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I brewed the entire 10g sample in a 140ml gaiwan. What I received were small, evenly sized chunks without any loose bits. I don’t know which part of the cake they were from, but they seemed fairly compressed in comparison to the more loose-pressed cakes out there. The colors and general appearance were interesting, really bright and just overall a very different look.

I’ve only drunk one raw pu’er that is allegedly Lao Man’e, that being Mei Leaf’s Psychic Stream Seeker, but smelling the dry leaves in a preheated gaiwan I definitely recognized the unique, characteristic scent. The smell of the wet leaves was equally familiar, with an extremely pungent, dirty scent that made me think of something having to do with a kitchen. I rinsed the leaves briefly for five seconds or less and this being such a high-end tea I naturally drank the wash. Damn that’s potent, damn that’s bitter. I’m intrigued.

After a brief five minute rest I carried on to do a total of twelve steeps. The timings for these were 5s, 5s, 7s, 7s, 6s, 7s, 10s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s and 2 min. The first steep had a nice mouthfeel, quite oily. Fortunately the tea was still light both in taste and color thanks to the more compressed bits. There was some slight sweetness, with a characteristic touch of citrus and maybe some bitterness in the finish. The second infusion is where the ball slowly began to start rolling. The tea was strong, but not too strong, sour, slightly bitter, a bit sweet. There was a citric aftertaste and the tea left your mouth coated with oils. This was combined with an incredibly mouthwatering effect. This is the stuff.

Infusion three is where the bombs started raining down. The tea was really strong, but not too strong for me though. The distinct grapefruit note I tasted in Psychic Stream Seeker as well was now much more pronounced. Although the liquor was not thick, the mouthfeel was juicy and the aftertaste incredibly long-lasting. Steep four was however even stronger. On man. But I like brewing oolongs Chaozhou style so I like strong tea, just not over-brewed tea, there’s a difference. I was now getting the infamous bitterness, but it wasn’t a bitterness I dislike. Now that’s BITTER, AWW YEA!

The sensory assault continued in the fifth steep, but here was an exemplary example of a bitterness that transformed into juicy sweetness within two seconds after you swallowed. After being bombarded with bitterness, I was so used to it I could have actually brewed the tea a bit stronger for the sixth steep. The tea continued to be incredibly bitter, but I wasn’t getting the sweetness anymore.

Steep seven really surprised by being less aggressive. It was juicy and still bitter but only in the finish. You could taste the tea in your mouth when you breathed out through your nose. At this point I must say it’s really hard to differentiate with this tea what flavor are from the tea in your mouth right now, because this tea just builds up layers upon layers of strong lingering flavors with each steep with all of the past steeps feeding into the current one.

From this point on I finally started extending the steeping time more aggressively and this worked really well in countering the drop in strength. I managed to brew steep eight strong in a good way and it was probably my favorite up to that point. It was really aromatic; you could just take a few sips and then taste the aromatic compounds in your mouth as you breathed out through your nose. There was much less perceived bitterness now, but honestly my tongue was so numb to the bitterness by this point it’s quite possible I just wasn’t tasting it anymore.

With the ninth steeping the tea began to simplify and enter easy-drinking mode. It was still mainly bitter, but there was now less depth, complexity and nuance. From the next infusion onward the bitterness finally began to taper off, making way to an emerging sweetness. The mouthfeel in these late steeps continued to be generally quite juicy. There was some nastiness in steep eleven, but this cleared up for the twelfth steep where only sweetness remained, but the tea was clearly falling off fast. The leaves could have possibly been stretched for a couple more sweet, extra-long extractions, but I was quite full of tea so I decided to call it here.

I’m still very new to extremely bitter raw pu’ers and sheng pu’ers from Bulang in general, but I really liked this tea. Unfortunately a cake is beyond my budget. It’s not even a question of the price per gram being too high, although this tea is by no means cheap, Hai Lang Hao’s decision to press this material into beefy 400g cakes places this already premium tea beyond most people’s reach. Certainly most people who really want to try out this tea should be able to afford a sample, but an actual bing is something most of us can only dream about.

After trying two teas allegedly from this hot village, despite different vintages and the other one being roasted, their flavor profiles matched so well they corroborate one another quite nicely, lending credibility to both. The grapefruit note was much more prominent in the Mei Leaf tea most likely due to it being a younger tea, while the bitterness had been replaced in it by intense sourness due to the roasting process. While it was a very good tea in its own right, I liked this tea even more. I’ve never ordered from them, but I know Tea Urchin offers a couple of Lao Man’e shengs, so I will have to order samples and see how I like their teas. It would be nice to acquire some Lao Man’e both for drinking and aging, but at a more affordable price than the Hai Lang Hao offering. I’m definitely intrigued by this region after this session.

