Sunsing Tea

Sipdown

I grabbed this from the storage, after a recent rotation, and decided it’s time to start hitting the tea cakes more often. I have so many partial cakes remaining, so it’s only necessary to top them off. I really want to reduce buying any more tea, with the exception of a couple monthly clubs, to help reduce the pile of teas I own….

I don’t remember where or how I acquired this cake. I’m thinking that it may have been a Liquid Proust tea snag, but it’s possible I searched for it on my own. All I know is that this tea has been in my stash a long while, and I hoarded the last 14g for a reason (likely I enjoyed it so much, I wasn’t ready to part ways, yet). I split the remaining 14g into two 7ish gram sessions.

Notes – Part One: The first session was 7-8 infusions. I was in the middle of working, and work can easily distract me from the tea. I didn’t make any notes.

Notes – Part Two: Last night, I made myself take a lunch, so that I could give the time for the last session with this tea. My storage (semi dry – I will monitor the humidity and throw in a Boveda packet or two, as needed) has proven to allow this tea to keep the original “aged” taste, but has really reduced the previously noted menthol taste. It was still there, but the bitterness had faded some. The tea was smooth and sweet – I noted some menthol/mint notes. The qi was calming, and allowed me to feel creative and journal, prior to returning to my workload.

PS. I did manage to find the tea online. Roughly $25 per 100g. Not too shabby. I’ve added it to my wishlist.

https://sunsingtea.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=226&search=+2009

From the Pubertea group buy organized by Liquid Proust. Wow…this tea was incredible – perhaps nearing my favorite that I’ve yet tried. I spent probably close to five minutes smelling the leaf between dry and rinsed. Lots of nice sweet and earthy aroma; dark vanilla, sweet, cinnamon, nutmeg. There is a slight aroma of storage. More than anything else, the scent reminded me of a slightly dank bourbon.

The tea started off quite sweet, with some woody notes, a bit of that bourbon/oaky vanilla flavor, and some deep and thick texture. The sweetness lingered my mouth for a good while as well. The tea was thick and mouth-coating from the get-go. As I started to steep it out more, the flavor got deeper and earthier. The color of the tea liquor was very dark for a sheng as well.

As the session progressed, I found some more spicy woody notes taking the fore, as the intense vanilla sweetness moved more into the background – sort of reminded me most of cedarwood. There is also a slight bitter backbone still remaining in this tea. The tea has a throat-tightening feel and I started to feel some relaxing qi in my upper body.

I agree with LP that this tea had very impressive longevity – I didn’t get 30 steeps off of it, but did get quite a few more than normal. Vanilla still lingers a little bit in the finish in the late steeps. I threw the leaf in a thermos with hot water for a few hours afterwards and it gave me a nice and thick infusion. I probably could have done the same thing overnight for even more tea.

I’m going to use the second half of my sample in my Jianshui teapot and see how it does. This is the first tea of this price range that I actually could see myself picking up a cake of to have as a special occasion sort of drink. I’d have to check what the price actually is of course, but maybe a self-Christmas present….

This tea has the most longevity out of any aged raw puerh that I’ve tried to date.
I went through over 30 steeps of this at 5g/60ml

The color is a little more transparent than I thought it would be so I was like ‘ahhh man this wasn’t aged as much as I wanted!’ but then the taste… this is a cleaner storage taste than most of the other Sunsing cakes that I’ve tried at this point. Leaf was and is very dark! Good mix of material in this cake which makes me glad because older cakes with this blend isn’t the norm for what I have bought.

This session kept a really strong grass and earthy balance that made it very enjoyable without having any of that dank/damp taste going on. As I got towards the end it sweetened up which was pretty odd, but enjoyable.
Part of me is curious if this could go a second day… :p

Really good stuff. Somewhat delicate in a hard way to explain as depth exist but doesn’t demand as much in return to enjoy it… if that makes sense.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWtLPmKgFbM/

I’m brewing about 6.75g of this from LiquidProust’s group buy. The dry/warmed leaf smells musty and a bit spicy. With a rinse, those aromas are intensified and some leather is apparent.

The first flash steep is a slightly cloudy light orange color. The flavor is very light – my sample was pretty compressed and will take awhile to open up in the gaiwan. Steep 2 is darker and getting fuller in taste. It’s smooth with some background sweetness and mustiness. I don’t really notice much storage taste, so I’m guessing conditions were quite dry for this cake.

Subsequent steeps are thicker and cloudier as the compression continues to open up. There’s a very light drying effect on the tongue. Not enough to bother me.

At steep 6 or 7 I decide to push this tea a little wrt to time. It’s darker – orange bordering on orange red and the bitter backbone of this tea is much more obvious. Not the best steep of the bunch but I was curious.

