pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

Today I’m drinking 2000 CNNP “Zhang Xiang Bu Lang” Aged Raw from Yunnan Sourcing. I feel like I should have bought a cake of this a while ago, dammit. LOL it has woody bittersweet notes and a smooth and sort of medium thick body, there are some dried fruit notes and a very nice camphor with huigan at the end. I think the bitter to bittersweet notes are really good and come up in the aroma of the liquor.

Having Yunnan Sourcing’s “Wu Jia Zhai” wild arbor tea.
I picked off 10 grams and gave a wash. The leaf carries a touch of smoke in the aroma in the Gaiwan.
I let it sit a few minutes before brewing.
The brew is somewhere between dark green and light golden. I think it has aged a bit since I have had it.
The aroma of the brew almost has a mineral, wet rock note to it.
The first sips are the punchy tip of the tongue with a fair amount of bitter to it. There are some hints of mint and pine just for a second lingering around. There is a medium level of the tobacco note in there as well. The tea held in the front part of the mouth feels almost viscous. This is nice and strong without being too harsh as some young teas can be. I don’t mind the heavy bitter and tobacco up front but this isn’t a hard hitter as some.
The first three infusions have gone well and I shall continue.

Flavors: Bitter, Mineral, Pine, Thick, Tobacco

Today I picked a shou from my collection almost at random, one I picked up from Berylleb King Tea, the 2014 Yunnan Menghai Dayi You Pin High Grade Ripe Puer Tea. This was an excellent shou with a moderate amount of fermentation flavor. I did not notice the fermentation flavor as being particularly unpleasant. There was little bitterness and a lot in the way of sweet notes. I was not really paying attention to the specifics as I was thinking of my impending move in two days time. Not really sure if it had chocolate notes but it is possible. It was pretty good.

TeaExplorer and I had a tea session while watching The Princess Bride today. I began with the 2014 YS Autumn Teng Tiao Old Tree sheng. It was floral and heady and quite cleansing of the palate. For the iocane sequence in the film I returned to the 2012 shu with snow chrysanthemums. Definitely an acquired taste. Then I finished with a 1990s Hong Kong style sheng from White2Tea which was wet wood, old books and a bit of camphor and pepper. I’ve not had much in the way of proper aged sheng before and I now understand better what shu aspires to. I’ll be continuing this last tomorrow and possibly the day after. Let’s see how long it goes on for.

1990’s Blue Mark from White2Tea
Enjoyed sipping this tea over the past three days and it seemed to become better with each infusion. The dry dark leaves were loosely pressed – a gentle nudge of the tea needle separated the fully intact leaves. They yielded a chestnut colored tea soup that is thick, sweet and lubricating. Camphor is noticeable in both aroma and taste. Smooth silky texture. Sweet broth is soft and gentle with a slight herbal taste but there is definitely a distinct nut-meat essence. Later cups were pure smooth sweetness. Definitely not a flimsy tea with its wonderful viscosity. Qi was not as apparent as I would have preferred but from what I could feel it was quite comfortable and relaxing. Overall, a very fine tea with durability and strength – several lovely sessions with an honest, straightforward tea.

2015 Autumn Ge Deng Old Arbor Raw from ys tea club. Starting off really smooth, wonderful dried apricot smell, you know how you get some really deeply tangy ones? Smells like those, and that carries into the taste.

It doesnt stay smooth, the tanginess creeps in and the aftertaste develops. its not unpleasant though.
I am very impressed by the shengs from the tea club, they have all been a real pleasure to drink

Tonight, in celebration of an upcoming four day weekend of teadrunk solitude, I decided to break out the 2005 Teji Tuo from the White2Tea black friday/cyber monday sale. I am blown away by how much I love this tea. I don’t know if I’m turning a corner with aged teas in general (and so I will return to my YQH’s tomorrow I think) but this tea is absolutely fantastic. I thought it would be too smokey and too heavy on the camphor, but it’s not. It’s got those notes, but it’s also sweet and so far I haven’t detected any bitterness and the mouthfeel is juicy and awesome. Sorry, my tea vocab isn’t great right now, so “juicy and awesome” is all I’ve got.

Apropos of nothing, I spilled some on my computer and all I can say is that this MacBook likes aged w2t sheng almost as much as I do!

{stumbles off teadrunk}

20MiamiMan, The Grand-son
in his words.
First I put ten grams and put it in a gaiwan and rinse it for 5 seconds . The first brew was for 5 seconds and sweet tangy flavor and dark amber color. The second brew was darker and had a nice new barn smell and was like a ruby color. The last brew was a darker color and had smelled stronger .

PREPARATION205 °F / 96 °C 0 MIN, 15 SEC 10 G 3 OZ / 88 ML

Spent the afternoon with Rama Lama Bulang (awesome stuff) while binge-watching Orphan Black (awesome show). Now I’m moving on to some aged sheng in order to further experiment with aged sheng brewed in a jianshui teapot vs. gaiwan. So I’ve chosen the last of my YQH Tejipin, a sample from The Man The Mystery The PuMonster, Grill. Off I go!

I’m the most boring old pu lady on the planet. Every day I read this topic and feel like I should post something, a new tea. But I’m drinking the same tea. Still on the 2015 Chawangshop Hekai, down to about 1/3 of a cake, the best tea cake to meet my edema feet. I’ll probably drink this up now and then move on to something else, outside of whatever I pick for my blog.

My son has asked for a cup of red tea every two days or so. I’ve been brewing him a Yunnan gold from Yunnan Sourcing I bought last spring. Son drinks one strong cup. Then I have to spend two days steeping out the leaves because he won’t ask again and I can’t throw out perfectly good leaves before they are done.