If you’ve never had a tea like this, it can definitely be a very informative and eye-opening experience. Even if you think you don’t like bitter teas, a tea like this could prove you otherwise. Even if it doesn’t, it’s worth it for the experience alone. To try to sum up this tea, it is one of the strongest teas you are likely to ever find, with great longevity to boot. It’s bold, aggressive and extremely bitter, but that does not mean it lacks complexity, depth or nuance. This is a matter of personal preference, but I personally never found the bitterness unpleasant. I should add that that is not generally the case for me with sheng. While the mouthfeel was generally juicy, the tea was never particularly thick and overall the mouthfeel was a bit of a letdown for such a high-end tea. The one other thing I hold a bit against the tea is the qi. The tea didn’t really have much of a noticeable effect during the session, but afterward with quite a delay I suddenly started feeling incredibly exhausted like I’d just run a marathon or something. This was strikingly similar to the qi in the Hai Lang Hao Lao Man’e ripe pu’er I reviewed a while back. The one notable difference in the qi was that whereas the raw pu’er only made me feel physically exhausted, the ripe also made me feel extremely lethargic and uninterested in even doing anything, even not doing anything. Fortunately the exhaustion did lift in a reasonable amount of time, but while drinking a tea like this should leave you exhausted as it is quite an undertaking, the cha qi still didn’t agree with me.

This tea showcases really well why the area is so revered and the fame is definitely justified. If you like your teas strong, look no further.

Much like the 2016 Wu Liang, I’ve had a cake of this for close to a year, but this was my first time trying it out. The leaves are large and the cake loosely pressed so I was able to pry off nine grams’ worth of leaves simply by inserting my pick just below the top layer and giving it the slightest of nudges. This was enough to cause the large intertwined leaves to start unraveling and thus I was essentially able to brew this session with the equivalent of mao cha. I did my customary 5s rinse followed by a 5 min. rest before proceeding with the actual brews. The rinse itself had a luxurious mouthfeel and taste, in the same way one might describe silver needle as luxurious.

I did eleven steeps total, the timing for these being 6s, 6s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min. and 3 min. I was impressed by how effortlessly the first infusion flowed. It had one of the archetypal young raw flavor profiles I’ve seen before, but I’m not sure how to describe it in terms of actual taste. The second steep was darker in flavor and maybe a bit grainy both in terms of texture and taste.

The third steep had a very clean taste. There wasn’t anything that’s easily described in terms of concrete flavor notes. There was however a sweetness that emerged after you’d drunk the tea. Steep four was very reminiscent of a dan cong in terms of mouthfeel and taste. There was even some mild astringency that was very similar to what you’d find in a dan cong. The flavors were accompanied by a nice, very unique sweetness. The unique sweetness continued in the fifth infusion, this time being present immediately. The sweetness only got more potent as the tea cooled down. There were also hints of perhaps a vegetal character somewhere in the background.

Over the steeps the mouthfeel had gotten thinner at each step and the sixth steep was the first time I also saw a drop in flavor. The taste was predominantly mineral, nothing particularly interesting. The next steep was harsher, possibly due to the larger increase in steeping time. What was noteworthy about it was the qi. First my tongue started to swell and rise toward the roof of my mouth. Eventually my entire mouth and jaw felt numb like after being administered a local anesthetic at the dentist.

Steep eight presented even more harshness, but also more sweetness in the finish. The lasting aftertaste that was present in practically every steep in this session was particularly prominent here. Thankfully the harshness decreased in the ninth steep, although there was still some. The taste was mineral and sweet with a quite nice mouthfeel.

The second-to-last infusion wasn’t thick, but just for this one steep the mouthfeel returned back to being really luxurious and lubricating. The harshness was gone and the tea had become gentler and decently sweet. The mouthfeel was oh so nice. At this point I found myself starting to feel a bit silly and slightly tea drunk. Unfortunately the session was cut short quite abruptly as the eleventh steep produced hardly any taste while having a very nasty character to it. There was color, but to me the tea came across as dead.

Overall this is definitely a quality tea. It’s a shame I reviewed it right after the 2017 He Tao Di as that tea was so spectacular it would’ve been hard to get excited about anything short of awe-inspiring. The attribute that stood out most about this tea was the long-lasting aftertaste which you could expect consistently from each steep. Although the qi was ultimately nothing massive, its presence really helped lift this tea above some of the less noteworthy competition. There’s quite a bit of cumulative sweetness already and I would expect this to only enhance as the years go by. Although not very consistent during this session, at its best the mouthfeel of this tea was very good and just like the sweetness I hope it will improve over time. During the middle steeps there were times when I wouldn’t have been able to tell this apart from a dan cong, which might make this an interesting one to try for fans of dan cong teas.

