Well! this was a bold move, but one I have made successfully before!
A lady was coming over whom I met over 25 years ago, but our interaction has been a once a year email to confirm her address and the occasional “Hi! How are you?” in the grocery store.
I invited her for tea and she accepted. I asked about preferences and she said she liked hot tea but drinks a few herbals and some things from the grocery in bags that she wasn’t really sure what exactly they were. She described a bitter black tea that someone gave her and she hated.
I chose to open with a second steep pot of this puerh! So many people, including myself and some of my friends here, were afraid of puerh at first. I am finding it to be a great opening tea for newbies, though.
Bottom line – we sniffed it, commented on the aroma, I said barn, she said horse manure, we laughed, she drank, she…..LIKED it! A LOT!
It was paired with toasted bread, crusts off, topped with diced German Johnson tomatoes from my garden with Brie melted on top and Sunny Paris seasoning which has the most delicious bits of purple shallots. It was really nice together because the pu held its own with the food. She refilled her cup several times before moving on to the next two teas. One of which totally won her heart….
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You are amazing. How you got a casual friend to trust you enough to drink horse manure is mind blowing stuff. Once past the smell this sure does sell itself. I have no idea what most of what you ate is, beyond toast and tomatoes, but glad it worked.
ooooooOOOOoooooo she was brave to try it even though she said it smelled like horse manure.
Lolz on the horse manure…
Lots of shu puerh smells like a faint whiff (okay, sometimes more than a faint whiff) of horse manure to me. But the taste is magnificent! The first pu I tried smelled like dead fish and shrimp shells and THAT took some courage to try! Fortunately, it tasted all right, but I have found lots of nice puerh since then!
I know, wasn’t she sweet and trusting to taste it anyway, since it was something she never heard of and didn’t expect?
The first ripe I ever had was a box of free puerh tea bags I got with a teapot order. Those bags were the fishy-est things, no wonder they were free. Vendor suggested rinsing fishy puerh in cold water before doing a hot rinse, it helped a little, but man oh man…
I still have some of the first I bought. It came in a 8 oz tin and cost like $8. It smelled like dead fish wrapped in wet newspaper and stored in a cellar – seriously offensive. I drank it anyway – with lots of chocolate mint. After a few years it has mellowed out and is actually quite drinkable all on its own.
I remember the first sheng , tasted like heavy smoke an XiaGuan 8113. Didn’t toss is still have it. First shou, a $12.00 Ebay auction. One brew and I tossed the whole cake. You did well to make a convert.Very hard to do with puerh.
I kept that fishy stuff for a long time, and finally read on here that if you let it air out for a couple of hours that aroma would dissipate, I let the little tuo chas sit out for two days in a bowl, drank them, and never bought those again! Even the better pu at A Southern Season has a bit of a wang to it.
A wang! :D
You are amazing. How you got a casual friend to trust you enough to drink horse manure is mind blowing stuff. Once past the smell this sure does sell itself. I have no idea what most of what you ate is, beyond toast and tomatoes, but glad it worked.
ooooooOOOOoooooo she was brave to try it even though she said it smelled like horse manure.
Lolz on the horse manure…
Lots of shu puerh smells like a faint whiff (okay, sometimes more than a faint whiff) of horse manure to me. But the taste is magnificent! The first pu I tried smelled like dead fish and shrimp shells and THAT took some courage to try! Fortunately, it tasted all right, but I have found lots of nice puerh since then!
I know, wasn’t she sweet and trusting to taste it anyway, since it was something she never heard of and didn’t expect?
The first ripe I ever had was a box of free puerh tea bags I got with a teapot order. Those bags were the fishy-est things, no wonder they were free. Vendor suggested rinsing fishy puerh in cold water before doing a hot rinse, it helped a little, but man oh man…
I still have some of the first I bought. It came in a 8 oz tin and cost like $8. It smelled like dead fish wrapped in wet newspaper and stored in a cellar – seriously offensive. I drank it anyway – with lots of chocolate mint. After a few years it has mellowed out and is actually quite drinkable all on its own.
I remember the first sheng , tasted like heavy smoke an XiaGuan 8113. Didn’t toss is still have it. First shou, a $12.00 Ebay auction. One brew and I tossed the whole cake. You did well to make a convert.Very hard to do with puerh.
I kept that fishy stuff for a long time, and finally read on here that if you let it air out for a couple of hours that aroma would dissipate, I let the little tuo chas sit out for two days in a bowl, drank them, and never bought those again! Even the better pu at A Southern Season has a bit of a wang to it.
A wang! :D