Menghai Wangshuji Shou Pu-erh First Grade 2008

Food pairing: chicken nuggets (kid wouldn’t finish hers)

I strained in a tea basket and it’s fun to watch the residue the thick, early steeps leave in the lid/coaster. It’s quite viscous and slides around leaving behind a LOT of color. This is a dark and long-lasting tea, almost opaque. Despite that the taste is gentle. I get the rice note and also a powdery storage note, as someone said, like dough. The sensation of the liquid is like honey or very good whiskey. I don’t get a lot of sweet smells but just the impression of sweetness from how smooth the liquor is. Maybe there is a slight scent of corn husk or something kind of vegetal-sweet like potato.

Continuing on my pu’erh journey with the rest of Sample Set A…

Yum! I just got some samples in the mail today and decided to try this one out tonight. Felt like some shou, and it’s been awhile, due to the heat. The leaf is so fresh looking even though it’s a 2008 shou. Once brewed up, it smelled fabulous! Sweet and a touch fruity. I steeped it a few times, about 20s in the first couple steeps, then longer. It’s silky in texture, nice reddish brown in color, and tastes like sweet dates. So good! Definitely on my wishlist!

This was nice. I am still in love with their packaging! The unique character and craftsmanship creates such a good feeling. The dry leaf consists of small rusted brown pieces. These little leaves carry a misty forest scent. I placed them inside my warmed yixing and gave them a shake. This forest scent went deeper in the forest floor and clay earth beneath. I washed the leaves once to prepare for brewing. The steeped leaves smelled of the trees themselves; a damp oak and redwood aroma. The liquor produced from this tea was a deep blood red. The liquor became darker until it was almost black, and I couldn’t even peer through it. The flavor was very progressive. This brew started out subtle and grassy. The drink became deeper and earthy as the session went on. The last steepings were sweet and nectar like. This brew is very dry in the sense of a dry brut red wine. I really liked this brew, but I think I would enjoy the higher grades instead. Thank you to this company for an amazing Shou!

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This will be… I think the third of WYMM Tea’s Menghai Shou Puer I have tried. So far, my favorite is the Third Grade. I tried two other grades in an earlier batch of samples. This First Grade Shou contains the smallest leaves and buds of the different grades of Shou Puer.

After a rinse, the leaves of this Puer smell sweet and musty. I get the scent of sweet dough and a hint of the dusty, musty smell you encounter in a basement or a cave. There is also a bit of petrichor, the smell that arises when it begins to rain, and the scent of mineral. Combine all that with a hint of pipe tobacco, and it creates a rather sweet, rustic, complex smell. The brewed tea itself smells even more like a sweet pastry dough.

The taste is really smooth and earthy, and surprisingly less sweet than I expected from the scent. It’s really difficult to describe this flavor, but I might almost say it tastes like a good Sumatran coffee would if it had none of the bitterness. It’s earthy with cacao notes. After the sip there is a lingering sweetness, and a really wet feeling in the mouth, also a bit of a lingering taste like the aftertaste of dark chocolate. The most outstanding factor while drinking this is just how smooth it is. It is really pleasant feeling in the mouth and throat. Very clean.

The next infusion is sweeter than the first and yet again very smooth. The taste is a bit woody, earthy, and again I’m reminded of petrichor. Really subtle and easy to drink. Later infusions had similar character to them. Throughout many steepings this tea remained very smooth and clean, with a mellow taste. It’s a dark, relaxing cozy tea. It has no bitterness or astringency at all, and in some infusions a mild sweetness is present. If you enjoy dark earthy flavors but more on the subtle side than the bold side, this tea would make a great choice.

Mmm, what a good choice of tea this morning!

The sample was 6-7g (my scale isn’t totally accurate) so I decided to use the whole thing in my clouds easy gaiwan. And I’m using the new rice grain cup I got during my last trip to Victoria! It’s perfect – just a touch bigger than my other cup.