Yunnan Sourcing is doing their annual price increase for spring harvest raw pu’ers in a week’s time, so I’ve been going through my Yunnan Sourcing samples to see if there are any teas I want to buy a bing of. My 25g sample of this one is almost entirely in loose form. I used 9g in my trusty 130ml gaiwan and gave the leaves a brief five second rinse followed by a five minute rest. I performed the wash with a very small amount of water and it turned out really strong! The taste was nutty, kind of like nut milk. The color was surprisingly dark too for such a young tea and this was true for all the infusions.

I proceeded to do a total of fourteen infusions. The timing for these was 5s, 5s, 7s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min., 3 min., 4 min., 5 min. and 6 min. The tea soup in the first infusion was incredibly viscous both in the cup and in the mouth. The mouthfeel was really, really thick. The tea was strong, but the flavors themselves light in nature making them difficult to discern. The taste was sweet and milky. The tea became more flavorful once it cooled down. It was really aromatic in the mouth and coated your mouth leaving a long aftertaste.

The second steep was really full in the mouth. It coated literally everything like some sort of lubricant. The flavors were still light, but quite irrelevant to the overall experience at that point in time. The taste was milky with a whisper of an edge to it and the tea felt satisfying. The mouthfeel continued to change with each steep and in the third brew the tea soup flowed really effortlessly. Despite the flavors still being light, the tea was strong and the flavor the most full-bodied it had been up to that point. It was really nice. The taste was a tad sweet, with a hint of a metallic edge to it in the finish, but surprisingly not in a bad way. Damn it was good.

In the fourth steep the flavor finally started coming. The taste was quite divine. It’s hard to describe, but it was a really special kind of sweet mineral taste with a metallic finish. It did get a bit rougher once the tea cooled down, however. The tea was so good, so satisfying. The next steep continued to be thick with a nice mouthfeel. The flavor was milky with the taste of astringency without the physical sensation. It was less enjoyable at first, but turned out surprisingly good in the end.

In the sixth steeping the tea was STILL really coating. On the flavor front, it felt like a lot of the base notes had suddenly dropped off, making the tea feel a lot brighter. The taste had returned back to being sweet and milky, with the astringency mostly gone with only a hint of it present in the finish. The following infusion was pretty much a repeat of this, although with the finish now more metallic and mineral. The minerals were amped up in steep number eight where the minerals pretty much dominated the taste. What set this steep apart from all the other teas I’ve had is how full the mineral flavor was. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. After consuming enough of the tea, it left a lasting sweetness on your tongue.

To my surprise the tea still had flavor in the ninth steep. The taste hadn’t changed much, having returned to being sweet and milky, but it was incredibly strong and full for steep nine. Steep ten was mineral and sweet. Rather simple, but strong and full. Honestly the tea was quite good even at that point. Holy cow was steep eleven sweet though. It was really, really sweet, with such exemplary strength still as well. And even this far into the session the mouthfeel continued to be quite nice.

I continued to be confounded by how good this tea is as I was sipping the twelfth steep. The tea was still sweet and satisfying with a nice mouthfeel to boot. I’m not sure if this is true of the other infusions, but at this point I realized the taste reminded me a lot of the taste of soy milk. This may have actually been one of the best infusions, and believe me this tea offered many great infusions.

Steep thirteen was RIDICULOUSLY sweet. Absolutely insane. It was pure sweetness, like someone had just saturated the liquid with sugar. Steep fourteen was finally the last one I did. This was the first time the tea brewed lighter both in color and strength. This could have possibly been countered to some degree by extending the steeping time even more, but I think it’s safe to say at this point the tea was finally past its prime.

This tea is unreal, just unreal. I ordered a cake immediately after the session. The strength, the mouthfeel, the longevity, the flavor – all are exemplary. This tea is perfectly ready to drink now, but I’m really curious to see what kind of a gem it will age into.

I’ve actually had a cake of this for close to a year now, but this was my first time trying it. Like is typical of most Yunnan Sourcing raw pu’ers, the compression is very light and you should have no trouble prying off leaves. Upon examining the steeped leaves at the end of the session, the leaf integrity looks very good and the leaves healthy and well processed. As these are some sort of hybrid, the leaves are smaller than you are accustomed to seeing in pure assamica.

I used 8.8g in a 130ml gaiwan and after a brief 5s rinse and a five minute rest I proceeded to do a total of nine steeps, the timing for these being 7s, 7s, 10s, 12s, 20s, 30s, 60s, 75s, and 90s. As I like to do with young, pure teas, I drank the rinse and it was strong, fruity and sweet. It had the taste of white grapes, followed by a long aftertaste of some sort of dried fruit reminding me a bit of maybe plum or raisin.

