pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

Sheng of yesterday: 2007 Banzhang Tuo from CWS. Compared two storages. One chuck had been pulled of the tuo many months ago, and was resting in a gaiwan. The other was a chunk from a steamed apart tuo, that had been stored without being completely dried out after the steaming. The steamed version was not so pleasant a week or so after steaming, as it had developed a “storage flavor” of sorts from the moisture. Around four months later, the steamed one has lost any hints of “storage”, and now just seems more aged than the “rested” counterpart, without anything lost. Hard to be to conclusive from the one session, as this tea can be inconsistent, but it looks like steaming open a tea can both make for easier drinking and helpfully add some humidity. Also, I can’t help thinking I maybe should have bought more of this tea. Tasty, interesting, has some qi, and plenty of bitterness for the future.

Sheng of today: 2006 yiwu from from the Mandarin’s Tea Room. Other sessions from my sample have been typical yiwu, sweet and soft. Today’s session almost made me wonder If the cake maker had accidentally mixed in a little bulang – the tea hit much harder, with some puckeriness, sourness, and bitterness. If anything, I underleafed compared to my often glutinous ways of brewing. Either way, this tea has a nice, long, complex, interesting aftertaste, which is the star of the show. Nice and thick. Appears to have been stored very well; rinsing this tea would be a waste. No qi of note.

I still can’t decide if this tea is expensive or a bargain. For example, you could compare it to the ’09 yiwu from w2t, or you could compare it to Last Thoughts…

2016 Wuliang Shan sheng sample from die Kunst des Tees. Another very nice young tea that might mature well if it lasts that long.

Tomorrow I am trying the last of their 2016 shengs: Jingmai.

Today I drank an excellent ripe from Puerhshop, the 2015 MGH 1501 Premium Golden Tips Ripe Tea Cake. This one was really inexpensive at $8. It was also very good, worth more than they were charging. There was a little bit of a bittersweet note at the start and a fair amount of fermentation flavor. It must have been fermented right because it was not unpleasant or fishy tasting. It developed a nice sweet note. In short this was an excellent tea. I wasn’t really paying attention to the specifics so I’m not sure if I should say it had chocolate notes etc, but it was very tasty and the price was right on this one. I find that Puerhshop’s house productions usually are pretty good quality and I usually like them.

Drank 2015 Smooch by w2t. Used a thick celadon pot, poured off the boiling water and let the tea just sit in the steam for ten minutes until it opened up. This tea has improved over the course of a year. Much thicker now, yellow and oily. Very sweet with some bitterness if steeped too long. Lincang origin. I think this might be the last one I have, unless I dig up another in my sample stash.

I haven’t touched this yet but I got this Tea recently and don’t know anything about it except that it is a Sheng and and that it is a fulushouxi cake with a symbol embossed on it during pressing. https://goo.gl/photos/hYCNURhbvGLqtkgb6

Today I decided I’d had enough cheap tea for the week and, after a brief period of decision paralysis, drank an extra-strong session of the ’09 Yiwu from W2T. It was raising a sweat by the end of the 2nd cup.

Also a session with the W2T ‘05 teji tuo, which I will be sad to see the last of in another session or two. But now it is coating my mouth with perfume and I’m about to go home for the weekend.

Jingmai maocha I picked up in Kunming last month. Sold as 2016 Jingmai from old trees (sure it is), but could really be anything since those tea market ladies will tell you whatever story they think will sell the tea. All I know is it tastes and smells incredible. The fresh strawberry aroma is less pronounced now, but I just got a whiff of canteloupe from the dry leaf, along with that distinct assamica aroma. Second infusion is giving me raspberry, blueberry and red grape. It’s really a pleasure drinking this maocha and dipping into a 500g bag when I want some (ok, more like 450g since I’ve dipped a few times now)! Brewing with Vittel today.

This weekend was spent in Frankfurt. While my wife went visit her work colleagues I visit two online tea shops: Cha Dao and Die Kunst des Tees with whom I had previously organised visits.

(Far) Too many teas were sipped until early hours of both mornings including 1980’s Oolongs and Pu’er teas. Curious teas were also sipped like white tea from Yunnan and green tea from Wuyi Shan.

Today I drank a tea I bought quite a while ago from Yunnan Sourcing, I’m not even sure if I bought it on the US site or China site but I think US. Today it was the 2014 Yunnan Sourcing Qing Mei Shan Old Arbor Puerh Tea Cake. This was a fairly nice raw cake. It was fairly bitter at the start and I noticed a sour note for about the first two steepings. It was dry stored in New York for several months at least so that may account for the sour note. In any case the bitter and the sour left this cake and a nice sweet taste developed. I guess you would describe it as apricots and stonefruits, pretty much the standard for quality young sheng today. Overall this was a very good tea.