111 Tasting Notes
Nice example of dry stored You Le. Has a grapefruit like bitterness withfloral high notes reminiscent of ye sheng. Again, coming from the beer world I’m reminded of a hop variety, Chinook. Think Pike IPA. I’m still educating myself on how these wildish Yiwu area teas taste with a bit of age on them. In the past I tended to prefer them young. Now I’m getting into aged and semi aged Yiwu teas. In the past I always said that I prefer Menghai teas aged and Yiwu teas young. I’m now beginning to rethink this. I got about a dozen steeps from this and they were all pretty consistent. The qi is of the gentle uplifting clarifying slightly calming variety. Not spectacular but nice. A good buy for $.28g if you like this sort of cha.
Most aged huang Pians I’ve tried are nice but I usually get about 4 steeps before it’s cashed. This stuff gave me 14 and that was with pushing it. I got all the nice figgy tobaccoey tamarind flavors I expect but I get more than I expected. The only deficit I noticed was a slight sour note. Perhaps I pushed it too hard or perhaps the storage got a little dry although as it was shipped directly from Yiwu I rather doubt that. I plan to add a bit of humidity and try again in a few weeks. The qi is nice and relaxing as well. Definitely glad I got a decent sized chunk. This vendor is exceptional. I’ve tried about a dozen teas and every one was excellent, from the ripe gushu to the semi aged and young teas every one has been a winner in its category. Right now I’m enjoying a 2017 Gedeng gushu maocha which isn’t listed here. Gedeng being my fav of the 6ftm this is probably the best young Gedeng I’ve tried.
This is by far the best young tea I’ve ever had…and at $5 a gram it should be. Being an Yiwu fanatic I had to see what all the rage about Mansong is so I steeped the whole 10g sample. I’m immediately greeted by a strong oily background and notes of cedar and fennel. No astringency. It tastes older than the stated 6 years and has had clearly impeccable storage. A wave of relaxation washes over me halfway through the first steep and continues to grow throughout the session. The flavors remain fairly constant through the steepings which is fine because they’re great and I get 20 steeps from this. While the flavors are awesome, the real winner here is the qi. The muscle relaxing euphoric effect rivals that of 1950s Pu Tian Gong. If scientists isolated the agents in this tea and learned how to manufacture it I think they could produce a great safe painkiller/antidepressant. After drinking this I remembered that I needed to take a 2hr drive to Pittsburgh to pickup some speakers, which was a bummer because I just wanted to stay home and meditate or sit beside the local waterfall as this tea put me in a very meditative mood already. Now being a country boy I get easily agitated by Pittsburgh traffic but this tea caused me to laugh instead of curse at it. 12 hours after consuming this tea the calm meditative mood persisted and I still had zero neck pain. (Neck pain from a bicycle wreck is a constant in my life). If I had Bill Gates’s (the computer guy, not my grandfather the diesel mechanic) money this would be a daily drinker. As it is I’m grateful to have sampled probably the finest Yiwu tea that a westerner can get his hands on.
When I have teas that treat me like this, I wonder if others have a similar experience with the qi. Nice to see you found such meditative energy and pain relief. When I see puerh more than $1/g, I tend to shy away. Now that I think about it, it’s no more expensive than a cheap eighth of trees. $5/g, though, I can’t justify.
Yeah…with tea of this caliber I find that it often does not treat me the same way twice and when one can buy a nice guitar or kayak for the price of a 200g beeng I’ll pass but it was worth it to try a sample…
Got a cake of the pressed version when released and had a session then that apparently didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time…probably because I was bombarding my tastebuds with wild teas from Lincang and Wuliang around that time…and because it seems that it takes teas from this area a few months to pick up steam. This morning I dug into my crock and this bing was staring me in the face. The devil on my shoulder said cmon man, you don’t want that mellow stuff. Steep up a Menghai…but the angel on my other shoulder told me to steep this one cos it’d transport me to a warm sunny place on this miserable winter day. That angel was right. Two sips in and I’m on the beach sipping a cocktail comprised of mangoes, green mango powder, coconut milk, unfiltered gold rum and garnished with a spearmint leaf. Does such a beverage exist? It should. That’s what this tea tastes like. It’s also among the oiliest teas I’ve had. Very mouth watering and smooth. This tea passes the mom test (the qi is so pleasant and gentle she would likely get tea drunk without realizing it) and would be a good introduction to sheng for those who like fruity beverages but recoil at bitter, woody, camphorous notes that usually accompany it. I’ve been sampling several Yiwu area teas like Chawangshu and Tongqighe in the $1.50-2 a gram range and I think this tea, while not quite of that caliber, can hang comfortably with those teas at $.56 a gram. Thanks to Glen and Lammu for making this tea available. Highly recommended.
The vendor states that this is identical to 1998 Menghai 8582. While I have never had the real thing, I cannot imagine anyone paying $800+ for this tea. I did find it to be in line with other teas in its price range for fake teas with this amount of age. I’ve had better teas that were less and lesser teas that were more expensive. Now about this tea. My only gripe is that I only got 8 steeps. At almost 21 years of age I expect at least a dozen. The flavor is nice and indicative of clean dry storage. I get notes of cedar and the classic New England root soda Moxie, without the sugar. People either love or hate Moxie as it is bitter and earthy. If you are a fan of Moxie (especially the old recipe before it got too sweet) try this tea. This tea also has nice muscle relaxing qi, sorta similar to 2005 Naka by W2T but not as intense…
Ok so I recently sampled a real 8582 from late 90s and remembered I had a small chunk of this left….the verdict? No comparison. The real thing had much more depth of flavor and huigan not to mention deeper qi. For this price one can get early 2000s teas from various areas that smoke this tea…after drinking the last pot of this I came to the conclusion that I musta been tea drunk on something else when I wrote my original review…
I recently sampled and reviewed the 2006 version of this and found it to be a good example of a solid semi aged Lincang that offered the typical flavor profile (no wild/purple tea character)and qi that performed well above its price range. This 2008 is a different animal altogether. Here, the wild in its title stands out. If I blind tasted this I would guess it was a 10 year old Wuliang wild cake with its bitter licorice and fig notes. The qi is nice but I can’t comment too much on that as I drank a pot of Last Thoughts with breakfast and that tea can elevate ones mood for prolonged periods.. I’m on steep 6 and the wild king is showing no signs of slowing down. If you are a fan of adolescent purple teas this one is solid. I was expecting something similar to the 06 with possibly diminished leaf quality with the growing popularity of Bingdao area teas. Instead I taste something radically different but still quite good I need a few semi aged purple cakes and have a few samples of cakes from Wu liang I want to taste beside this. It’s definitely on the short list.
A great daily drinker for those who like adolescent Lincang teas. Nice camphor and dead wood notes with just a touch of sweetness. There are some similarities between this tea and a Keemun. It’s quite generous for a factory tea as well. I get well over a dozen steeps out of this. Nice contemplative energy as well.
2014 must’ve been an exceptional year for sheng (especially for those who love floral top notes) bc some of the best teas I’ve sampled are from this year. The Mu shu cha from YS and the Gedeng from Pu’er-sk being the biggest standouts. Being a fan of WanGong village teas I had to try this. Glad I did. If you are familiar with Scottish heather honey, subtract the sugar and leave the floral aromatics and you get this tea. Nice huigan, a bit of cooling. Warming smiley qi that makes this snowy Pennsylvania day feel like early spring. I’ve sampled several manzhuan teas this year and to my palate, this tea tastes very similar only much better.
