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“I wasn’t sure how I felt about fermented teas without a floral note to cover up some of the flavor when I ordered this. But at $18 for a 3.5 ounce brick, this seemed like a safe way to try out...” Read full tasting note
This last May I visited several carefully networked pu-erh sources on a pu-erh specific sourcing mission. I wasn’t looking for Heicha but I really liked this one and grabbed it up. I’ve been delighted to drink this tea for a couple of months now and decided it will be a great addition to our line-up.
What is Heicha (黑茶）? Literally “Black Tea” it is made from fully oxidized leaves and wet piled like Shou Pu-erh. It is pleasantly sweeter than most teas not withstanding its less-than-elegant appearance. This batch comes from Anhua county in Hunan and is Taiwan Stored.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about fermented teas without a floral note to cover up some of the flavor when I ordered this. But at $18 for a 3.5 ounce brick, this seemed like a safe way to try out unadulterated pu’erh without shelling out $100 for a ripe 400 gram chunk with some age to it.
Well, after taking a whiff of it in the bag, I’m hooked. It smells like a gently dampened forest floor, woody and organic with a whisper of sweet fallen leaves. There’s also some detectable dirt, but that’s not an unpleasant note, surprisingly. When you saturate the tea with boiling water, the aroma turns into what I can only describe as the scent of vivarium—clean soil and mulch that slowly steeps in the intense humidity. The taste is what you would expect from the dry scent: woody, earthy, and overall pleasant. Very, very smooth. Nothing fishy about it, no astringency, no biting edge from an excess of tannins. A touch of sugarcane in the aftertaste with a gentle minerality. It’s like a tasty and polished version of the liquid you get from boiling dried oak leaves on the stove to make leaf litter for a blackwater aquarium. I’m sure there are better fermented teas out there, but I’m in love with this stuff for the time being.
Flavors: Bark, Earth, Mineral, Smooth, Wet Wood
