2013 Mengku Bingdao Raw

Bought this a couple weeks ago from Puerhshop. I have not tried too many of their raw teas and this one was somewhat expensive at around $88. It also claims to be ancient tree material about which I in a sense can’t comment. How do you prove it is ancient tree material. It is supposed to be Bingdao material. What it was was really very good, really just short of the best raw I have ever had. I’m not sure what I would call the best raw I’ve ever had but this one was very close. It had very little bitterness, a little crept in around the third steep once the leaves had opened up but was gone by the fourth steep. It had no off flavors of any sort, no storage flavors. Certainly no wet storage flavors. I would say it was predominately sweet tasting with apricots and stonefruits as the main notes. I also performed something of an experiment with this. The first time I steeped my kettle for the first eight steepings I used Iceland Springs spring water. For the second time I filled my kettle I used filtered water from my Zero Water filter. While the Zero Water filter did a surprisingly good job the spring water was better, just not by a lot. This tea also doesn’t have any unpleasant aftertaste to it. It really didn’t have a strong aftertaste but what was there was pleasant. Again this was the best raw tea I have had in quite a while. Puerhshop has some excellent teas, but because they also sell a lot of cheap bargain teas they do not have the greatest reputation on Steepster. This tea if people try it could change people’s impressions on Puerhshop. It was that good.

I steeped this twelve times in a 120ml gaiwan with 8g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. 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. The tea was not finished but I had had enough. There was no indication the tea was getting weak in the twelfth steep. It would have gone at least four or five more steeps had I wanted to continue.