Indian Gushu Sheng Pu'erh Wafer (Spring 2020)

Long rinse/steep the first: barnyaaaaaaaaard! I half-forget about these classic aromas, then stumble into one and feel hella joy.

Saponin bubbles on every steep in my ceramic pot. Pours progressed super quickly from reddish gold to hong-colored. Now this is another tea that has me wondering about the processing — it’s only 3 years old, but brewing quite red/dark already. So was it oxidized further than traditional sheng puerh, and is it meant for young drinking? Will it age up into something else, or are we looking at what it’s destined to be right now? I’d absolutely call this more tannic than bitter.

Wet dog and apricot in the second, opens up to some poppy red fruit/berries and fuller mouthfeel in the third. Oof, yeah, that mouthfeel is nice.

Fruity tobacco on the wet leaf. The fruit here is interesting; I wouldn’t necessarily call this sheng sweet, but fruity for sure. Kind of bright-tannic and lightly malty as well — which aligns with the color of the liquor if we’re talking about processing edging closer to hongcha territory, I guess. Hm.

The huigan really starts coming alive now — juicy in the way that makes you smack your jaw around. The tannins are a little touchy — one steep after that, it felt like they tried to step in with a NO MORE SMACKING sign. I smacked anyway, and it worked.

There’s something about this that reminds me vaguely of my mother’s iced tea; bags brewed hot and crisp, with a healthy dose of lemon juice and just enough sugar to take the edge off (“My sister makes it too goddamn sweet!”). All this with a side of damp canine plopped in your lap, scootching for pets. Ah, home.

Thank you very much, derk. This was fun.

Well, I bought this last year and have just now gotten around to it. And I’m going to have to play around with it some more because I kept severely oversteeping it. Severely, though? Hard to say, since I did enjoy at least 3 pots’ worth that had been brewing for no less than 15 minutes each time.

The dry leaf has interesting aromas that are malty and fruity, waxed wood, redfruits, twigs. Sweet-syrupy. Bread dough, fermented camellia buds.

Warm has bourbon vanilla sugar notes w/massive red berry and yeasty bread dough notes, rosewood. Rinsed leaf brings more of an antique wood feeling, eucalyptus, port wine, raisins.

Overall vibe is —

Like the 2020 Ball Rolled Wild Oolong but without the intensity of feeling or sweetness. More mineral and antiquewoody like a Chinese pu’er. High oxididation (black tea) tastes such as malt and redfruits. Superficial bitterness, not the kind that penetrates but is like a sheer layer. I prefer feeling the bitterness rather than only tasting it. Does that make sense? It has that light astringency that is thirst-quenching.

Curious tea that has some good markers but lacks some punch? I hope Ketlee has set aside some of these Indian raw teas for aging and will re-release them in the years to come.

I have to try this brewed in a different vessel. I used my tiny duanni clay pot because I wasn’t sure if this tea was going to hijack my brain like the 2020 Ball Rolled Wild Oolong. It didn’t.