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Enjoyed very much the initial campfire smoke with lingering aftertaste. From the 2nd steep on, the campfire smokiness lessened and began to be upstaged by chocolate, cacao, then some (candied) fruit appearing and then taking over the chocolate. The lingering aftertastes left me smacking my tongue, had some grip.

I definitely would want to have this tea on hand.

2016 autumn. Carob. I agree with the reviews pointing out the complexity of the flavors, the various layers and dimensions, it is hard to unravel. I also got the milk-malty-chocolate, toasted rice, walnut, some fruit note and even some kind of liquor flavor, and I can see Verdant’s toasted marshmallow descriptor as valid for me, too. But if I had to sum all of this up: carob. A fascinating experience.

New to tea tasting, started with pu’er, and this is my first tasting with black tea. Seems like I am starting with a really good one.

Long aftertaste that grabs the tongue.

I am still new to tea tasting; that’s my disclaimer for the following. I was really looking forward to this tea due to the Verdant description of “pound cake” and “whipped cream” as main flavors. But what I tasted was hands down medicinal. Something in this tastes how an acupuncturist treatment room smells. A kind of acrid and bitter underside to the tea, is it like moxa? Is that camphor? Menthol or wintergreen? It has a coolness about it and engages the nose a lot, as if there were volatiles being released. Chinese medicinal roots. Like chewing on a licorice root. This stood out in the aroma of the steeped leaves as well. Maybe, maybe in steep I tasted some whipped cream, but I also was wanting to taste that from the start, so maybe I was imagining. The texture is smooth and rich with some creaminess.

I have tasted less than 10 shu pu’er so far, and this one was different from all the others, so it was a good experience in showing me new possibilities. However, the upfront medicinal taste (and aftertaste) disqualifies this tea for me in terms of daily drinking. This is a tea I would recommend to taste with friends for a session comparing and contrasting different shu pu’er.

I will be curious to see what other reviews say.

Pros: fullness in first few steeps, and interesting sheng-like traits start to appear: fruitiness (apricot?) in both aroma (loved that, intriguing) of steeped leaves and somewhat in aftertaste while still presenting some nice shu sweetness: vanilla pudding, pastry dough (no earthiness or fermentation flavor). Deep coffee-color.

However: First few steeps present a sharp edge to the above: burnt and bitter. While that mellowed out in steep 5, the fifth steep also saw the whole flavor profile and body collapse suddenly. I let steep 7 go for 5 minutes, and was still flat. Finished there.

Conclusion for now: at $11 for 100-gram cake, a 5-gram session will cost 55 cents, so I am happy to have it on hand for those days when I am preoccupied with work and can’t give my full attention to tasting. But for those dedicated tasting sessions, I would definitely save my money to get something with more endurance and a richer flavor and texture profile.

Update: I bought more of this, and it is a winner in my tealog. This is one shu I would want to have on hand (sold out, though…), and thus I am keeping my 96 rating. I would also add new flavors I pick up, more in the earthy spectrum, which I did not get originally.

In my original review below, I explore manually opening up the nuggets in later steepings in order to get more mileage out of them. Since, then, I have had probably more succcess keeping the cover on the gaiwan throughout the whole session (except to pour in water, obviously), and I think the steam kept in the gaiwan helps open up the nuggets earlier.
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Really enjoyed this shu pu’er. I am on board with Verdant’s descriptors of vanilla pudding and maple syrup. Richness, fullness, and pastry dough, I might add biscuit, Graham cracker. Creamy.

A different Verdant tea that I reviewed—also a 2014 shu pu’er from Qianjiazhai but loose—had an upfront very dark roast almost burnt edge that eventually rounds off. That tea is also very savory and a wonderful experience, but the present shu nuggets give a fuller body I think and have no burnt edge. I think this might be due to the lesser surface area of the nuggets, which slowly open up over several steepings (unlike the loose tea which I couldn’t steep fast enough—pour on and pour off as fast as possible the first few steeps).

At the end of my first session, I found some of the nuggets still had not fully opened, but by that point opening them manually did not offer more than a couple more steeps. So before my second session, I tried using a tea pick to open the nuggets— a bit difficult to do. They are dense, the tea pick easily slips. Thus, I did two rinses, waited 10 minutes, then I was able to use the pick to open them up a bit. I did a third flash rinse and was ready to go. I found that this initial effort allowed the tea to give a fuller first few steeps, and they were so good.

After steep 8, I noticed that the core of the nugget pieces still had not fully opened, and so I went in there with my fingers, gently twisting the pieces and breaking them apart. My next steep was almost like starting a new session and could have even used a flash rinse to clear the new debris. And before breaking open the pieces, my 8th steep was up to two minutes, but after opening the pieces my 9th steep was back to 5 seconds, then 8, 15, 20, etc, so I feel the nuggets allow the tea to get a real second wind.

Tea drunk alert. I was not expecting or waiting for that, I noticed as I was drinking I started to furiously make a list copying down all of Steepster’s suggested flavors in the drop-down menu, the tea gave me a real buzz, and suddenly I found myself laughing for no apparent reason, giddy, and I think it should be called “tea high” instead of “drunk.” This happened into the third steep, so with 5 grams I had consumed 225 ml in less than 10 minutes, and after that third steep I had to wait almost a half an hour before doing round four.