The first proper steep was soft and oily, with the taste of white grapes. This tea turned out to be the most cooling I’ve had. Almost immediately I felt chilly right down to the bone, with the sensation being especially prevalent in my arms. The second steep was very similar: soft, oily, with the taste of white grapes and still very cooling. It was quite great.

In the third infusion things were amped up. The mouthfeel was nice and slick and the tea really oily. The effects of the tea were really potent. There was an amazing, calming cha qi that slowly spread through my body and could especially be felt in my limbs. Gradually I started to feel a bit silly and slightly tea drunk. I don’t remember much about the taste as it felt irrelevant. I know it had a bit more edge, a bit more bite to it. This brew was damn good.

As I was preparing the fourth brew, my motor control was quite f’ed. Perhaps somewhat fortunately the effects did settle down as I was drinking this steep, allowing me to finish the session with a more clear head. The tea itself continued to be soft and oily, with hints of astringency, but not really. The following steep finally lost the oiliness, but the tea had a quality of going down very easily. The taste was green, with hints of astringency and maybe some slight sweetness.

The mouthfeel began to diminish and the flavors simplify starting with the sixth steep, but the tea was still very much in the easy-to-drink phase. The tea soup was characterized by being very clean tasting. I accidentally ended up pushing the tea a bit for the seventh infusion by over-steeping it a little, but this wasn’t really a bad thing as it allowed me to assess how the tea performs when pushed a bit harder. The result was quite mineral tasting, now with some minor bitterness as a result of over-brewing it. It was still very drinkable and comparable to a decent green tea with some bite to it.

Steeping number eight started to be quite astringent with still some bitterness as well, so I adjusted my brewing time conservatively for the last infusion that I did and managed to produce a green mineral taste with less astringency and close to no bitterness. The flavor profile was rather simple now, but I would expect the tea to potentially go at least a couple more steeps like this before giving out. I decided to call my session here, however.

All in all this was a great tea. Don’t let the price tag fool you, this tea performs at least in the mid mid-tier if not high mid-tier. As a fan of Yunnan Sourcing’s Da Qing Gu Shu, I’d say this tea is not as great as that one, but it’s comparable and only costs half as much, making it a great budget alternative. This will be a great tea to both drink now and to age for later. The cha qi is nice and decently potent, but not overpowering. Both the strength and longevity seem about average, the tea doesn’t feel overly thick in the mouth, but the mouthfeel is rewarding. There is some mild astringency and a hint of bitterness if pushed, both of which are considered positives for future aging prospect. I should also note that this tea is highly aromatic, with the dry leaf, wet leaf, the lid of the gaiwan, tea liquor and the empty cup all providing different aromas that evolve and change over the course of the session.

An amazing value!

The last of the samples I’ve ordered from white2tea. So far I’ve not been impressed with any of their teas, but perhaps my mistake was ordering fresh 2017 spring productions instead of going for teas from 2016. Anyway, this one has some age on it so it should not suffer from being too young at least. I’ve only tried around half a dozen or so semi-aged raw pu’ers so far as I’ve been quite content with drinking and sampling young raws for the time being, so bear in mind that my experience and palate when it comes to these teas is still quite limited.

I used 12 grams in my 180ml teapot made from clay from Dehua. The sample smelled extremely dank when I received it, which is why I’ve given it several months in my pumidor to air out. Fortunately this worked and I didn’t note any off notes in the smell or taste during this session. I rinsed the leaves for ten seconds and let them rest for five minutes before I began brewing proper. I did a total of nine steeps, for 10s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min. and 3 min. The wet leaves have a scent of pinewood and bark. Perhaps slightly wet or decaying in the beginning, but it moves toward more fresh wood over the course of the steeps, eventually resembling warm wood stacked beside the fireplace.

The first steep surprised with its honey-like sweetness. It wasn’t nearly as intense as some of the sweetest young raws I’ve had, but definitely the sweetest of the handful of semi-aged shengs I’ve tried. The sweetness was accompanied by a dryness I’m accustomed to with every aged sheng I’ve tried. Note that this dry character does not often mean the tea is actually drying as well, although some steeps with this tea were a little bit of that as well. The mouthfeel was quite interesting and something you definitely took note of. The second steep was still quite sweet. It had now moved from honey to somewhere between honey and apricot. The dry finish was naturally still there as well.

The sweetness was gone by the third infusion, with the tea beginning to taste a bit sour now. There was also some bitterness in the finish now as well. So far the mouthfeel had remained the same. The next steep provided very typical semi-aged flavors. Dry, smoky, a bit bitter and prickly on the tongue. After a few small cups, the tea starts tasting a bit creamy. It got even creamier in the fifth steeping, with more pronounced flavors across the board, including the bitterness, but it was by no means any sort of bad kind of bitterness.