Nothing about this tea really stands out to me, but it should be interesting to go back to after I’ve tried the other teas from this group buy. It was certainly enjoyable, but maybe not in proportion to the price on Sunsing’s website (to my taste buds, at least).

Okay, let’s cover all the points to this tea in a very brief session.

1. Price
$.38/g via http://sunsingtea.com/PuerhTea/Boxes?product_id=91
I want to buy some more, but I only want about 50g… anyone want to go in :P
$38/150g for 1999 Raw is a GREAT deal

2. Taste
Yes

3. Color
Yes

4. Aroma
Eh… not really, but the taste is what I’m looking for

5. Additional properties?
Body warmth, but no drunk feeling.

6. Worth?
Yes.

7. Is seven really a perfect number?

8. Why didn’t you answer #7?

Overall this tea was very very enjoyable and I got to show it off :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/5qnt6i/drinking_some_raw_puerh_from_1999_via_sunsing/

P.S. Sunsing has one SERIOUS 1999 raw cakes that you can see by the color of the brew here: http://sunsingtea.com/PuerhTea/1990’s?product_id=163
Look. At. That. Brew.

Clean. Semi mountainous taste. Medium body. After notes of old fruit. All around great tea.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPeG5HtgwE_/

Friday night and I finally had time to dedicate to a brewing so I pulled out the Pubertea teas. Heard some talk about this and pulled out the 4g I had left from everyone and knew I had to be careful with the brew.

The leaf has a good rustic look to it and a decent smell. This was one of the cheaper aged shengs surprisingly, but I choose it for what it is to Sunsing and all; it’s also my first Sunsing tea : )

The first brew was a bit murky with some real smokey notes coming through and a little grit. It might be the dust I brewed with, but this tea seemed like it was going to be a journey through the sand. The next few brews still had some rather strong smoke for the age it is, but it is clear that this has been stored more dry than humid as the tasting goes on. Sides of the mouth have decent dryness going on but the aged taste that comes through makes it enjoyable.

Around the 8th steep and I’m getting use to the taste to which each sip comes with a cooling taste at the end as if I ate a warm cucumber… if that makes sense. Still not the best in taste, some depth still there, and slight smoke. No qi, oh well. For what it is: There’s plenty of room for this tea to develop based on how it is stored from here on out. The price isn’t so bad either compared to others, but it really does need some airing and a little humidity to bring it to life and maybe even add some legs to it because I feel as if something is holding this back. The leaf is quite beautiful and I am curious as to what Sunsing’s own Yiwu pressings are like.

The first tea I have tried from the Pubertea group buy put together by LiquidProust, pulled out of the bag at random. The leaf on this one smelled slightly leather and musty, though I wasn’t getting much of any strong aromas from it. I brewed it up in my Jianshui teapot with boiled water.

The first steep was leathery with a bit of a smoky aftertaste. Not particularly pleasant, but thankfully the leather only persisted for this single steep. Could be solved with a second rinse, but it’s still drinkable so no point there.

Steeps 2-5 are extremely thick – by the third steep I was almost chewing it. The flavors were sweet, a little hard to place, I’m thinking bamboo perhaps and slightly vegetal. Also inklings of vanilla in the middle of the sip. The smoky flavor in the aftertaste persists as well, coming through as a slight BBQ note in the finish. Sounds unpleasant, and it would have been if it were stronger, but it’s really just an echo on the end of the sip, and one of the rare times a smoky flavor has kind of added to a tea rather than subtracted from it for me. If I had to guess, I’d say this tea was a bit smokier in its youth and this is all that remains. I was feeling this tea quite a bit in my throat and the back of my mouth. Not really getting much of anything in the way of qi.

Steeps 6-8 presented a brew which I described as “cleaner.” So mostly the same flavor, but the meaty BBQ aftertaste was gone. In my first session, I had to pause it after steep 8 to go run some errands. While I was riding around in the car for around an hour, I could still feel this tea in my stomach and chest, and felt just a tiiiny teadrunk fuzziness. Not much, and I didn’t notice it while I was actually drinking the tea.

Steeps 8-11 were a little bit lighter all around. The flavor and thickness were less intense. More silky than what it was before, when it almost felt like pudding. Occasional spice notes on the front and still getting the odd hint of vanilla.

Steeps 12-19 were very soft and sweet in flavor. The texture would come and go, depending on how long I steeped it for, never returning to the crazy heights it had in the early session. The last two steeps were really all texture with little to no flavor remaining aside from maybe a sweet feeling in the mouth.

This was a good tea, and makes me excited not only for the rest of Pubertea, but also for trying more quality aged sheng. Most of my puerh exploration has been on the younger side of sheng to this point, which I certainly enjoy, but these teas promise a different and exciting experience of their own. I’m curious to see if all of the good aged sheng I try is this thick in the mouth. The only young sheng I’ve had that approach this thickness are some of the W2T productions.