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“Brewed gongfu in a 170ml pot with unglazed interior at boiling. Rinse (10s, half full): dark orange/amber tone 1st steep (15s): Pot aroma is shou with a maple syrup note. Color is a couple shades...” Read full tasting note
“Autumn and winter are fast approaching, and apart from a few sporadic heat waves, the summer here in California has been uncharacteristically cool. With that in mind, I found it time to splurge on...” Read full tasting note
“Earthy and smooth, with lots of light mineral notes. Maaaybe a hint of molasses sweetness as it cools? Fairly satisfying but unremarkable. It’s been nice on this chilly, breezy Sunday morning.” Read full tasting note
“I probably could have steeped this better. I was going to do a proper gongfu session with it but I was freezing (new furnace being installed, no heat all day) and it’s hard to stay buried in my...” Read full tasting note
The Pretty Girls shou Puer blend has a beautiful aroma. If one were to try and place it in a broad category in might be a pulling a hot tray of freshly baked cherry danishes from a wood-fired oventype, but we will leave that up to you. Pretty Girls quickly proceeds into sweet shou territory after the rinse. The velvety texture of the soup and complex flavors develop over the coming steeps and eventually settle into a soft sweet profile that can be infused over and over. Drink immediately or age as your prefer.
Brewed gongfu in a 170ml pot with unglazed interior at boiling.
Rinse (10s, half full): dark orange/amber tone
1st steep (15s): Pot aroma is shou with a maple syrup note. Color is a couple shades darker than the rinse. Flavor is similar – syrup/waffles, with the typical bready shou note in the mid/back. I havent tried the w2t waffles just yet, but if you told me this was it, I’d believe you
2nd steep (20s): Color is similar – dark amber, close to fully dark brown in the center of my glass fair cup, the edges are burnt orange. Flavor is similar but slightly darker – the bread dough note is more dominant than the syrup note now.
3rd steep (20s): Color similar – shade darker, maybe slightly more red note. Flavor is bread dominant, syrup in the background, and maybe something like a dark cherry note in the background.
4th steep (30s): Pot aroma still has the sweet maple syrup note. Color is a shade or two lighter. Same with flavor, although I think its revealing more of the background notes that I cant quite place yet. I think I need to push the tea a bit more
5th steep (45s, less water): Darker color again. ran out of water in my kettle so I only about half filled. Despite this, the flavor is still diminishing – mostly shou notes getting on the light side
6th steep (~75s): lightening again, I think this tea is just about done – back end of shou type notes
7th steep (didn’t count, around 2-3m): Lighter color yet, just normal amber, slightly darker than the rise steep I think.
Overall opinion: I started a bit more excited, but was disappointed that it quickly steeped into typical bready shou territory. To be clear, its a perfectly good (not excessively) bready shou, no bad notes at all. Just nothing spectacular to pull me into buying a cake whenever they reproduce it.
Flavors: Bread Dough, Cherry, Maple Syrup
Autumn and winter are fast approaching, and apart from a few sporadic heat waves, the summer here in California has been uncharacteristically cool. With that in mind, I found it time to splurge on some W2T material – I don’t buy from this vendor as much as the average loose leaf tea enthusiast in the West, mainly because of some bad past experiences with shipping. I won the shipping lottery this time however and received my tea in a little under two weeks (the last shipment took almost two months due to tariff uncertainty).
One of the many shu puerhs I ordered is Pretty Girls, a 2021 production which is marketed as a sweet and velvety tea. It doesn’t break the bank, and was one I got just to cast a wide net of the types of shu this vendor has to offer.
The taste notes of this tea lean largely on the side of baked, yeasty, and starchy notes. It does not explode in your mouth nor is the soup thick, but it is rather smooth. The color of the liquor at its peak is moderately dark, with some light passing through. All in all, the taste matches the pricing; it’s a decent tea that will give you the more accessible characteristics of a shu, at the expense of a truly memorable session.
Flavors: Bread Dough, Milk, Pastries
I probably could have steeped this better. I was going to do a proper gongfu session with it but I was freezing (new furnace being installed, no heat all day) and it’s hard to stay buried in my blanket nest and gongfu at the same time. I ended up doing a bunch of short gongfu type steeps but poured them all together in a big travel mug so I could bundle myself up with tea and a book. The tea was smooth and sweet but I didn’t really get the fruit-filled baked goods flavors mentioned in the description. Pleasant but unremarkable. I have one more ball of the 2021 and a couple of an earlier version that I’ll try to make more of an effort with. Hopefully not combining steeps will make it more interesting.
Grandpa style!
Couldn’t resist trying some of my newly received shou samples, from my last order, right away. I’ll probably give the rest time to settle but I needed to try something and these dragonballs are just such a convenient choice. It’s such a reliably smooth and warming shou with deep notes of caramelized baked dates, molasses, black cherries, and sweet damp earth!!
Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVDyv9Prp1m/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg2AGzD5d4M&ab_channel=TheRyanBeatty