The tea started getting better in the sixth brew. The sweetness from the beginning was now starting to come back while the dryness was beginning to fall off. While the seventh steep was clearly a strong extraction, the flavors were beginning to taper off. The taste was a basic aged dry bitter taste. The tea was still quite drinkable though. It was slightly refreshing, but the dry finish also demanded you to keep drinking more. Even at this point the tea still retained most of its original mouthfeel.

The eighth steep was pretty basic now. The tea had a sort of slightly sweet woody taste. The mouthfeel was nice, slick, actually now somewhat oily. I actually quite liked this steep and it was possibly my favorite of the bunch. I could have possibly extended the brewing time for steep nine by more than just a minute as it ended up being slightly sweet, but clearly quite watery now. However, I thought that this tea was pretty much done by this point so I decided to end it there.

This tea was pretty decent. Clearly not made from high-end material, but not low-grade stuff either. As far as semi-aged teas go, this was actually the best one I’ve had so far, although not something I liked terribly much either. A couple of steeps were pretty good, but overall this is not a tea I would purchase for myself. However it is something that I can recommend for someone who is looking for a semi-aged sheng that doesn’t break the bank to try. Some people may enjoy drinking it now, but with further aging I would expect the bitterness to gradually die down and the sweetness to become even more pronounced. I think the price for this one is right, so if you like it go for it.

Another 2017 offering, this time the first Hai Lang Hao raw pu’er I’ve tried. I used 8.9g in a 130ml gaiwan and drank the tea both from a regular glazed teacup as well as an unglazed Jianshui clay cup. I rinsed the leaves briefly for five seconds and drank the wash while I let the moisture soak in for five to ten minutes. The texture was soft and creamy. I proceeded to do eleven more steeps, timing for these being 5s, 5s, 7s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min. and 3 min.

The first actual steep was much bolder than the wash. It had a wonderful mouthfeel and the same creamy vanilla flavor you got a hint of in the rinse. The steep that followed felt really heavy both in the mouth and going down. I’m not really equipped to describe the flavor. It was amiable with maybe a hint of fruit, but nothing spectacular. My tongue was left feeling kind of bloated and like it wanted to rise to touch the roof of my mouth.

The third steep was really creamy, but also greener and somewhat astringent. The tea started to be less enjoyable in the next infusion when drunk from the regular cup, but from the clay cup it was soft and sweet. Steep number five saw a return back to soft and creamy, but now with a bit of astringency as well. This time the tea was actually less enjoyable from the clay cup, tasting mainly quite mineraly.

I should have probably pushed the tea a bit harder for the sixth steep as the flavor began dropping. At this point the tea started tasting more like a young green sheng. The flavor was about 50% prior sweetness and 50% young raw taste. The tea continued to be pretty thick in the next steep. It was quite sweet with an almost toffee or brown sugar sweetness to it. The sweetness also persisted in the mouth. Some of this sweetness lingered in the background in the eighth steeping, but in general the tea was becoming less pleasant. It was softer when drunk from clay, but very basic.

Steep nine still had a surprising amount of body, but it was even more evident that the tea was becoming very basic in terms of taste. The soup was sweet and green, but when drunk from clay it got MUCH sweeter. The ofter characteristic soft, thick mouthfeel was still present in the next steep. The flavor was becoming increasingly green with the sweetness diminishing, but the astringency was still just barely there. The eleventh infusion was the last one I did. The tea was still slightly sweet, but also more astringent now. While the tea most likely still had more in it, I didn’t expect to see any more nuance developing so I called it there.

While this is clearly a quality tea, although not necessarily of the absolute highest quality, and I have no doubt it will develop into a great tea in a decade or two, it didn’t really appeal to me personally. Nothing about it struck me as special enough and the flavor profile didn’t appeal to me. I’ve yet to explore aged teas enough to find any that appealed to me, but this one despite being young actually reminded me of some of the things that didn’t appeal to me about the handful of semi-aged raws that I’ve tried. If I can predict any kind of trajectory for this tea based on how it is now, my gut feeling is that I won’t like it any more ten years from now as I do now. That being said, this tea is still really young and unless you have incredible confidence in your ability to evaluate raw pu’ers and know exactly what you want, it’s still too early to properly evaluate it I’d say. I still have two thirds of my sample left, so I will try this tea again a year from now. I have a feeling my thoughts on it won’t change, but you never know.

