This is an excellent tea. I received a free sample of this from Angel at Teavivre some time ago. I reviewed the tea then. I finally got around to buying a cake of this tea. This is one tasty puerh. It has partially cleared as far as fermentation flavor. There is still some but it is not too dominant. The first notes I got from this tea were sweet notes. Around the third infusion some bitterness crept in. This did not last long and it was back to a sweet flavor. There were some notes that could be called caramel and others that were fruity, perhaps dates is an appropriate description. I steeped the hell out of this tea this time, giving it twelve steeps. It was pretty much finished at twelve but I think I could have gotten about two more steeps out of it with longer times. There were basically no negative notes to this tea. I don’t consider the mild bitterness to be a negative note. In particular there were no sour notes and no notes of wet storage. This tea has probably been dry stored. I am not sure about the storage climate where Teavivre is located but I would be very surprised if this had been wet stored.
I steeped this twelve times in a 120ml gaiwan with 8.6g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min. The tea was not entirely played out at twelve steeps but it was close. Overall I still really like this tea. The cake matches up to the sample sent to me months ago.
Flavors: Caramel, Dates, Earth, Sweet
