240 Tasting Notes

99

The wet leaves opened with hot cotton, warm dryers and some bursts of intense ashy smoke. The first flavors rocked between cantaloupe and cooked strawberry and freshly smoked whitefish.

Middle steeps produced a light tartness in the vein of white cranberry flesh – but never intensely sour.

This yiwu proved dazzling in the finish, with a lovely, terse, complex bitterness holding long and giving herbal satisfaction. I enjoyed this tea’s understated, complex, and composed beauty. Wrapping up with fermented cocoa nib dryness in the throat, it was hard not to be impressed. This is my kind of sheng.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=275

cultureflip

wow, 99. i tried a sample of this not too long ago when i was but a babe in the way of puerh and i remember it being good (like pretty much all of tim’s tea).

teaddict

You reminded me to go back and finish the tasting group from last week. Thanks!

TeaGull

I was very impressed. Unfortunately, it sells for a price I couldn’t even imagine paying for a cake.

teaddict

I hadn’t looked at that. Yikes. I am really enjoying my 2008 Yi Wu bamboo aged puerh from Norbu—another stellar brewing on Friday got people very enthused—but I probably will drink it all up long before it gets another 2 years on it, to see if it could achieve similar class to this one.

Oh well.

TeaGull

That one looks mildly more affordable. :) Glad to know it was good, I’ve been wanting to try a bamboo pu’er for a while, so I may give that one a run.

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69

Picked this one up from JAS eTea to have a relatively easy drinking shu pu’er at work and am very satisfied. It breaks easily into a nice array of small leaves, with a pleasant, slightly cocoa-infused dry leaf aroma.

Overall, it has a pleasant, soft grain flavor and texture. Cream of rice or cream of wheat, perhaps. A bit of honey, a bit of chocolate, and nice classic shu pu’erh flavor. Those fearing strong “wo dui” will be glad to know this has little to none. It is a bit simple, but not boring. There are hearty flavors there and for me, it delivers what I need from a shu pu’er. It’s certainly a great value for the money and quality.

cultureflip

whats wo dui?

TeaGull

http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.cgi?phrase=wo+dui

Piled fermentation smell. Often, fresh shu pu’er will have an intense “wo dui” aroma, which can be fishy or rotten smelling.

cultureflip

ah. ive gotten that before. not good.

cultureflip

“dude, your breath is wo dui. you need gum.”

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94

I purchased this exact tea through JAS eTea (and didn’t have to deal with shipping from China).

The aroma on the dry and wet leaves of this tea are incredible. They have the dankest, most aromatic puckery white grape smell. It’s just incredibly pungent, fruity, and floral, backed with some straw and immediately sweet. It’s not the most even pile of buds, there are a few unfolded leaves, stems, and bits of other things.

I hold in my mind a real notion of wildness with this white tea. Something a little rough around the edges, of forest-origin, and maybe a bit unpredictable. The flavors rise from the forest floor in a certainly musky and rich combination of young pu’er like funk and the delightful strawberry flesh that I find many white teas have. It’s got a delightful fermented character to it that lends a bit of fino sherry or white wine flavor, deepening the overall complexity.

I really enjoy the super-high-grade silver needles that are refined, elegant, and perfumed, but I enjoy this too a funky, fermented, puer-like, wild strain silver needle.

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78

Well, now I know where JAS eTea sources their green teas. I bought this exact tea from their online store. It was bit more expensive, but I didn’t have to deal with shipping from China, which I appreciate.

I’ve been shying away from the classic Chinese greens, mostly because they require relatively urgent drinking (compared to pu’er) and I have been focusing on more robust teas lately, especially as autumn has come. However, I wanted to throw something into the mix of my weekly drinking and this fit the bill.

I almost always take my greens with a much shorter steep than recommended, since I think they have such wonderful, light, airy fleeting qualities that can get overrun in two to four minute steeps. This is no exception. Light chestnut sweetness, creamy wheatgrass, and tangy flower blossoms. A delightful green, vegetal, and chlorphyll-laden soup, that reminds me of my early days of exploring Chinese tea.

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68

Surprisingly, the dry leaf composition may have been at least a quarter small bits and near-dust. This may just be the way the cake crumbles. Despite many tiny pieces, the steeped leaves revealed a unique blend of very large leaves, small buds, and bits. The wet leaf aromas were swirling, complex, and shapeshifting. Rinsing brought a bevy of damp moss, wet bark, agarwood, decaying leaves and trillium blossom. Lots of dew. The first full steep ignited a resin-inspired forest fire. Further leaf aromas came with damp, wet rocks and further forest floor detritus. Flavors were seemingly light. Initially, I got a lot of cooked tomato out of it, but the flavors eventually developed into an enjoyable array of fresh mushroom characters, stemmy, woody, and with distant umami.

Unfortunately noticeable was a suffering texture. Slick, soapy, and with a soup nose of slight pool, the effect of chlorine came through, despite a hard boil of the water. It dampened the experience of the first steeps and clouded the liquor aromas. Redeeming the unfortunate damage I did to the tea, was the fact that it brought on a quick, warming, and rising qi. Soft, but direct, my core warmed and my head floated as the tea coursed through me. I sit now, pleasantly relaxed, and centered in a warm, autumn sun. *Look for an update on this tea soon, when I can enjoy it with filtered water.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=257

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88

My original tasting of this tea was apparently good enough to convince me that I should buy a bing, especially since it was a very reasonable price. Revisiting the last of the sample, I now look at this tea with a bit more skeptical eye and treat it more like the factory material it is.

