2007 Golden Melon Tribute Tuocha 500g (金瓜贡茶）

this is a sample I purchased from Puerhshop. this is amazing. the tea is clear wine color, almost like cranberry juice color. taste wise its very smooth, sweet, no earthiness detected. kind of thick and some vanilla notes.
5 sec rinse/ 5/10/10/10 to be continued
i think im in trouble. im not supposed to like it, but i do. A lot

This is an excellent puerh from Puerhshop. It had a moderate amount of fermentation flavor but not too much. I’d say that it was gone by the fifth steep. It was slightly bittersweet at the start, lasting maybe six steeps. It was a smooth tea. It evolved into something nice and sweet. I am unsure how to describe the sweet note. It was very good and fairly inexpensive as I recall. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to ID this tea because the wrapper didn’t match anything on the Puerhshop website. But I found a second wrapper inside. Puerhshop had placed another wrapper over the original wrapper because it was clearly in bad shape. I did like this tea. Perhaps it was not spectacular but it was a good solid ripe tea and had a nice flavor over twelve steeps. I am sure I could have gotten a couple more steeps out of the leaves but I usually stop at twelve in most cases, unless the tea was particularly expensive. This was not at around $36 for 500g. As to qi, I really didn’t notice much, but maybe a little. I am more relaxed than when I started the tea session.

I steeped this tea twelve times in a 150ml gaiwan with 12.1g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 secondrinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1,5 min, and 2 min.

This is a nice mild shou. No fishiness or storage flavors, it would probably be a nice choice for someone who is newer to shou. It’s a little boring though. There’s some honeyed sweetness throughout the sip but other than that there’s not much to be found. It’s getting deeper as the steeps go on, but it’s not interesting enough to really push any further. I’ll have to try more leaf next time.
25s, 35s, 45s, 1m, 1.5m