pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

Today I drank a tea from Pu-erh.sk the Shu Pu 7262 Year 2000. I wish I could report about how great this tea was but all I tasted was notes of wet storage. I figure all is not lost. I only had this one for a week. In six months of dry storage here it may improve. As it was it was pretty dismal. No other notes so as to speak of at all except for more fermentation than one expects from a 2000 tea.

2015 Hai Lang Hao “You Le” Old Arbor Raw. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Shame it is a pricey cake as I would buy this one.

Depending on the outcome of my sheng olympics, if it takes a high enough spot I might have to save some pennies.

Drinking 2005 Tibetan Flame here today. I took some to work with me last week and it was awful, so I made a point of trying it in my flat here. Turns out, as I suspected, that the tea was not at fault, although I did once have a brick of this tea that must have been contaminated with something noxious. No, it’s the water at UCC that is terrible and leaves an awful chlorine/chemical residual flavour. I think I am going to have to take bottled water to work in future.

Today I went back to my Puerhshop order. Drank the 2011 Yiwu Pinweizhichun Ripe Puerh Tea. This was a pretty good tea overall. It had a bittersweet taste at the start. This fairly quickly lost the bitterness. It had a fair amount of fermentation taste to it but not of the unpleasant sort. It was in my opinion a good solid ripe, not phenomenal but good. It is sold a good price too. It seems to have partially cleared. A few more years of storage and it may clear completely. It was pretty good for something dry stored in Michigan.

Poundcake-
https://cuckoossong.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/2015-poundcake-w2t/

I’ve been neglecting to post in this thread, and have dunk many in the last few weeks. I’m going to try and show up here more often to chime in! Today, I started out with the 2014 Autumn Song from Mandala Tea – it was included as a sample with a recent purchase.

This is a really nice sheng. I’m really bad with the tasting notes still, and especially with the shengs which seem very complex and different in every sip! so maybe…. Apple, sweet graham-cracker almost, grape, some autumn hay. Really good!

The Qi also triggered a very strong emotional swelling which I’ve never felt with tea before, including other strong shengs/shous (i’m assuming it’s from the tea, because i’ve eliminated most other possibilities and it seemed to rise and fall along with the energy / caffeine ride).

I will definitely be ordering a cake of this when I get some more money saved up!

It’s a beautiful day and today I’m sampling a 2011 YangQingHao Guyun Bulang courtesy of MrMopar. I decide to go with about 6 grams of material to my 1990s Huang Long Shan Hong Pi Long Shui Ping Hu 60 ml Teapot.

Upon inspection, the dry leaves are relatively large in size and have a thick, healthy look to them. Also, it is clear to me that MrMopar is much more skilled than myself at prying puerh! Barely any breakage!

I give the material a quick wash and inspect the nose. The wet leaves produce a rather dull nose… perhaps somewhat vegetal with very soft, barely noticeable, notes of plum in the background. Perhaps some mineral-y notes in there too. From my experience, this is rather common among Bulangs. The appearance of the soup is rather typical – clear with your golden hue to it.

Following a few infusions, I find that I enjoy the mouthfeel on this one. The soup is thick in the mouth with a brief initial cooling sensation followed by a sweet finish in the back of the throat, which seems to linger. There is also a very agreeable astringency that balances well with the sweetness that lingers in the back of the throat. This is a nice tea and would definitely recommend it.

Today I am starting on my Awazon order and drinking one of their raw cakes, the 2013 Awazon Raw Puerh Tea Cake 357g 1302. The description states this is spring tea. To the best of my knowledge this is a blend. It was pretty good. Better than you expect for the price. It was smooth and sweet from the start. It had little or no bitterness. It had I think what you would call a thick mouth feel. There was an apricoty sweetness to this tea. It was still a young sheng as far as taste and color of the tea soup. It was fairly loosely compressed. I enjoyed this tea. I think that the company Awazon or www.pu-erhtea.com is a good one but I will be able to recommend them or not better in a few weeks when I have tried more of the teas I bought from them. This is a good first start.

I had my White2Tea smooch this morning, which had all the qualities I’ve come to love about young sheng.

Now I’m drinking YS’s 2012 impression cake and I’m wondering if this is what people talk about when they speak of awkwardness in puerh. It seems to be about the right age for that, and it has qualities of both the aged and young shengs I’ve tried, but I don’t like it as much as the teas that are closer to one side of that spectrum.

After drinking sheng all day the last few days, afterwards all I have wanted was nice shou. 2003 xinghai elephant valley and 2005 bo wen yu chen yue xiang has been drunk (nearly finished all my samples of puerh!) and ive really been enjoying the softness after the sharper sheng.

ive officially got the puerh addiction. Help.