The sample I received stands out in appearance from most raw pu’ers you typically see. The leaves are rather large, largely intact and they’ve been neatly pressed into clear layers. I’ve had the sample in my pumidor for quite a few months, but I finally wanted to make a purchase decision on this tea, so I threw nine grams into my 130ml gaiwan and got brewing. I rinsed the leaves briefly for five seconds, giving them ten minutes before the first infusion. I did ten steeps, for 6s, 6s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s and 90s.

For this session I used both a regular glazed teacup as well as a brand new unglazed Jianshui clay teacup to evaluate the tea. I’ve used a similar cup for shu pu’er for a few weeks now with great results and was glad to discover that at least with this tea the clay seemed to be suited for sheng as well. Based on my limited testing, at least while new the clay can mute high notes somewhat while boosting lower notes and increasing body. For ripe pu’er the pairing is almost ideal, but after two failed experiments with dian hong I was glad to discover that at least with this particular raw pu’er I did not seem to lose too much of the tea’s nuance, whilst significantly bringing forth the tea’s flavor. The cup does alter the flavor profile slightly, but from here on I’ll likely be evaluating teas using a pair of a glazed and a clay cup.

As is customary to me, I did drink the rinse. While the color was still really pale, the tea was already surprisingly thick. While rinses can be somewhat hard to judge in terms of flavor, this one was nice, maybe a bit fruity but also somewhat creamy.

The first proper infusion still brewed a really pale greenish yellow. The tea, however, was much, much bolder. It had a nice, oily, almost buttery mouthfeel and it was really aromatic with a long aftertaste. The taste itself was creamy, slightly vegetal. The second steep produced an interesting luminescent yellow that was characteristic of this session. The tea continued to be bold and creamy, veering slightly more toward green now. It was also possibly hinting at astringency that was to come.

The soup was notably thicker in the third steep. The taste was greener and there was a hint of dryness, but vegetal was possibly the most dominant character. The next steeping was somewhat more coarse. The taste leaned more toward cooked vegetables now and the tea left my tongue a tad sandpapery and caused a slight burning sensation at the back of my throat.

Infusion number five continued to be quite strong. It was mostly vegetal still with a dry finish. The tea continued to be nicely thick in the sixth steep while the taste remained vegetal, but now also with a refreshing quality to it.

The seventh brew was harsher, less enjoyable. This is where the clay cup made the tea much more drinkable. The taste itself was a cross between vegetal and mineral. The next infusion was much better. It was quite reminiscent of the early steeps with its creamy vegetal taste. It was quite yummy and still nicely thick.

In the ninth steep the tea got harsher again, with some slight astringency to it now as well. While the tenth infusion was still quite full in the mouth, the flavors were beginning to simplify and the tea becoming less enjoyable and rewarding. I decided to call it here. While the tea could have possibly gone on for a bit longer, I think there’s a high probability it could get nasty really fast.

This tea was really good. It didn’t blow me away, but the quality is evident. The only reason I’m not more enthusiastic about it is because I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing some really high-end teas recently and while this one is better than a lot of other teas out there, it can’t quite compete with the best of the best at least in its current young state. With age I have no doubt this will become a fantastic tea. For such a young tea, this is very drinkable, although I’m not sure if it’s quite dynamic and interesting enough to warrant more than a session or two before tucking it away to age. While not cheap, I do think this sheng offers good value for the price, especially for a 2017 tea.

Normally I would order a cake of this right away, but as my pumidor for sheng is starting to get short on space, there are a few other teas I want to try before deciding which ones to get. I will likely invest in a second clay jar to break up another cake for drinking purposes and free up space that way as well. Nevertheless, this tea has my recommendation.

Companion review to the 2016 autumn Bohetang I reviewed last time. The sample I received was practically mao cha. I used 8.7g in a 130ml gaiwan and did a total of eleven steeps after rinsing the leaves briefly for five seconds and letting the moisture soak in for ten minutes before proceeding with the brewing. Timing for the steeps were 5s, 5s, 7s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 20s, 25s, 30s, 35s and 45s. I did drink the rinse and it turned out to be shockingly strong, bright, fruity, even bitter.

The first steep following the rinse was very bright. I’m not quite sure if fruity is apt here. The tea also had some interesting savoriness to it. While the body was only decent, the qi made you calm and focused. The second steeping had close to no taste when it entered your mouth, but it left your tongue feeling very sweet. The tea felt warming in the body while being very cooling in the mouth, making it feel like a wind tunnel.

The third brew was bright, mineral, astringent. It coated your tongue in a way that let you keep tasting it over and over again while also having a calming effect. In the fourth brew I tasted fruit, possibly orange, mandarin or something of that nature. The tea also had a common young raw pu’er layer to it along with some harshness that was potentially a mixture of astringency and some bitterness. At this point I could also pick up an orange peel aroma from the leaves.

