2018 Yunnan Sourcing "Autumn Ai Lao Secret Garden" Old Arbor Raw Pu-erh Tea

This is an awesome tea and is likely one of the best autumn Simao shengs you can come across. The only slight drawback is that I would prefer a more pungent bitterness in a young tea, but I am hoping the spring one from 2019 would fare better in that regard. Otherwise it is a very clean tasting tea, memorable with hard to describe flavours, complex aroma, and a very interesting mouthfeel. It also has a sort of comforting cha qi, a great one all across the board. I find this tea to be hard to overbrew, the bitterness and astringency intensify of course, but it remains very much drinkable and interesting even when pushed.

The dry leaves smell very floral and sweet with hints of cauliflower, honey, and ginger cookies. In a preheated pot, the aroma reminds me of some cough syrup, and is quite unusual. Once wet, I detect various other aromas of peppercorn, fenugreek, mushrooms, and orchid. It is strong, floral and slightly earthy I’d say. Interestingly, there’s an additional scent I found when smelling the empty cup, which is that of incense. All in all, an explosion of aromas :D

The taste is grassy, sweet and floral with a muted bitterness and some tartness in the background. Flavour wise it reminds me of forest, hay and bay leaf, but I realize that doesn’t quite do the tea justice, I am just finding it hard to find the right words to describe it. The aftertaste is warming and dry, but not too astringent. It has a cinnamon spiciness and white grape tartness, both of which are fairly prominent. The flavour stays for a very long time and there is a strong hui gan as well.

As for the mouthfeel, the tea is full bodied, slick, coating, and soft. I found it to be active and mouth-watering as well. Drinking it makes me feel relaxed and calm, there is no caffeine rush as far as I can tell. I recommend this tea very much!

I ordered a 25 gram sample of this 2018 raw. When I opened the foil bag, I found a nice unbroken outside edge of a beeng. When I smelled the dry piece of cake, I would have sworn I was smelling a tie guan yin oolong. It was floral and had some bright sweet aroma. The bright sweet notes could be described as fruity or could be interpreted as something like a light sweet honey such as sourwood or locust tree honey. Sweet and sticky is what comes to mind. There was some muted hay aroma but this was slight. Sweet and floral are the dominate aromas.

I did a quick rinse and the cake looked so clean I decided to drink the wash. I’m glad I did. The quick rinse produced a light sweet taste that was very much in-line with the tie guan yin smell of the dry leaves. The soft yellow tea soup was also very much like tie guan yin. The next infusion was kept short and again the tea produced a sweet floral oolong-like tea. For the third infusion, I let it go for 20 seconds. That was enough to bring out some bitterness. It also produced a very nice hui gan in this third infusion. Sweetness kept coming long after the slightly bitter tea was swallowed as well as a mouth watering sensation that lasted for minutes. For the remaining infusions, I drank this with dinner, and pushed it a little harder to bring out more flavor to better stand out against the meal I was eating. It will produce bitterness if steep times are extended, but with the bitterness, you get the nice hui gan. I went long, but did reduce the water temp to around 195 F.

If steep times are kept short, this raw puerh is surprisingly sweet and drinkable now, or if you don’t mind some bitterness and want a more intense experience, it works now. I would love to know how this one will age.