I’ve had this bag of shôu carefully stored in its sealed mylar bag for 8 years and it has not appreciably changed in that time, now being 28 yr old. This is a loose-leaf tea that was never compressed and consists of clean chopped leaf dried into short brown threads (<1cm). I brewed as directed by the label: western style with 2g leaf in 8oz 205°C spring water for 1 min, using a stainless micropore infusion basket, after a 10s wash in the same water.
The resulting liquor was deep red-brown in color, and both flavor and aroma were fairly one-dimensional. Petrichor earthiness, autumn forest leaves, slight sweetness, a touch of bitter, and a caffeine kick. Just as Tealyra promised: “drinkable”. No fishiness or astringency, and I couldn’t quite get the mineral notes mentioned by Tealyra. Once I added sweetener and milk. the flavor came alive to present a creamy vanilla taste and fragrance that was quite nice and coated the mouth. That is how I’ll drink this in the future. Offered multiple steeps (more than I cared to drink). I’ll rate this as 50 and recommend it as a value introduction to ripe pu’erh, good for blending and free of major defects.
Followup Edit: I’m obliged to report some sad news— I poured a cup of hot water and added milk and sweetener, only to discover the same notes of creamy vanilla and nuttiness. So I cannot credit the tea for the flavors at all. Generic yellow packet of sucralose and generic lactose-free ultrafiltered dairy milk. :-(
Flavors: Autumn Leaf Pile, Petrichor, Woody
