Perhaps Pu-erh is not for me. The fannings are finely ground and look a lot like coffee grounds. The smell is very rich and dark with sort of an earthy twist. Brewed the leaves smell faintly fishy and fermented with a sort of loamy, mossy aftertaste. It doesn’t taste strong in the generic Assam tea sense, but brewed it is a dark chocolate that looks more like coffee. I can’t quite put my finger on the taste as its somewhere between a fermented peat and a malt. The smell is remarkably soy sauce like. It doesn’t quite taste like tea to be honest. Almost like coffee with none of the bitterness or caramel sweetness. I think what I don’t like is that it tastes almost savory to me though the addition of sugar helped. I have heard pu-erh is an acquired taste and I’m not sure right now if it’ll grown on me or grate on my nerves.