2016 'Jingmai Shengtai' Raw Puerh Cake

Thus far in my puerh journey, my nose seems to enjoy it more than my tastebuds do. I love the fresh earthy aroma of sheng but the flavor tends to get overpowered by bitterness. This tea epitomizes that experience. It has a wonderful sweet clay smell with floral and grassy notes. It’s mellower than most puerh teas and produces a nice golden amber liquor. Early steeps are soft and full of sweet fruity tones. A bitter melon flavor mixed with fresh dirt emerges around the 3rd steep. The sweetness peters out fairly quickly giving way to strong astringency that was too tannic for me. This would be a winner if only the initial taste could extend further than just a couple of steeps.

This is my very first real very young pu’erh I’ve had. I’ve had some aged raw and ripe pu’erh before, but those didn’t appeal to me that much. So, I thought I would get some raw pu’erh and since I needed some more tea I could use for daily drinking, I got an entire cake. The cake is quite loose and can therefore be broken apart without too much work. The smell is very floral, sweet anf fruity and so is the tea’s taste. I managed to get it up to 15 steeps without the flavour changing to a very bad one. The only thing that was added from steep to steep was the astringency. The tea, after a couple of steeps, started to dry my mouth out a bit, but I believe this is to be expected from young pu’erh. The astringency isn’t too bad though.