2013 "Ye Sheng Cha" Wild Tree Purple Tea of Dehong

Thank you Dr Jim for this petrified tea tree leaf…

There is no way someone would know this to actually be tea and not a fossil or rock. I trick to break this with my hand and it did not happen…

The first 8 steeps this thing just sat there and told me in a stern way that it was not going to open up… well, once it did open the liquid became more intense.

I really like this little guy!

Not too crazy about this one. Their 2014 dehong is way smoother than this

This isn’t like any tea I’ve ever tried. The brick is so dense it requires a chisel. For sure, this is not typical cultivated tea. The previous tasting note called this thing “Wild Child”. I don’t think I could’ve come up with a better name. I’m picking up deep forest flavors (something I love in sheng pu’er): pungent herbs, vegetal sweetness, pine, camphor, smoke, and pleasant tobacco notes (there is such a thing). I don’t detect any bitterness since I’m doing 5 second steeps. That said, DO NOT over brew this one. This one is full-bodied, interestingly textured, has a long aftertaste and strong cha qi, moving from the mouth down towards the gut and through the rest of the body after each sip. Given it’s potency and complexity, I’d say it would age nicely.

I have no idea what I was thinking having this wild ass sheng first thing in the morning. I succumbed to peer pressure (consisting of no actual pressure) and joined Sarsy in morning sheng. I usually prefer to ease more gently into my mornings with a nice black or some Special Dark. But there you are. I shenged.

I call this bad boy Wild Child. It is a wild hollering baby and I love it. It’s punchy for sure. Very very punchy.

After borrowing a jackhammer, I put 6 gr in the weexing, used 200 water and combined numerous steeps in one mug alá Sarsy. It brews up dark orange so it kind of warns you what’s coming.

Is it a little rough around the edges? Oh yeah. But it has something that I LOVE very much in a tea. It has an intense grapey-muscatel flavor that gives me a happy. It’s fairly bitter but not off-puttingly bitter with an aftertaste that appeals to me mightily. I just really really like the way it tastes. I have a real affinity for the purple thing y’all. There is not much smoke to speak of and I have to say I prefer separate steeps for this as it does mellow out in later steeps. In the combo method you have the bitter all the way through.

Wild Child wants to make sure I’m paying paying attention so it slaps my head around a time or two and I get an immediate wave of head bang. Not much body feel for me – this is all in the head.

I really like this sheng. Lots of people won’t. It is $6 for a 100 gram brick and I think that is a screaming deal for this tea. I’m thinking after it calms down in a few years, I will will thank myself for buying 6 of them. In the meantime, I will drink it cause I like it.

Couple of songs for this bad boy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxZbOZDineQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=def3ob2h-1s