This tea is so much fun! I love sharing this with people, because as soon as they smell it, they can’t help smiling and saying, “That smells like…corn?!”
I’d tried another corny pu’er when I was in China, and that one was great- it was thick, sweet, corny or reminiscent of wheat crackers, and then again it was a little bit too heavy and tended to build up and sit on the tongue.
When I first smelled this tea, I was excited to find that “corn” taste again, but I was so so pleasantly surprised to find that these little tuocha’s were so much better and more interesting!
The corn flavor really only lingers in the smell, and even then, corn is a bit too strong of a word. It’s more like corn husks or hay or buttered popcorn or fancy stone-milled wheat crackers. When you taste this, it’s the light mintiness that shines through as a delightful reversal of expectations. Warming and cooling at the same time, and the flavors do change as you keep steeping these.
And the texture? It’s absolutely blessedly weightless in the mouth. It’s so put together and /not/ heavy that you forget this drink was made by steeping leaves in water and not by coming out of some bottle in a store.
This is probably most fun if you’re introducing pu’er to someone who’s never had it before. Very accessible, very easy on the drinker, very easy to describe and remember. At the same time, it’s also not in the least boring for someone who really loves pu’er and has been drinking and thinking about the aged tea for years!
I now have this at my office, and everyone who’s tried it has liked it. I gave a few to a co-worker who wanted to quit coffee but still wanted a bold, delicious flavor in the morning. He came upstairs to my desk that afternoon and told me this was the best drink he’d ever had.
All in all, a really fun and rewarding tea, for all tea or pu’er drinking experience-levels.
