2010 Yunnan Sourcing "Bang Dong Village" Raw Wild Arbor Pu-erh tea cake of Mengku

Very fruity apricot fragrance, especially from wet leaf. Dried apricots, hint of smoke. Very nice!

A nice sheng with a fair amount of bitterness. Apricot, tobacco, and mint notes with a strong mouthwatering effect and qi

This will probably be a lengthy review…

So I’ve been searching for the right sheng and shoe variations for my own taste preference. This is one very enjoyable journey so far, but it must be known that such a journey never ends! I decided to try samples from all over first and surprisingly Yunnan Sourcing was not one of them. Thankfully there is the US site now which is fast and a flat $7. This was the only one I picked up because it sounded like what I was looking for. The best part is the community, I was able to purchase this cake and split off pieces of it to others which reduced the cost a bit. This also means I will be making another purchase sooner than later :)
Breaking the cake went smoothly :) http://postimg.org/image/uant70z3t

Had to try this asap so put about 5 grams in my kamjove and began my sessions. I found myself outside drinking this with the fourth Marcel Proust novel… but I couldn’t read because there were two birds playing some kind of game in the tree in front of my so I watched them for a good two minutes. Ten steeps in and a bee comes to join me: https://instagram.com/p/8I1nXdxYMY/
I tried to get it to taste the liquid, but I realized I probably would have harmed it so I let it just walk around my shirt until it flew off.

This tea is crazy though. At first I was really confused because it smelled like roasted zucchini. What an odd experience it was to just smell it. I ended up smelling it multiple times before drinking it because I just wasn’t sure. Once I first tasted it I realized that this was one deep sheng. The flavor for me is like a smooth raw pu’erh that had a roasted vegetable taste with backed of smoke (very light though). The mouth feel is nice on this, but it only occurred at the back end of my mouth which was a new experience.

This will now be a cake that I will sample off to others because it was a fun experience and I find it to be a smooth deep vegetable sheng with a taste that is quite different.

Now that I have had this tea I am looking at the next two to know what I’ll get:
http://www.yunnansourcing.us/store/index.php?id_product=141&controller=product
or
http://www.yunnansourcing.us/store/index.php?id_product=517&controller=product

The nice part of YS is that there are samples for their full cakes which some places do not offer, but it does seem that more and more places are providing samples to purchase.

& to think that pu’erh was something I really disliked in February…. it take time as I was told and I was told right :)

end note
I spilled a whole cup of this tea over that book I was suppose to read… so now this will live on longer than I thought :p

My sample is listed as 2011, but I’ll put the note here.. Still getting accustomed to sheng.. I had this after the 2008 Often tuo sample, so I was smart enough to change my steeping parameters for this one! Just a little bit of astringency in this with a dry mouthfeel, but a nice subtle sweetness building to a nice creamy texture at steep 7 or so.. Definitely a nice sheng, in my opinion :D

4g in Gaiwan.

Dry leaf: Mostly loose and is colourful like White2Tea New Amerykah 2. It has some concentrated herbyness, but this is mild.
Wet leaf: This is slightly subdued concentrated herbyness with some dust and some spice.

Summary: Softly fruity (raisins/apricots), slightly smoky, with some bitterness creates a level of friction, which makes this a stimulating and interesting tea to drink.

5s – Slightly smoky, mild in flavour, has a pleasant soft fruitiness like 2007 White2Tea Repave by White2Tea.
10s – Aroma of the liquid has a soft Yiwu-like fruitiness. Bitterness and astringency makes this softly fruity, slightly smoky tea more interesting.
15s – Liquor is orangey. It has a syrupy consistency; it feels thick in the mouth. It’s edging towards a certain type of fruit – raisins and apricots.
20s – It’s not a strongly flavoured tea, but it is mildly fruity with some bitterness.

I had a second session with this tea, this time with a hot curry (Madras), and although the tea is fairly mild in flavour, it was not overpowered by the curry and cut through with a bitter, slightly smoky, raisin like fruitiness, which was enough to raise my appreciation of this tea.

I’ve had this tea twice and it’s very good. It has a mild smokiness, a touch of bitterness, and plenty of sweet fruitiness. The leaves are beautiful. Very good sheng, overall. Here are some pics of my latest session:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/97273956@N03/15962271428/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/97273956@N03/16123917596/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/97273956@N03/15527373294/

After I finished my mad rush of Thanksgiving preparations, I had a little time to sit down with some tea before my guests arrived and I chose this. Fruity, fruity fruity. A little bit of bitterness, especially if you go a little long on the steeps but really nice. I very much got a lot of the apricot others have mentioned. A cake of this on my wishlist and I will scoop one up soon.

I bought this tea because of Mr Mopar’s description of it. It was all that he said. I found apricots and stonefruits early on that lasted throughout nine infusions. There was only a little bitterness in a few of the steeps, I think where I gave it a bit too much time. I over steeped it in the second infusion but it was quite forgiving. I brewed this nine times and could have brewed it at least twelve times. I am guessing that I would have had weak tea in a fifteenth infusion but I am too tead out top steep it a tenth time.

I brewed this 9 times in a 150ml gaiwan with 200 degree water and 6.5g leaf. I gave it a quick rinse and then a ten minute rest as Mr Mopar often does. I don’t know what effect this rest had on the tea but I was too impatient to give it more rest. I steeped it for 10 sec, 15 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 30 sec, 1 min, 2 min, 4 min, and 8 min. I added a small amount of sugar to this tea which intensified the stonefruit notes but tasted it without sugar too. It was sweet on its own, I simply prefer sheng with a little sugar.

while I did not put it down as a note, I am interested if others who have tried this would say it also has bitter melon notes as well as apricots and stonefruits.

I actually bought this cake after reading Rich’s description of it.
I brewed it in the Gaiwan , 10 grams , 10 oz and a 5 second rinse. This is spot on. Fruity , floral and stonefruit. The taste of apricot as noted before is right there in the forefront. A little bit of bitter but definitely apricot. I love apricots and always will so I see this as one I don’t intend to run out of.

I got this one from boychik. She told me to have it first out of the huge box of tea she sent me, so I did.

I’m glad I did. My taste isn’t quite all the way back, but it’s getting a lot better.

This one is quite nice. It has that sort of weird not quite minerally flavor that I get from a lot of sheng. I like it. It also developed some nice fruitiness. Really nice texture.

I still have enough for another try of this when I’m back to healthy, too.

http://instagram.com/p/tvvcW9Ayf3/
http://instagram.com/p/tvtyf8Ayc6/

(Also the first time using my freshly seasoned sheng pot!)