The aroma of the leaves after two rinses was wonderful: yes, pastry dough or biscuit, an earthiness and accents of vanilla, cocoa, maybe sweet almond, some kind of spice. Taste: my first impression was wow lovely creamy texture with a sweetness and also a burnt edge—in a dark roast kind of way, not unpleasant, like swirling ocean contained by a rocky cliff. As I continued to steep, the creaminess and biscuit aroma persisted as a main trait, the dark roast edge eventually rounded off into the eighth cup, maybe some caramel appeared early on, and graham cracker?? in second steep. Overall, very savory, lovely creamy, 5 grams went past 10 steeps, and got me tea drunk. This is my first tea from Verdant, I bought two samples, and Verdant sent me a free sample as well, thank you!

Update: A second session, that burnt dark roast edge again very present, and because this is loose tea, I can’t steep this fast enough. The first few steeps are flashes—as soon as I pour the water on I am scrambling to pour it off because it steeps so quickly. I think next session I will try steeping with a lower water temp, maybe 200 degrees and see if that takes of that very dark roast almost burnt edge. No tea drunkeness this time, but a nice warming buzz with no jitters.

By the way, Verdant’s Qianjiazhai shu “nuggets” (in another review of mine) does not have that harsh edge even at the start, and I suspect that is due to the nuggets having less surface area and taking several steeps to really open up. Love that tea.

Update 4/8/2017: I followed my own advice and decreased first five steeps each to 3 seconds. That helped a lot and the tea was much more approachable. This session went a dozen steeps, and although the later steeps were obviously weaker in flavors, they had a delicious creamy texture that made it worth it to keep steeping.

Original review:

My first sheng ever. Before this for puerh I had only tried a couple shu, and one of them was a realy bad marine backwater fest. So, I had no idea what to expect with this sheng.

I read of people talking about all these flavors and fruits in sheng, and I was skeptical that I would pick them out. So, the highlight of this sheng experience was how readily the apricot stood out for me, upfront and as a wonderful lingering aftertaste.

A second session made me realize that the apricot is actually for me closer to a dried fruit from the Andes in Peru called aguaymanto (Peruvian ground cherry, dried). There is a tartness. Also discerned a floral character, jasmine, and maybe honey.

But, I also learned with this tea that I was over-steeping it. With 5 grams/75 ml and initial steep of 20s/10s/7s….I was mistakingly trying to extract a more intense fruit flavor that way, but I instead was confronted with a smoky bitter burnt and too-astringent experience.

So I backed off, increased the leaf:water ratio and less time steeping, that mellowed things out. My bad, but I learned.

Really enjoyed that dried fruit enduring aftertaste.

My second sheng. Highlights for me: apricot appearing in second steep and lingered 10, 15 minutes, longer? (However, I notice other reviews do not mention apricot, so I would at least reconsider things next time). Aroma of horse stable first few steeps. But, already steep 4 was a casual affair for my amateur palate. It was a good experience, part of the educational sample package, but I prefer the other sheng in that package: 2005 “Top of the Clouds,” and I hope to find others, too. I learned that astringency adds dimension and I can open myself to appreciating it along with the flavors.

Steep 1
Aroma: wet hay, horse stable, sweet grass.
Taste: no smokiness, some astringency but not overpowering. Green tea, aftertaste of dried fruit, apricot? Smacking tongue. Pineapple?

Steep 2
Aroma: Even more horse stable.
Taste: gripping astringency, fruit moves forward, enjoyable. Enter apricot. Last 5, 10 minutes or more.

Steep 3 and beyond: gradually fades, steep 4 is already what I call a more casual drinking experience since I am not yet able to distinguish a lot at this point. Maxed out at steep 8 (8 grams/120 ml, one rinse).

I really enjoy the aroma: exquisite deep mushroom, rotting wood, mineral, humid moss. With each steep I put my hand over my cup and then took in the aroma, the highlight of this tea, along with its grounding qi.

Also the texture at its best: oily, almost syrupy, smooths out into velvet.

Flavors transform from:
1. Initial smoky and burnt, strong edge
2. Wet moss and leaves
3. Musty and moldy leather boots in the Amazon jungle: “hongeado” in Spanish.

Very calming, grounding, contemplative, steady.

Didn’t see this as an everyday tea. A tea to get excited about drinking on a cold autumn day, rainy, cloudy, thinking deep thoughts, reflecting, reading poetry, musing.

Flattened out at 7 steeps and maxed out at 10 steeps (using 5 grams in 75 ml).

Overall not so enjoyable. I wanted to like it, but in the third steep (after two initial rinses), I found myself not even wanting to continue drinking it. What happened?

Admittedly, this was only the fourth shu I have ever tasted (so what follows is my amateur tasting). My first one was a $10 cake from a Chinatown grocery store: marine and musty. My third was a 2007 “Huang Zhi” (from Crimson Lotus) and especially the intense mushroomy aroma and oily texture blew me away (I wish they had more in stock). The present shu, however, although it had some mushroomy aroma that I liked (and wood aroma that I didn’t like so much) actually turned me off by the third steep due to an overpowering earth taste. Not the interesting earthy taste I can appreciate, but rather just more like dirt, if that makes any sense. Long wet earth/dirt aftertaste in second steep. Then, the third steep suddenly bottomed out with an odd tatse, much weaker body. In the 4th steep, the earth taste was gone already, but there was nothing notable I could discern, and it became a casual drinking cup rather than something to study and inspire. By the 7th and 8th steeps it had mellowed and smoothed out, the earthiness receded and was replaced by mustiness and wet cavern. Did not get to 10 steeps.

There are positive traits: that mushroomy aroma at first, some mineral taste, a noticeable thickness, fullness, and somewhat creamy. And especially, it had a grounding effect and left me in contemplation and calm, steady focussed work. That was great.