The fifth infusion was bright and mineral, continuing to have a hint of a harsh edge to it. It had a bitterness that persisted in the mouth. The following infusion ended up being dominantly harsh, which resulted in me holding back on the steeping time for all subsequent infusions. The tea left your mouth sandpapery and coated your tongue with a prickly mineral sensation. A high level of bitterness is revealed once the liquor cools down.

The seventh steep produced a soup with a mineral character with a metallic edge to it. Despite attempts at holding back on the brewing time, bitter was the dominant flavor in the eighth steep. It was almost a creamy bitterness. Not really a bad kind of bitter, but not quite a pleasant bitterness either, although it wasn’t too far off. Surprisingly the ninth brew offered more body. The taste was mineral with very little astringency and close to no bitterness.

The tea began to simplify in the tenth steep, continuing to present a mainly mineral character with perhaps a hint of mineral sweetness as well. I did one final steep and the tea was beginning to be rather simple and plain now, while still maintaining quite good strength. The leaves could have quite possibly brewed at least a couple more times in this mineral, slightly sweet fashion, but I doubt there would have been anything more of interest in store.

I’m not very familiar with the Yiwu region and this was my first Gua Feng Zhai, so this tea was very interesting to try. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but this tea turned out to be more of a wild mare than I’d anticipated. While the early steeps exhibited clear quality markers, the middle steeps were often dominated by bitterness and/or astringency, until finally settling to a quite typical mineral/sweet profile. While the bitterness and astringency were at no point so excessive as to make the tea unpleasant, the tea wasn’t particularly interesting or enjoyable either. Although this might be a tea that would benefit from slightly different brewing parameters like a lower temperature, I’d say that this is likely a tea that you would seek to age rather than drink now. I found Bitterleaf’s two other high-end teas that I’ve tried – Oz and Mint Condition – to be more to my liking. Both have a very soft profile and really nice cha qi. If you have your sights set on Windfall and are intending to order a sample, I’d recommend picking up a sample of Mint Condition as well as it shares the same price point and is another Yiwu tea.

It could be that this is the kind of high-caliber tea that is still beyond me or perhaps it still needs more age to be properly appreciated. Either way, I still have some of my sample left so I’ll be trying out this tea again in another six months or so. If my impressions of it change dramatically, I will do a follow-up review, otherwise not.

I’ve had a sample of this in my pumidor for a few months now. I thought right around now might be a good time to start sampling teas from autumn 2016, so this’ll be the first one I’ll be reviewing. I used ten grams in a 140ml gaiwan and did a total of ten steeps, timing for these being 5s, 5s, 5s, 7s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s and 75s. I rinsed the leaves briefly for just over five seconds and let the moisture soak in for five to ten minutes before I began brewing. As is customary for me now, I drank the rinse, and I was quite surprised to actually taste the mint this area is supposedly famous for. It wasn’t subtle either. I honestly did not expect to taste the mint, because that’s what usually happens to me in these situations. Of course my perception could have been influenced by subconsciously expecting mint, but whatever the case, I was still very pleased with just the rinse alone.

The first proper infusion was still reasonably light both in terms of flavor and texture, but it was very enjoyable nonetheless. The mint note was still there, but somewhat muted now. The second steep offered more body and was quite a bit stronger and bolder in general. It had a darker green taste and a definitive cooling effect that was present in all of the early steeps.

The next brew was nice and refreshing, like a really nice green tea with some mineral sweetness. At this point I was REALLY feeling the qi, though. It’s not restless or rushy, though, you just feel it affecting your body even if it’s not clear in what way exactly. At this point I was thinking this is a really nice tea. Then I got to the fourth infusion and experienced a nice mouthfeel, but more importantly the most AMAZING throat feel. Even my mother whom I was drinking with commented on it specifically and she’s definitely a tea novice who has never even heard of such a thing as “throat feel”. You could feel the tea along the full length of your throat and the sensation persisted long after you’d swallowed. At this point it was clear that this is a phenomenal tea. I honestly paid close to zero attention to the actual taste in this steep. One could describe it similar to a great green tea with maybe a hint of astringency now.

The fifth steeping was otherwise pretty much your standard fare – green, mineral, astringent – but had an AMAZING, strong returning sweetness. Probably the most notable I’ve experienced. In the sixth steep I was starting to get the mint again. Otherwise the tea was still reminiscent of a really nice green tea. The aftertaste in this infusion was particularly strong and long-lasting. Some very mild underlying bitterness revealed itself if you let the tea cool down. I could really feel the qi building up at this point.

