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“I was grumpy about White2Tea’s Halloween minis pack selling out before I convinced myself to order it again this year so I consoled myself with a tea club membership. This tea was in my first box...” Read full tasting note
2021 Old Arbor Autumn Raw Puer tea – 50g – This tea was picked and processed in the early days of October and brought to a factory to press a mere week later. It was then steamed and pressed into these little cakes and dried to be shipped to your door. You may notice that from being picked, to fired in the wok, to rolled and dried in the sun, not to mention the steaming and pressing, that these poor leaves have been through quite a lot in the month of October. That being said, this tea would greatly benefit from a bit of rest. The excess moisture from the pressing process will slowly dissipate in the coming months and the character will coalesce into a sweet and thick soup. However, since you have 50 grams to experiment with, I do recommend trying a session now to experience the bright aromas and flavors in all of their fresh glory. Jot down a few notes on your experience and revisit it in a month or two to observe the changes. This is a very small production of tea, we used all but a few kilograms for the tea club. This autumn didn’t have much yield for old arbor teas, but luckily this one was just enough. We were lucky to be in the tea mountains this season, even being on the ground didn’t assure we secured every tea that we wanted. This little cake was a stroke of luck and we were fortunate to be able to get the small amount of material that we did. (See: savor each sip)
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Yunnan SourcingI was grumpy about White2Tea’s Halloween minis pack selling out before I convinced myself to order it again this year so I consoled myself with a tea club membership. This tea was in my first box (November) along with a 2018 Sun Fu heicha. I’d normally stuff a pu-erh this young down into the bottom of my tea box and try to forget about it for a while but the included information sheet suggested tasting it now. This is probably the freshest/youngest pu-erh I’ve ever had a chance to try so it seemed like a good learning experience.
Teeny baby gaiwan, 2-3g leaves (my scale decided to turn off in the middle of weighing out the leaves, it was awesome), water just boiled, house freezing (okay, about 63°F), quick rinse and steeps starting at around 10sec.
I didn’t think this would be a favorite right now and it isn’t. To me it has more smell dry than the wet leaf or brewed tea does. Dry it has a nice zingy sheng smell. The most interesting steep for me wasn’t even one of the real steeps but the rinse. The rinse had a little more flavor to it than the following steeps. After that, it was just kind of a light bitterness and not much else. I could be out of practice with my gongfu. I also don’t really have any experience with old arbor raws so I’m not sure what to expect compared to other raw pu-erhs . And I tend to prefer raws that are a few years old. It’s possible I’ll absolutely love this tea after letting it age a bit but at the moment it’s pretty meh for me. I’m glad I tried it now but it’s not something I want to keep drinking in its current state. It didn’t kill my stomach so at least there’s that. I wish the growing region had been mentioned in the description for this tea…White2Tea doesn’t seem to include that information for most of their teas. I try to compare information for teas I like (or dislike) to help me choose new teas instead of just randomly picking things so I’m always a fan of more info in descriptions.
Hi, I tried this same tea recently and I found it really rich and delicious. What’s your gaiwan size? Have you tried using more leaves?
@Tea_Ass – I was using a little 50ml porcelain gaiwan. I may have underleafed…I tend to be a bit cautious with new shengs and then with my scale causing problems I might’ve ended up with even less. The dry wintery air here has been making my sinuses grouchy and could be affecting my senses of smell and taste a bit too. I haven’t tried the tea again yet. It’ll be interesting to see if I feel different about it next time.