2005 Organic CNNP Zhong Cha Wild Ancient Tree Puerh Raw

This is an interesting tea that I thought was worth a try for the price. I have no way to confirm that it is wild tree ancient tree leaves. For the price I kind of assume it isn’t but who knows. The tea started out with a flavor that I can only describe as aged flavor. I don’t know how to describe the note but that a number of older teas I have drank have had it. It had no taste of wet wood indicating to me it was dry stored, probably. After about four steeps a bitterness developed. This bitterness largely went away after a few more steeps. There were also some sour notes to this tea. I have been told that sour notes are a common thing for dry stored tea. Never found any apricot or such sweet notes. This was a powerful tea but not really to my taste buds a sweet tea. They say bitter teas have better aging potential, I guess I shall find out. There was only a sweet note as the absence of bitterness in the last steeps if you get my drift. Oh, as to the age of this tea, I think the color of the tea being somewhat orange indicates it is really around ten years old.

I steeped this ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 8.5g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min. There was still a lot of color left in the leaves. Had I wanted to continue I’m sure I could have gotten half a dozen more steeps out of it.