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I got a sample of this from the Curated Puerh Box 0004 and tried it twice in the past week. This note is from my first tasting.

Warmed my gaiwan for 7g of these fragrant leaves. I found the aroma a bit hard to place, but it seemed rather herbaceous. With a quick wash and flash steep, they yielded a smooth, reddish gold liquor. The flavor started out very light, herbaceous and vegetal, with a pleasant hint of sourness, and a syrupy aroma clung to the cup.

I got a distinct throat sensation off this tea, and I wasn’t able to finish this session up that day. I ended up saving the leaves and, funny enough, going back to them after my /second/ session with this tea, and found the rest of the experience to be pretty on par with that session, so my later note should provide a bit insight on this tea.

Well I’ve got quite a few notes to catch up on since last Friday, so let me start with this one. rhinkle and I drank this one at work last Friday.

This was a blend Steph made and sent in the swap we just had, YS Laoshan Black with cacao shells and vanilla beans.

First of all, just let me say this has an incredible chocolate aroma, both dry and steeped, and it is so well supported by the vanilla. We can taste the flavors waking up in the first steep, but they really came together in the second one, a purely delicious blend of chocolate, malt and sweetness that melded together and persisted through the few steeps we had time for.

We still have a bit left, fortunately, so we are saving our next steep for home, where we can truly savor it! Thank you again, Steph!

Received some of this from Steph in a tea swap and decided to bring it to work this morning, along with the sticky rice one for rhinkle, who is a fan of puerh blends with pandan.

I didn’t really know what to expect, as I’m not really familiar with crysanthemum (I have a crysanthemum pu cake, but haven’t tried it at all yet). The aroma was an interesting one that reminded me of the dried goods/tea aisle of the asian market I most often frequent. Now that I think about it, it also smells like one of my containers at home that has a bunch of dried ingredients stored in it, including dried lilies. The other one smelled just as expected…like pandan!

It was tough waiting like 10 minutes for this to steep, but once it was ready it was super dark. The taste was kind of like a light coffee up front, with that rich, earthy shou taste and smoothness rounding out each sip. I am not really sure if the chrysanthemum flavor came through much since I’m not sure what it is supposed to taste like, but it didn’t take away from the pu at all in my opinion.

Thanks again for sending this Steph! I can see something like this being a good option for situations where having a good tea setup won’t be an option, or for easy drinking in a mug any time!

Wanted something tasty and easy to drink yesterday afternoon, so started some of this. Roasty, sweet, smooth, comforting. Good, affordable oolong to enjoy any day.

Started drinking this one the other day, drawn in by both its amazing aroma and my love for white tea. I am very sad now, because I love this and just realized it is out of stock. First 1990s hk style and now this! :(

Anyhow…this tea starts out gold, gradually becoming a deep rose gold over several steeps. The aroma and flavor are both that of sweet honey and hay, and the texture is thick and smooth like honey, as well.

Those characteristic spiced notes that I love from white tea begin to emerge after a couple of steeps. I hit this with boiling water to start and gradually reduced to 90C.

This is so good, even rhinkle liked it, and she’s not usually a fan of my white teas!

So I’ve participated in the last few curated puerh boxes posted by toby8653 and dug into one of these teas this week. I started this tea the day before yesterday and I’ve been steeping it out and taking progress notes several times since then. From the start, it was clear this came from a dense cake. 7g of material hardly took up any space in my gaiwan. The sample has a deep smokey aroma, so I’m prepared up front to get plenty of smokiness in the tea.

I give this a quick rinse and let the leaves sit to open up a bit before the first flash steep, which produces an amber liquor that tastes sweet with notes of tobacco and a hint of earth. The flavors are light, so I can tell the tea is definitely still opening up.

Some tannic sourness and astringency kicks in in steep two. I leave these and come back to the leaves the next day, and there is a very strong smoky aroma and taste to start. After a few more steeps, the taste becomes a bit more mellow and more defined with woody notes and a nice thickness. It’s still got a significant amount of bitterness and sourness going on, though.

I come back to them again today and the taste is significantly more mellow and balanced tasting, with a very long-lasting drying effect on the throat. This has been an interesting drinking experience, and though I gave this tea a couple of weeks to air out and pretty much flash steeped it every time, I’d like to come back to it after an even longer period of rest and to play around with steeping parameters, as well.

For some reason this review from two days ago was on Brown Sugar, so I’m just fixing that…

Returned to one of my recent go to greens this morning. This morning this tea was almost syrupy in texture, umami, briny and sweet with just the right amount of vegetal finish.

Crap…I forgot to save my note yesterday. Been wanting to attempt to drink more shou lately, so I brought a couple to work for the week. This was today’s pick, and I threw a rather huge chunk into a pretty small gaiwan, gave it a couple of rinses to help it start to open up and then proceeded with flash steeps.

Liquor was a transparent brown to start with a light flavor hinting at the deeper mushroom and earthy notes that were soon to come. Quickly darkened to an opaque, deep brown with a mushroomy earth flavor. The texture is indeed thick and smooth with a nice creaminess. Eventually the earthiness evolves into a more pronounced soil-like flavor with a hint of bitterness and a kind of mineral finish.

I am among those that feel there’s not really that much sweetness to this one (yet), but it still has a nice, appreciable flavor profile and an excellent mouthfeel. Good, easy drinking experience!

Drank the last of this today. Got some of the good creamy chestnut notes along with a lot of strong, grassy vegetal notes and astringency. The remainder of the leaves here were pretty dusty coming from the bottom of the bag, so not surprising, and they were a pain to strain quickly enough.

I brought this along with some other ripes this week to encourage myself to drink them. And this morning in teachat, steph recommended using “boychik parameters” on this one—1g/5ml, so that’s what I’m doing!

Quick wash, let the leaves sit and then flash steep. Color is like coffee, aroma is a bit earthy and mushroomy. Mouthfeel is very smooth and rich. I don’t think creamy would be an inaccurate description. And something about the richness of it really lingers in my mouth and throat.

Second steep is darker, richer, thicker and the sweetness starts to come through. There’s almost a bit of viscosity going on. In steep three, the hint of coffee grounds pushes more into the forefront.

Since I had to go to an appointment today, I decided to take these leaves home to finish up with a few hours later. I snacked on some really spicy ghost pepper chips and then did another steep of this. And THAT was creamy. So thick and rich. I can visibly see the thickness of the tea.

Been flash steeping this all day now and it’s still going. I like this, and this experience definitely makes me want to try leafing heavier with shou more often.