2012 Bang Dong Spring Raw

I received this tea, generously, from a passionate and inspiring Liquid Proust as an offering to broaden my raw puer vocabulary. I rinsed the tea quickly with boiling water and went to town on an immediately golden yellow tea.

The later steepings remain tame and tasty, floral and apricot notes definitely stand out now, but I taste no pepper or spice as other tasters have. I count this as a good thing. Having accidentally oversteeped one pot, this tea friend was very forgiving with little added harshness. Savory plum replaces the woodsy flavor, and jasmine with apricot wraps up the end.

This tea was delicious— it reminds me of a crisp fall evening which is quite the accomplishment as we don’t see too much autumn in Florida. I’m thankful to have tried the one; it sets my bar for middle (young?)-aged teas pretty high.

Finishing off my sample of this tea. I still love the way the wet leaves have this heavy, fruit scent—kind of like ripe plum or apricot or something along those lines. In the first and second steep, flavors are very low and mellow, with no particular high notes making their way known to me. Generally, it seems people describe this as being more “spiced” as opposed to “floral”, though I’m still not quite sure what that means. It does have a little bit of a spicy note on the uptake (is this just confirmation bias?), and overall it has a very low flavor profile. It’s quite enjoyable! Different from some of the other young sheng I’ve been drinking thus far but I’m quite enjoying this tea as it is.

Got a decent sized sample with the Sheng Olympiad. Brewed the whole thing in one go, zisha teapot. Small leaves, slight whiff of more humid storage than what I can do here, evident in the browning already on the leaves. Liquor more amber than is usual for barely close to five years old.

Some light bitterness and medium thickness, more on the spicy end than floral. Pleasant drinker with decent storage. I understand this was a pricey tea but not premium price. I can easily drink this but it’s not strong enough a sheng for me in terms of caffeine and bitterness. If it didn’t say spring I would guess this to be an autumn tea. After about eight steeps I felt like the tea needs coaxing and longer steep times.

Received a sample of this in Liquid Proust’s 2017 Sheng Olympiad. This is my second session with this tea as I had a generous 12g sample bag. I enjoyed my previous session with this tea and remember thinking that it definitely stands above the other Bang Dong samples in the package. Dry leaf has a typical young sheng clean apricot and grassy smell. Thrown into a dry, hot gaiwan, the aroma is similar, but more pronounced and fuller.

The color of the rinse is a pale yellow trending towards orange, not unexpected for the age of this tea. The gaiwan lid smells of spiced apricot, a bit more nuanced than the younger shengs I typically drink in the $.10-$.15/g price range.

The first steep brews up about the same as the rinse, perhaps a little darker. There’s a bit of cloudiness in the liquor. The taste is very soft and mellow with a pleasant lingering apricot aftertaste in the back of the mouth.

Steep number two is darker still and I can tell I’m getting close to reaching the juicy center of this tea. The fruity sweet taste is still there, but it’s now joined by a creamy vegetal note and increasing thickness. The vegetal flavor is, to me, reminiscent of white2tea’s Poundcake.

I let the third steep go on a little longer to see what happens when I push this tea a bit. It’s still sweet and getting thicker, but a pleasant bitterness has appeared.

By the fourth steep, the cloudiness has cleared up almost completely. The sweet creamy vegetable taste begins to overtake the apricot up front but the apricot is as present as ever in the aftertaste. This is, in my opinion, a rather dynamic tea. It’s something I look for as it adds interest to a session.

The fifth steep, at about 35 seconds, continues the trend of the vegetal, green taste overshadowing the soft apricot. We’re not at the stewed greens stage yet, but I can tell we’ll probably get there in time.

The leaves have just about fully opened at this point and the young green flavor has built up substantially. There’s some astringency creeping in and the bitterness has remained at a nice, manageable level. The qi is relaxing – not something I’d want to drink first thing in the morning.

For the back half of this tea, I’m bumping up the temperature to see what else I can get out of the leaves. At 205F, I’m getting more astringency and bitterness, but also sweetness. With quick back-to-back steeps, my face is feeling numb and my body’s warming up. This tea just keeps going. The color has been consistent since steep three and the flavor refuses to drop off.

After about 12 steeps, the aforementioned green sheng flavor is still quite present and doesn’t show any signs of changing.

This is a really agreeable tea. Approachable for puer newbies and enjoyable for vets. There’s something for everyone here, but it comes at a price. This cake looks to be sold out as of January 2017, but at $.44/g, it’s on the expensive side. Would I buy a whole cake? Probably not. Would I drink a whole cake? Yep!

Brewed in a zisha pot. Very deep herbal tones. Lighter flavor on the first brew then expected. Second brew- much thicker body, a lot more bitterness. Some florality but mostly herbal with a slight lemon zest tone. Nutty hints. 3&4 brew – decent cooling, decent mouth feel. All around this has been very soft and light on flavor but medium textured with decent finish/mouth characteristics. 5th brew, soft and sweet – good cooling in the back of the throat, nice lingering sweetness, all around soft, sweet, and subtle, nuanced but not exactly what you expect from a spring bang dong cake. All of the usual floral and fruit notes are quite soft. Quality seems to be there, but this is a very soft and round take on bang dong. looking forward to trying it again w/ a heavier leafing and seeing how that goes. however, I enjoyed the more forward and flavorful YS bang dong’s. probably my least favorite bang dong of the 2017 sheng olympics.

Got a sample of this witih Liquid Proust’s Sheng Olympics 2017. This was a pretty good tea. It was a fairly balanced mix of bitter and sweet. I didn’t really pick up on the specifics so I will just generalize and say it was good. If I had any shortage of sheng cakes I would say it is good enough to buy a cake. But I have a lot of sheng cakes, although far fewer than I have shou cakes. It was very good and it was nice to try it.

I steeped this tea twelve times in a 150ml gaiwan with 8.1g 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.

Above standard raw puerh, has a soft dry sweetness with all the prerequisite flavors of hay, pine nut, kelp. Hui gan much in present with a solidness on the tongue and that seeping of sweet coming off the parotids. Used a gaiwan one rinse and a rest then steeps of 20/25/30/35/35/35/40/40/40/45/45 after that it became a blur, as I needed to do some chores around the house since the cha qi was coming on strong. The spent leaves were all uniform and quite green with flecks of brown.