pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

This afternoon, I have just starting a 2012 Fenqing Ancient Tree Spring Chun Jian sample that I bought from Teavivre. It’s quite pleasant really.

2012 Sheng Cake Special “Year Of Dragon”
The aroma to me is a bit muddy with an uncooked sourdough bread flavor.
The taste is complex, unbelievable, and I am blown away by the flavor.
This is woody, deeply earthy and smokey…my first time to try a smokey flavored tea…
it is all this, but with the sweetness of sourdough cookies.

Drinking some sweet molassesy 2009 Feng Qing shu, nice and smooth and gently warming on a cold morning stomach.

FYI, Yunnan Sourcing posted a 15% off everything sale for today on twitter, code: 15OFF. I picked up the 2012 wuliang cake and some cheap xiaguan and stuff, plus some nice green for gifting.

In honor of the Verdant tea 25% off pu-erh tea sale for cyber Monday, and my order of 2013 Master Han’s sheng and 2004 shu, I brewed up a batch of 2012 Master Han sheng which comes from the Qianjiazhai region of the Mount Ailao National Forest Preserve in Yunnan. I like this tea as a young sheng. It has complex aromas and flavors and some astringency which I appreciate in young shengs. A good tea with my dinner of turkey vegetable soup which my wife cooked up today.

Having a Haiwan 2011 Yun Zi “Cloud and son” shu cha. Mineral and fruity seems to describe this one. brews dark has a touch of “woodiness” to it. Very complex kind of hard to pull individual notes out, but thick and oily and it all seems to work pretty well. i may have some mixed or muted tasting notes on this as I think a cold is coming on. but overall pretty good so far. 15grams in the yixing 1 rinse short 10 second steep. Notes of caramel later on.

After a couple of hours of torturing myself with trying to understand Schemes, I’ve decided to prepare a batch of 2011 Gao Shan Zhai from Yunnan Sourcing. To my surprise, this tea is EXCEPTIONALLY clean. The soup is completely clear with a golden amber colour. The wet leaves produce an aroma which reminds me of Ragu tomato sauce, a first! However, the soup itself has no such characteristics on the palate. The soup has a sweet (somewhat sweeter than other puerhs I’ve had) feel to it and leaves a lingering sweetness in the mouth. Still amazed at the fact that the leaves can smell one way while the soup itself can taste completely different.

I have just finished editing a chapter of my thesis, and have rewarded myself with a pot of 2005 Xing Hai loose shu. It has been in my cupboard for two years and seems to have developed nicely, even without any particular care being taken over it. It’s sweet with an iron edge and a milk chocolate finish, followed by a warming sense of blood rushing through my fingers and toes. Very pleasant.

As it’s getting colder, and after drinking sheng tea for quite a while, I jumped on the shu wagon again. Got that 200? CNNP brick out of my cupboard, took a vast amount of that precious stuff, chucked it into the yixing and off I go…

Xingyang Golden Buds Shu 2010

Brewing up another shu, a Pu er Impérial, 2006, a bit absent-mindedly, so, after 10 minutes of steeping, you’ll get a dark, muddy, coffee-like substance, the taste is overwhelming, a bit on the strong side,tough; but still drinkable and interesting. It makes you run around in circles for minutes, at top speed.