I rinsed twice, then had to brew up a cup before I let the leaves rest. The colour is lovely, a vibrant red-brown. It tastes woody and mushroomy and very mild.

The second steep is almost black. Whoa. Again, it’s really smooth and woody and mushroomy and mild. I know, “mild”. IDK tea friends. I’ve been drinking coffee and sheng recently, so this is coming across as “mild”.

At this point I’ve had a few steeps, and I’m still really enjoying the tea. I think it’s delicious, and a really solid option.

One thing I would have liked to see is a little information about each tea in the note that they included in the package. Is it loose or cake? What is the price range? How many rinses are recommended? Little things like that.

Thank you so much to WymmTea for the samples!

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This is a pretty awesome shou. A medium-dark amber color with a sweet earthy taste. I guess the word is “meaty” even if that doesn’t make much sense to anyone else :P I enjoyed multiple steeps of this tea. I noticed a distinct difference between this and the other grade that I tried (either fifth or seventh, I can’t remember). This is more clean and pure tasting to me – definitely enjoyable and would have again.

This is quite mild for a pu-erh which was surprising. I got back to my host families host last night after traveling in the rain and wanted a lot of warm liquid so I decided to brew some pu-erh with six steepings… this was just rather mild which was odd. The fifth grade is better than this one for sure (both are still smooth though)

I was going to review this Saturday with the reactions of the birthday crowd, but unfortunately they had colds and could say nothing more than that they thought it was a good one! No other nuance could be detected through the haze of Cool Menthol salve under their noses.

Hubby and I had it again tonight. When the water hit the dry leaves, and even as I doled them out, I thought it had the horsey aroma pretty strong, that didn’t come through in the steep. The most surprising thing to me was that I smelled melted milk chocolate in the aroma cup, which I am using frequently with puerh now, and when I sipped. I checked my hands for any residue from the single square of Bissinger’s salted Dulce de Leche I had eaten, but there was nothing. It was definitely coming from the tea, light but there.

I am not really timing this in my Kamjove, just watching the color. It is gorgeous color, too. The clear, sparkling fresh orange red of sweet iced tea in summer. Smooth and sweet, not drying, perhaps even one of the “wetter” teas I have drunk lately.

Hubby doesn’t go into detail. He says his palate isn’t refined enough yet. He will tell me when something isn’t a favorite. With this tea, he asked me several times what I thought of it, and told me several times that he thought it was really good. That is the highest compliment he pays.

Six steeps.

Thank you, Wymm Tea, for sending these samples! I am looking forward to the rest!

mmmm this has been a great tea this morning. This is a strong flavourful tea on the first few infusions – slight woody taste to it but not overly strong. Mostly smooth and comforting for me. I’d be curious to compare this against the other grades they offer. This one was exactly what i needed this morning though. Some earthy notes to this but subtle and generally just a happy place. Not helpful i know, but i’d reorder this one in future so i’m super thankful to Wymm tea for providing the opportunity to try this one out. If the tea changes remarkably, i’ll edit my note again as i want to have a few more infusions of this one after a little break. :)

Another sample from the Mystery tea samples Wymm Tea so generously sent. I had this one this morning. It brewed up so dark! My little teapot had a bit less volume than their steeping instructions so I was using a bit less water to tea which made it so rich and dark. I would describe it as being very woody, earthy, mushroomy & smooth with faint cocoa notes. The cocoa notes were very faint and although I love some of the chocolate shu’s, this one didn’t have enough to make me love it. The caffeine or energy level was much more than the other shu I had (Menghai Shou Seventh Grade). There are some who would love a tea like this in the morning but I usually start my day with a green and I could only think of how I wanted my green tea so bad all the time I was drinking this.

I did 3 infusions on it and it stayed consistent and rich through out. There could have probably been plenty more infusions but 3 was a lot for me!

For those that enjoy a full bodied rich dark tea, this is the tea for you.