pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

Drank the ‘04 Dayi 7542 from Mandarin’s tearoom again yesterday; some bits of it have been resting in a gaiwan since I got the tea a few weeks ago. This time, the comparison to the ‘04 Denong brick from CWS seems bizarre, as I’m only getting the slightest wisps of that flavor. I guess it’s a storage flavor of some sort; I’m glad it left. The tea seemed more complex the last time I had it, but I really enjoyed the greater cleanliness. The tea sat pretty deep in the throat, which was nice. I pushed a later steep and got an orange cream sorta flavor; tasty. Seems fully ready to drink to me, and will probably be consumed regularly.

Also, fwiw, I drank the rinse both times. I must be crazy.

The Chawang Shop has a mini that I picked up a few years ago simply called Qiao Mu. Upon receipt it was funky but decent enough. I just visited it this morning and it is a very good ripe. The aroma is more roasted nutty than I’ve noticed in any other ripe. It tastes like a very strongly brewed pot of roasted barley, which actually happens to have some ephedrine. There is a real “Guinnessy” backnote that is definitely bitter, though not necessarily astringent. I’ve taken to infusing ripes at much longer times, so I might squeeze three infusions from this. The second infusion was very booky at about 15s and I’m trying to compensate with the intensity of other flavors. Very satisfying brew.

I’m back from the hospital after what was fortunately a very mild stroke and thought Last Thoughts 2015 would be an appropriate welcome-home tea. After that I’m going to break out some YQH. Sic Transit Gloria mundi. I wanted to turn that into a pun, but I’m pretty sure there’s no word for tea in latin.

I drank two puerhs today but most noticeably a raw tea from Puerhshop, the 2013 Mengku Bingdao Raw. This tea was fantastic. It was the best raw I have drank in a long time. It was a young sheng, it hadn’t aged really. There was very little bitterness to this cake. There were a lot of sweet notes that I would describe as Apricots and Stonefruits. It was just a fantastic tasting tea. Puerhshop doesn’t have that great a reputation on Steepster I think because the sell a lot of bargain priced tea. This was one of their more expensive offerings at $88. It was said to be ancient tree material. There is of course no way to prove this. It was just damn good tea. As good as anything I have had from Yunnan Sourcing or White2Tea for sure. It was excellent tea. If people tried this their opinions of Puerhshop might change. This was not cheap and I took a risk by ordering without sampling first, but I was not disappointed. The only other thing I would say was I didn’t notice any qi to this tea.

2004 Jingmai Big Tree Raw, w2t. I found the remains of a sample of this tea hiding in a small Hohin in a kitchen cupboard. I have squirrel habits of tucking things away and forgetting about them. That sample would still be hiding except I decided to send the Hohin to my sister, she needed a brewing vessel to use at work. As with many aged samples, I remove them from the bag to get some air, and cut out the name of the tea to keep it with the sample.

I can definitely tell a difference between this older Jingmai and younger ones I’ve had. The young ones now are mostly floral and sweet, but this older tea is much more bitter and powerful. Dry stored, a touch of Chinese incense but not much. Cooling on the throat, I get a bit of camphor, old book woodiness, stone fruit. The tea has faded somewhat from two years in the cupboard, looks brown and aged but it needed more humidity. So much Jingmai on the market, not a profile I’m looking to acquire at this point.

I’m having a baffling but enjoyable session with a tea purported to be Lao Ban Zhang (2004 LBZ from Puerh.sk) I know very little about LBZ, but one thing I’ve come to accept as truth is that I’ll probably never actually drink any of it in my lifetime. Which isn’t to say I haven’t had tea that’s been labeled as such, it’s just that I wouldn’t know a real LBZ if it bit me in the rump, so I drink this with some reservations. It’s good, it’s interesting. It’s chopped like spinach and there isn’t a whole leaf to be found. But I like it, which I suppose really is all that matters. Still, I do wonder if even in 2004, even if that was before LBZ obtained near mythical status in the world of puerh… was anyone in that area really shoving such tea into bamboo tubes? Isn’t that the sort of thing that’s done with a lower quality leaf? I don’t know, but I wonder.

2007 Bulang tuo for BTTC. Posted a long tasting note, but the short version is it’still cheap and cheerful, as long as you don’t expect miracles its price should tell you aren’t on offer.

2015 Hekai…yes again. This tea has settled down quite a bit since I bought it over a year ago, and now I’ve drunk half the cake. The soup is no longer a green color tea, but yellow and thick. The flavors have come together much more. Really love this tea.

Today I’m drinking a nice raw from Puerhshop, the 2011 MGH 1105 Mangfei Puerh Tea Cake. This was overall a nice raw cake. There was an unpleasant note in steep one but it was gone by steep two leaving me to wonder if it was my taste buds. There was a fair amount of bitterness to this but it was not an abiding bitterness. This steeped out after four or five steeps. What was left afterward was a nice mildly sweet note that I did not come up with a good descriptor for. Overall this was a nice tea. Despite the fact that Puerhshop doesn’t get too much good press on here I find their house productions to be generally good. This one was inexpensive too. A winner overall I think.

2002 Ancient Spirit from Yunnan Sourcing recommended me by James fr Teadb. its not a first try, ive had it before. yesterday it was quite powerful, i dont remember experiencing such strong qi from this tea. it was very nice, sweet, menthol cool, with quick powerful huigan. But… i think it had so much effect on me that i acted like 3yrs old and hurt my friend feelings. Im sorry. it must be a weather too. i have to blame it on something. it wasnt me, its them

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