The seventh steep had an incredibly strong mineral sweetness. It wasn’t the sweetest pu’er I’ve drunk, but still shockingly sweet. The next brew offered some nice body and while the flavors were slowly beginning to simplify, the sweetness was still really nice. At this point the qi had built up so much that although I wanted to keep drinking, my drinking nearly ground down to a halt. What I was experiencing wasn’t a bad sensation at all, but I simply felt like I had to slow down or I would drink myself under the table.

The flavors continued to simplify more noticeably in the ninth steep and the tea wasn’t as nice tasting as before. The tea was beginning to become more astringent as well. I did one last steep just to see how the tea would fare and now the soup had become notably more bitter and astringent, although it still wasn’t awful though.

Overall this was a fantastic tea. I’d rank it up there with Bitterleaf’s 2016 Xigui which I was very impressed with, although I think that tea still probably holds a small edge over this one. Regardless, both represent the highest echelon of sheng pu’er that I’ve had the privilege of experiencing so far on my tea journey. Apart from the noticeably larger average leaf size compared to most spring teas, I couldn’t tell this was an autumn tea. While still not cheap, at half the price of the Xigui which is a spring tea, Mint Condition represents a really good value if you are looking for a tea of this caliber, but at a more affordable price. Probably the best of all, this tea is perfectly drinkable right now, while most likely holding great aging potential as well. I ended up ordering a cake based on this session, putting my money where my mouth is. Next I’ll most likely be reviewing Bitterleaf’s 2016 autumn Gua Feng Zhai to make a purchase decision on it as well. You can look forward to that next.

This was a free sample that I received with an order. The bulk of my sample consisted of a large 20g piece of the cake, from which I gently separated 8.7g into my 130ml gaiwan being able to keep any additional breakage at a minimum thanks to the seemingly rather loose compression similar to Bitterleaf’s 2016 Xigui that I reviewed last time. I gave the leaves a brief five second rinse followed by a ten minute rest while I sipped the rinse. The taste was still very light, but quite floral.

I proceeded to do a total of nine infusions, timing for these being 5s, 5s, 7s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s and 75s. The flavors themselves in the first steep were light, while the extraction itself was perhaps even a hair on the stronger side. Similar to the rinse, the tea was floral, or at least that’s the only word in my vocabulary to describe it, but also sort of… earthy? The taste reminded me of something food related, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. The steeping that followed was similar. Floral, but also now mineral. It was pretty much a bolder rendition of what had come before.

In the third steep the flavor had advanced. It was now mineral on the front while being metallic in the finish. Again it reminded me of something food related, but something different this time. There was perhaps some mouth cooling going on now as well. While there was less going on in terms of taste in the next infusion, the tea was getting a bit better than before. There was what I perceived as growing astringency, but it lay somewhere between drying and astringent without really being either. The cooling effect was now much more pronounced than before. This steep was nothing amazing, but pretty good.

The fifth brew was softer, brighter, very mineral. There’s still the same sensation at the back of my tongue similar to the last steep and I realize it’s actually bitterness and not astringency that I took it for. I’m so used to most young raw pu’er that I drink being astringent but not bitter, so I often forget that sheng can also be bitter. As the tea cools down, the bitterness becomes much more pronounced.

The tea was finally mildly bitter up front in the sixth infusion while the general taste was still mineral. The bitterness bordered on being almost pleasant. It certainly added to the flavor rather than detracts from it. The finish was perhaps slightly vegetal and the lingering aftertaste it left in your mouth was rather nice. The cooling also made a slight comeback. Quite interestingly, the next steep had a finish similar to the finish of cream. The tea was bitter on the front, but the bitterness went away right after you swallowed. The taste itself was pleasant, but hard to describe beyond that. Nothing spectacular, but not a bad infusion.

Curiously, the bitterness seemed almost absent from the eighth steeping. There was now some more body thanks to the extended brewing time. In place of the bitterness you now got some astringency, which grew in your mouth over time. There isn’t much to say about the taste; the tea was simple, nice. The final infusion I did was notably more bitter than before, so I decided to call it there.

After reviewing Oz, I pretty much set myself up for disappointment no matter what I was going to drink next, because very few teas are going to compare. I found Take My Breath Away to be a decent tea. It’s not the kind of tea I would personally seek to acquire a bing of, but in terms of quality and value it represents about what you’d expect. There are probably people to whom it appeals as it is, but I would expect most people to be seeking to age it. On that front, although I’m hardly anything more than a novice, I have a feeling this tea has good aging potential. The already very manageable bitterness is only desirable in that respect and should serve the tea well along the years. The biggest problem for this tea is that this particular price point of mid-to-high midrange is very competitive and the upper limit of what a lot of people are willing to pay for tea, so they are very careful about what they buy. If you’re not seeking a drink-now tea and have your sights set on this one, give it a shot and see what you think.