How did I miss the insane smokiness of this sample the last time around? The first rinse of this tea explodes campfire, smoked pine, and incense all over the place. Bacony. As the well-chopped leaves agonize, it’s apparent that this is an even blend of three kinds of leaves: ruddied stems and medium sized leaves, dark green larger leaves, and paler small buds. Mostly red stuff though, as this tea pours out a dark orange. Accordingly, there’s a flatness and lack of bitterness throughout this tea.

On the other hand, however, this tea is a wild mangy beast. At a distance, the wet leaves smell like the funkiest french cheese you can encounter (think Époisses). Closer up the pine smoke intensifies and the finally, in the mouth it really pulls through on the mushroom, sesame, and herbal qualities. I think this tea demands using a large quality of leaf. Finally, it has some headache inducing potency, unfortunately. It will be very interesting to see where this tea heads in the next 5-10 years and how I think differently of it then.

Thomas Smith

This really has me intrigued. I’ve come to think of shengs that are somewhat smoky and mineral-bitter at younger age to mature well, but this is based largely on YiWu and NanNuo material. How does this guy do on astringency?

TeaGull

Relatively light. In my experience, oranger teas are often lighter on the astringency. That’s not saying that a long, hot steep won’t yield strong soup, but when brewed reasonably, I think the overall bitterness and astringency are lighter than average.

TeaGull

This tea has ridiculous endurance already…I’m on, I don’t know the 15th or 16th steep and will give it a few more tomorrow.

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79
drank 2010 Mansai by The Essence of Tea
240 tasting notes

These leaves edged smaller, with more variety in color, but the same healthy sheen. Unlike the Manmai, the aroma wasn’t a bellowing tropical fruit, but instead a mellow, more typical dry sheng smell. Rinsing the leaves, classic woodsy characters emerged: damp moss, birch bark, and distant cedar shavings. The color of the soup was an opaline scallop-color, speckled with bud fur.

Despite the pale moon-colored soup, this tea had a great thick, gloopy texture early on. I found the overal flavor profile fleeting: light-colored uncooked mushrooms, maple wood, and cotton candy. In the gaiwan, the leaves looked larger, darker green, and more mature than the last two Essence of Tea samples, giving me pause that older leaves may have less immediate potency to them.

The middle and later steeps got a touch soapy and thinly astringent for me. And, despite what I consider to be another light tea, this had less quick bitterness, and a better texture and structure than both the Manmai and the Bangwai, hinting at a potentially bright future for this tea.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=245

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84
drank 2010 Manmai by The Essence of Tea
240 tasting notes

Of all aspects of this tea, the most stunning was the initial wet-leaf aroma. Goodness. A rich, intoxicating push of licorice root and star anise, following by a bundle of tropical fruit: persimmion, jack-fruit, rambutan, and banana. Absolutely illustrious. A lot of aroma came out of a small amount of dark, large, well-dressed leaves that were dark and had an excellent sheen.

Hot steeps and long ones produced surprisingly light tea. I kept my chubby yixing only partially filled in an attempt to concentrate the flavors, but for the first few steeps of treating this tea like other young sheng pu’er, I felt as though I could taste the minerals of the water and the clay more than anything from the tea. An ephemeral and ethereal gauze of apricot, straw, and honeydew made brief appearances. Otherwise, the water extracted light green bitterness, a not so subtle reminder that pu’er, in its early days, is really a form of green tea. Maybe I should have treated this sample as such.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=239

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58

Cleaning out the sample closet, I polished off this example recently. My opinion of this tea has declined even further. The interior of the cake is really rough and finely chopped. The first few steeps are cloudy! A touch sour, with a bit of ash, and some aged mesquite bark. A yellow color, thankfully, but heavy on the forward and back bitterness. The more pu’er I drink, the less interested I become in these heavily cut, strongly processed big factory names.

deftea

Usually I wouldn’t remark on a tea I didn’t like. But I realize now how helpful a negative review can be to others. Thanks for this as well as your other puerh reviews.

TeaGull

I try to stay away from being needlessly negative, but think it’s important that positive reviews are balanced with negative ones. The scores do add up and it helps the cream rise to the top. Plus, there are so many teas to choose from, I find negative reviews very helpful to steer away from things I may not want to direct my monies at.

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84

Finally, I may have used enough leaf to find this tea enjoyable. Packing my small gaiwan near to the top with these big twisted wires, I was able to get some really fun flavors out of this tea. The initial steep was a fruit and blossom bomb, with tons of white peach, papaya, and nectarine, all backed with subtle hints of cocoa powder, sandalwood, and white pepper. Underlying all of this was a subtle, silky texture and flavor of fresh, perfectly-cooked scallop meat, reminiscent of the really enjoyable pink shrimp flesh I found in a younger Hou De dan cong. Ramping up the amount of leaf and following Tea Habitat’s brewing guidelines (http://tea-obsession.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-brew-dan-cong.html) really produced a nice session this morning.

deftea

You really make me want to try this tea. I have a similarly aged Feng Huang DC from Dragon Tea House that I just can’t get to work for me. Tastes too much like shu puerh. Did you get the leathery tastes of puerh in this?

TeaGull

It doesn’t taste anything like shu puerh to me. It’s got it’s own thing going on. It does have leather, but in a soft, fresh, dry kind of way. Similar to how figs or golden pipe tobacco might give off. Not in the earthy, umami, mushroom-like way that a shu puerh might.

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