I bought a sample of this from Yunnansourcing some time back and have been trying to work through my backlog of samples this past week or so. I was quite excited to try an 11 year old sheng. The dry leaf promised much with its hot hay aroma. It smelt good and promised a robust and pleasing experience. Sadly the liquor failed to deliver. It has a nice bitterness at the back of the mouth and in the throat and is quite smooth, but in the end it left me feeling that something was missing. There is a slight smokiness, perhaps a hint of grape, a soupçon of sweetness but really not much more. Perhaps someone with a subtler tongue could plumb the depths of this tea but I found it rather shallow and my feet remained firmly on the bottom of the pool while my head and body remained above water. It is bland and underwhelming, and failed to enthrall me. If I wished to damn it with faint praise, I would describe it as nice. That is all it is.
Flavors: Bitter, Smoke
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A non-shengadelic sheng….sad.
:( I think this is one of the samples I ordered
MzPriss: I don’t see it on either of the Yunnansourcing websites now. If you did order it, I would be interested to hear what you think about it. You may find it much more to your liking than I did, and you may get a lot more from it. I hope you do.
Tea Fairy: Utterly not shengadelic for me. It’s the Scott Evil of the sheng world, always trying to spoil Dr Evil’s fun.
Oh good – maybe I got some other purple thing. I will have to check, cause I just ordered Sunday so maybe it isn’t the same one
What would be your ultimate sheng?
That’s a difficult question, boychik. The standard by which I judge all sheng is the 2005 Xiaguan Tibetan Flame. It is cheap, basic and powerful. That said, I have little to no experience of aged shengs and might find a favourite among those if given the chance. Also, as I sample more shengs of different types, I expect my tastes to change in line with my experience. Still, the combination of price and ‘hit’ for the Tibetan Flame is hard to beat.
I do like Tibetian Flame. Just very tight compression it’s hard for me to chip a piece. I need a hummer :)
Yes, you could build a house with Tibetan Flame. I would up sticking my puerh pick through my hand one time while trying to get some off the brick, because I pushed so hard! No lasting damage though. I wonder if I should just use a hacksaw to cut it into lumps. ;)
Dude – a hole in the hand is extreme sheng
I have bled for my art!
A non-shengadelic sheng….sad.
:( I think this is one of the samples I ordered
MzPriss: I don’t see it on either of the Yunnansourcing websites now. If you did order it, I would be interested to hear what you think about it. You may find it much more to your liking than I did, and you may get a lot more from it. I hope you do.
Tea Fairy: Utterly not shengadelic for me. It’s the Scott Evil of the sheng world, always trying to spoil Dr Evil’s fun.
Oh good – maybe I got some other purple thing. I will have to check, cause I just ordered Sunday so maybe it isn’t the same one
What would be your ultimate sheng?
That’s a difficult question, boychik. The standard by which I judge all sheng is the 2005 Xiaguan Tibetan Flame. It is cheap, basic and powerful. That said, I have little to no experience of aged shengs and might find a favourite among those if given the chance. Also, as I sample more shengs of different types, I expect my tastes to change in line with my experience. Still, the combination of price and ‘hit’ for the Tibetan Flame is hard to beat.
I do like Tibetian Flame. Just very tight compression it’s hard for me to chip a piece. I need a hummer :)
Yes, you could build a house with Tibetan Flame. I would up sticking my puerh pick through my hand one time while trying to get some off the brick, because I pushed so hard! No lasting damage though. I wonder if I should just use a hacksaw to cut it into lumps. ;)
Dude – a hole in the hand is extreme sheng
I have bled for my art!