2018 Yunnan Sourcing "Serendipity" Ripe Pu-erh

(drank in 2019) Very well-rounded, nice sweet and toasty flavor. The texture is the standout here: thick to the point of feeling chewy. Easy to steep, doesn’t demand attention, works well in a thermos. I could drink this all day.

Lightly buttery and creamy. Super smooth and clean. Faint freshly brewed coffee and distant toasted cocoa husks. Incredibly smooth and ready to drink, but not particularly complex or enduring. A ready to roll daily drinker, but not much more.

I like this tea quite a bit. Good complexity with the blend bringing an interesting session. This is really what I’d expect in just an everyday shou for me.

The cake has a mellow aroma – hardwood and molasses, no funk now while there was maybe a touch at arrival.

Taste is very multi-dimensional with ginseng and dark chocolate with more bitterness early on. Personally, I love some bitterness in shou and I’d say this is a fairly midline bitterness, nowhere near the Hai Lang Hao LaoMan’E ripe. Middle steeps are more or less chocolate while later ones are more like that antique shop taste of aged shou.

This has a nice warming energy to it and steeps for a good time as well.

All in all, I’m happy with this. If you liked the 2017 Crimson Rooster, grab this.

I am not sure how pleasant I find this tea. I think it’s less tasty for me than some other recent Scott’s shou blends. What it has going for it though, is that it’s fairly unusual. I also think it can improve quite a bit in the next few years. All things considered, I could see it grow on me, but at the moment I am not planning to get a cake.

The smell is deep and fruity with the main note being blackberry with a light brownies aroma in the background. Taste has very little sweetness. It is smooth and fruity with flavours like blackberry, dark cherry, blue grape skins, char, bread crust and camphor. The aftertaste is quite different and presents some sweetness. There are some umami notes too, like cheddar, as well as decaying grass and porter ale.

The mouthfeel is oily, viscous (while not being very thick), lubricating and a tiny bit powdery. I find the cha qi to be very strong and unusual for a ripe pu’er. It’s somewhat heady and uplifting rather than rushy.

This is an interesting tea. Like the description says, I can taste different styles. The first few steeps tasted like half aged library book and half newer chocolatey Scott style ripe. In later steeps the newer ripe flavor was more dominant. Definitely tasty and high quality, and unusual.