With my recent appetite for greens and green oolongs, I felt the logical next step was to try a Sheng Puerh. This one came highly recommended, so I included a small bag in my first order from WP.
I took it down to London with me, for my interview at Kings, whilst I was staying with my boyfriend. And it was absolutely sensational.
With it being my first Sheng Puerh, I was obviously a little apprehensive. It smelled very strong and unusual, to my unaccustomed palette. I made it roughly according to WP’s Gaiwan recommendations – I used ~3g in a 100 ml Gaiwan. I did lots of short steeps using water that was just off full boil. I think, next time, I’ll try to use slightly cooler water (to tone down the bitterness).
The tea was really delicious. In colour, it was pale-green/yellow and the scent was so unusual – kinda vegetal, a little bitter, camphor, florals… So complex! On the palette, it was much the same – there was a bitterness, but it was light and quite pleasant and really “worked” alongside the surprisingly savoury overall flavours. I do think I’d like to try it a little less bitter in future, though, so like I said above I’ll probably use slightly cooler water next time!
I drank this tea with my breakfast, before the interview, and then spent the afternoon drinking it, whilst reading Malcolm X and just generally enjoying my day.
As with the Shou puerhs I’ve tried, I’m not really experienced enough to give this a score that means much, either to me or to the community at large (I don’t wanna affect the overall scores etc). But I’d definitely recommend this tea, within the context of “tea” on the whole.
Continue to experiment. You will find some good tea out there.
Thanks – and no doubt! :D I think I’ll really enjoy the rest of this bag, but it has definitely made me want to explore more sheng puerhs (and different brewing parameters for them)!