Okay, I’ve gone from not really caring for this tea at all to really enjoying it now that it has aged some. I think I need to find a few more yixing jars so that I can lay in some sheng pu-erh for aging, since I certainly can’t afford the aged stuff.
Initial review: First infusion has a very strong mineral, grassy taste (think Timothy hay, if you’re familiar) with a very grassy scent. The second infusion is still mineral and grassy but it also has a floral scent and taste. Subsequent infusions lose the mineral taste, but continue to have as much of a taste and scent of Timothy hay as well as the floral scent and taste. The finish on this tea is slightly sweet, but I did not note any scent or taste of honey. In all honesty, I’ve had plain green tea from various large chain tea companies that was just as good at nothing approaching the price of this Spring 2009 Taste of Jinggu Mountain; to say that I’m disappointed with this purchase is an understatement. I would have been much happier spending the extra $20 to buy a 2003 Yiwu Puqing Hao Green Pu-erh Tea Cake from Puerhshop.com but I wanted to try other teas as well. I guess I’ll chalk this one up to ‘live and learn’ and do my best to buy a sample of a tea before I invest in an entire bing/tuo/brick.
A note on the tea cake itself: I know bings are supposed to be tightly packed to allow for storage but this particular bing was so tightly packed one could use it as a discus at a track meet! I was very careful when I tried to pry off a few pieces of this cake and used a pu-erh knife but there was just no separating it without breaking the leaves into tiny flakes in the process. I decided to go ahead and separate this cake and put the tea into a new yixing clay jar to allow it to get some air to age and wound up with as much powder and tiny flakes of leaves as I did small chunks of tea. I was completely unable to separate the center of the cake and will try to use a nail to break it up later; the darn thing could have been used by Wayne Gretzky for hockey practice it was so solid. I just hope a few years in a nice yixing jar will make this tea worth the trouble.
Flavors: Grass
