could give me the fix. I became a tea-need freak. I went through withdraws and drank coffee…..But then, a miracle happened! I discovered Adagio, Tiesta Tea, Harney & Sons, etc. At that moment, I told myself to find something more…something new. I found Steepster. I found new brands. I found my place in the world….

Now—this tea—it’s great! The leaf is beautiful. I wanted to start on it last night, but I thought that I’d be up all night drinking pot after pot of tea, so knowing that Kindergarten registration was coming early, I went to bed. I woke up early, though, just to have a pot of tea before heading off to work.

The aroma of the wet leaf is nice. Imagine picking a leaf from a tree, and crushing it between your fingers. That is how this smells. The flavor is the same.
The first steep (25 seconds at 195 degrees Fahrenheit) was sweet, smooth, “grassy,” and had an overall gentle mouth feel.
The second steep was the same with a touch of astringency.
The third was more astringent than the previous two—but in a good way….

https://www.instagram.com/p/BC2nc15g-2k/?taken-by=sgsanders1

https://www.instagram.com/p/BC1SZGvg-8X/?taken-by=sgsanders1

For reference: http://steepster.com/Proust614/posts/328940

2016 Sheng Olympics

I don’t like this – grassy – bitter – green – very sheng esque

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBss5f0OE4M/?taken-by=dex3657