2004 Jianshen Tuo

A daily drinker that delivers an aroma of sweetness and a thick clean soup. I recommend brewing this tuo heavy and you will be rewarded.

I brewed this one up in the traditional two rinse format with about 6-7g of leaf in a 100ml gaiwan. I steeped this at about 205f. This is a pretty good tea. The wet leaf had a nice peachy and hay quality with a bit of slight tobacco. I did detect a slight smokiness but I wouldn’t say this is a smokey tea by any means. It had a nice aged taste but to me still seemed young. Mainly in the mouthfeel. It had some action going on. I felt a tingling numbness quality, but really hard to describe. Let’s just call it action. The liquor was a nice orange color showing a bit of its age. There were flavors of hay, tobacco and a bit of a peach fruitiness tucked away in there as well. Much like the smell. It had a nice qi as well. Calming but aware. I feel like this tea could still use some more age as there was some astringency that was ever present. Like I said it seemed a bit younger than it is but not in a bad way. It was definitely active in the mouth though I may use a bit more leaf next time as it was ever so light. I am sure if I mess with the brewing parameters a bit I will get more out of this tea but this was my first go at it. A decent price for a nice sheng with a bit of age on it already. Can’t beat that. I would recommend for sure. Play with the parameters and I’ll bet this one will shine even more.

I’m really enjoying this tea. This has been my go-to. It smells like a dry summer day on an herb farm I worked at one summer. It was a particularly hot/dry summer for New Jersey and the farm was kind of overrun with buckwheat. It was only a few acres so we hand weeded the whole farm, this tea reminds me a lot of that. Composting herbs, in a humid environment, that have been dried out by a heat wave. Which is a super pleasant thing to me. That is what I’m hit with upfront, then the apricot flavors come as time goes on.

This has been my go-to for everyday casual drinkin because there is no super subtle huigan or floral taste, so I dont feel too bad drinking this unfocused or on the go. Also it gives my spring tea a rest. I find it tough to drink very aged tea when its hot, flavor wise, and the fresh stuff is almost too good to have ALL the time

I like a raw puerh in that adolescent stage because it still has some of that young vibrancy while also showing some signs of maturity. I’d love to try this one again in 5-10 years but not sure I can hold onto it that long. The tea liquor is nice and thick with a beautiful orange color. Taste is salty tobacco and wet straw with a slight astringent bite and some caramel sweetness. Salted caramel! Maybe some apricot in there as well. Fantastic qi! Got a little drunk on this one.

from the Sheng and Shou TTB

okay, this one I think is just a little too young for my liking. Maybe some humid aging would help it along. It’s on the bitter side, but not astringent. It does remind me of scotch, but I’d like it a touch sweeter, a touch less young. There’s some tobacco notes and something else I’m not sure what. It’s okay, but I probably wouldn’t drink this again for a few more years.

I bought a four-pack of these tuos, difficult to buy just one of these because they cost only $9.80 each. The age already on this tea enticed me, I prefer to buy something with some age on it. The other reviewer of this tea gave it a poor rating, but didn’t know to gong-fu this tea.

The positives are this is one Energizer Bunny of a tea, just goes on and on and on. Two days in and I’m wondering when it will end. The shiboridashi is stuffed to the gills and I’ve got more buds and leaves than sticks. Long huigan, thick and full, very bitter when pushed with boiling water and less so with cooler water. Mellows to sweet on the tongue.

Description includes tobacco notes, but this is more of a fresh pipe tobacco. There is no actual char from processing in this tea, so for me this doesn’t qualify as smoky. Not compared to a Menghai or Xiaguan raw tuo. The soup starts out caramel colored and yellows after the fourth steep or so.

One downside is the tea was dry stored and is still so green. It is definitely in second stage and hasn’t turned any corners yet into something I would consider aged. My tea fridge storage doesn’t penetrate the thick paper so well. I transferred the tuos to stoneware. Would love to ship them off to puerh boarding school for a year of humid storage. I like a bit of traditional storage on my tea, but not so much it obscures other flavors. This tea is very strong and could take a year of humidity without losing the other flavors. As it is now, the tuo tastes like a lot of other teas I’ve had, the dusky apricot with caramel notes.

Dunno if I’ll be around when this tea matures into a dark, red/brown love nest, still got so far to go. The material is what we want for aging, but I’m probably too far ahead of this tea myself.

Photos and blog post which is mostly unrelated to the tea itself, at http://deathbytea.blogspot.com

This is a cup of smoke-flavoured brown water. Not much more to this one than that (though I may have tasted a very brief sweetness at the beginning). I’m very glad this was a sample, and not a tea I paid for. Awful tea, but great service from White Tea Two!

Brewed grandpa style: 5 g. tea per 450 ml water over 4-5 infusions.