This was one of the teas that was in the Liquid Proust “puerh exploration kit for newbies,” which I signed up for in 2018. The label was simply “Dayi 7572 2007” but this is probably the only one of the bunch I received that had cryptic labels that I think I’ve correctly tracked down and don’t have to put on Random Steepings. (Of course, I could still be wrong!)
I’m using this tea for the monthly prompt “A tea from a place you’d like to visit.” Not because I actually want to visit China (which isn’t even on my short list) but because, the other day, my friend Todd was talking about going to a Santa Cruz teahouse called Hidden Peak Tea for his graduation, and it made me realize how badly I want to go back to that area and visit him. This tea is offered at Hidden Peak Teahouse in Santa Cruz, so I’m using that as my connection.
180ml (mini teapot) | 8.45g | 205F | Rinse/10s/15s/20s/25s/30s/35s
Gong fu. Brewed the first steep a little longer than intended. The tea smells warm, spicy, and subtly smoky… mineral earth and leather aromas. On first sip I get a strong peppery leather impression, with that sort of marshy taste I don’t care for in puerh sort of subtly hiding in the background, though the edges are smoothed out and it isn’t coming off as abrasive swamp water. A bit of smoke mixes with the spiciness at the end of the sip. It stayed pretty consistent from steep and steep, aside from that “marshy” taste getting stronger, which led to me being progressively less into it. Perhaps I’m not cultured enough to properly get flavor notes from teas like this, but I think I’ll make the remainder of the leaf western style, as I honestly didn’t really notice much difference brewing gong fu. I only went six steeps until my water ran out, and was pretty over it by that point.
I’ve never been much of a pu’erh person, and while I’ve definitely had some way worse than this, I’ve also had some I was more impressed by… pretty average feelings here.
Flavors: Earth, Leather, Mineral, Pepper, Smoke, Smooth, Spices, Wet Earth, Wet Moss, Wet Rocks
