2017 Lincang puerh maocha

Pulled a session’s worth of this maocha out of the Puerh TTB when it came through last. I was not part of the W2T Teaclub when this one came. The dry leaf had a soft and green sweetness to the aroma – after a rinse, it smelled more like wet corn and alfalfa, with a sour undercurrent.

The flavor of this one was beany and vegetal – very sweet. There is a relatively small amount of bitterness, mostly in the front of the palate. As the session went on, the flavor turned extremely floral, and some astringency built up as well. When I spilled some of the liquid on my tea tray, I was surprised by how sticky it was – almost more like juice. Very sugary young tea.

This month in the white 2 tea club I got an interesting couple of samples. One was a green tea and the other was a puerh tea from the same plant from the same farmer. Very interesting comparison and this was the youngest I’ve gotten to taste a puerh, pretty much straight from picking to my pot.

I follow the recommendations on the sheet as closely as possible. 6 grams of tea, to just a bit more than 90ml of water. He recommends a 1 to 15, but my pot is just slightly bigger, so I just didnt quite bring it to the top.

The first thing that hit me on doing the wash was intense fruity aroma, peach and apricot, along with spinach and cut grass. Now general floral, fruity, grassy aromas are petty normal with young sheng. But the intensity was really impressive, as well as the complete lack of bitterness or astringency, it was almost completely floral and fruity notes with spinach or cut gass.

First infusion the flavors almost exactly match the aroma and the floral flavors are really strong. The liqour is clear and a very pale yellow and its slightly sweet as well. Its hard to place some of the flavors im getting from this.

Second infusion was pretty much the same, though the liqour got slightly darker, and it got a bit sweeter as well. The base flavors are still the same though.

Third infusion is where thing are getting a little different, Im getting more of that young puerh flavor now, as well as a tiny bit of astringency. Also the sweetness has started to die down a little too. This is actually closer to what I would have expected from a young sheng, dry, floral, fruity, bit astringent, but light. I guess it would be right to call it that immature flavor.

Fourth infusion is very close to the third, im actually a little surprised how much this flavor is changing , I think there is a bit of the cooling bitterness, that he mentioned at this point.

Im fairly sure based on this it will brew out many many times, but im really impressed with this tea. IM aware I should have let this tea rest for at least a week before trying it out, but I want to taste it next to the green tea, which Ill be putting a note up on later today. But its a fairly hefty 50gram sample, so there is more than enough to rest and come back in 1 month, 3 month and 6 month and give notes on each time.

Highly recomended if you like young sheng.