Menghai Raw Pu-erh Cake Tea 2016 - Monkey Year

Olive note. Charred note with slightly bitter edge. Faint dull sweetness trailing into the aftertaste.

This is a sample sent by Teavivre for review. Many thanks, Angela and Teavivre!

I used my eight ounce pot and about half the sample. The dry leaves smell wonderful, and remind in appearance and scent of a nice white tea, one of the bolder ones like a shou mei.

I did rinse this and pour off the very pale liquid quickly. My first steep was thirty seconds. I have a bad habit of drinking all types of puerh too quickly, forgetting how much more I like them after they have cooled for a minute, so I used my thinnest cups. The heat on my fingers will remind me to wait until it is cooler so I can taste the full flavor profile better.

This is a nice golden color. The scent surprisingly has apple notes! I am thinking of Granny Smith apples with their tart juiciness. The scent of white tea is now mixed with the characteristic scent of raw puerh, or perhaps the scent of a brisk green tea.

The flavor is mild, slightly astringent and lending a tingle to the tongue, and has the delightful rising sweetness that occurs when drinking certain greens.

I raised the third steep to 45 seconds but it is more astringent here so I will be sticking to 30-35 seconds for this one henceforth.

There is still a fruity flavor now on the fourth steep, with a hint of smoke and a good bit of dryness. This is a very interesting tea, and I find it very drinkable even at this young age. My daughter is drinking this with me and didn’t know it was raw puerh. She was quite surprised when I told her because she had one at a tea festival that did not please her! She likes this one.

Drinking up an entire 10g sample of this in my yixing pot. Dry leaf is sweetish, wet leaf smells quite Menghai-y. Ripe fruit smell, and a hint of smokiness.

First steep comes out quite as a light amber, definitely lighter than I was expecting. The flavor is quite smooth and creamy, with no bitterness yet. Relatively mild in flavor profile, with a sweet mid-note cream aftertaste holding throughout. No particular high note presence.

Second steep is much darker in color, with a mid bitter note starting to appear in a mildish level. Still definitely a smooth creaminess to it, and a sweetness around the back of the mouth and in the aftertaste. I’m enjoying this one quite a bit.

Third steep loses a little bit of the creaminess and the bitterness gets a tad sharper. Fourth and fifth steeps, despite a longer steep, lose a bit more of the flavor and become watery with bitterness becoming sharper. After this point, it’s mostly fallen off. Around steep 7 I was able to get a little bit of sweetness out of it by steeping for a long time, and the bitterness faded off, but it was mostly done by that point.

The last sample from Teavivre for now. A big THANK YOU again to Teavivre! This is just a baby sheng both being harvested and sold within March 2016. But it is quite delicious now, even if aging the pu-erh should make it better. The leaves in my sample were huge and loose in package (not formed in a cake, but maybe that was just how the sample was packaged.) It had the lovely scent of a fresh creamy corn green tea but the flavor is all of a raw pu-erh. It has such a fresh, bright, smooth, sweet flavor with hints of lemon. Now that I think of it, this could almost taste like a white tea cake. It’s very consistent in all three steeps with no overdone sheng flavor if I stay with 35 seconds. It’s perfect this way and I really love this sheng. I can’t imagine the flavor can get even better with age. Maybe I like brand new sheng flavor more than aged sheng. I think the steeps were only beginning with tasty flavor — I could have kept going. All of samples I received in this round of samples were so delicious. They definitely aren’t hurting their business sending out samples. Teavivre is awesome.
Steep #1 // half sample for a full mug // rinse // 30 minutes after boiling // 35 second steep
Steep #2 // 32 minutes after boiling // 35 second steep
Steep #3 // 32 minutes after boiling // 35 second steep