“2004 Yang Ping Hao Kong Que Zhi Xiang (ripe)” as a gift from Liquid Proust included in the Pubertea group buy.
Shou really isn’t something I’m nearly as confident describing in depth as sheng, so I can’t give a great deal of insight into this tea. At 13 years old, this is also the oldest shou I’ve drank by 5 years or so meaning it is uncharted territory for me. I tried drinking a more recent cake yesterday appearing to have a roughly equal level of fermentation to it for comparison, and this older shou had less astringency/bitterness to it. There may have been a chocolate like sweetness to this, but I don’t know that that’s quite the right word to describe it. Imagine a very strongly brewed, decent quality shou with the slight bitterness present when steeped aggressively being replaced with a milder form of aged sheng profile. That’s the closest description I could come up with.
Overall this was a pleasant tea to drink over the course of 8 or 9 steeps. While there wasn’t a whole lot going on as far as fragrance at any point, the flavor hardly weakened from steep 1 until the end. I likely could have got 2+ more cups out of this, and I may go back tomorrow to ride the sample out.
