Pu Erh Dante

1st steep, 4oz water, 4g leaf (after 15 second rinse)

It’s a rather lovely reddish-brown color; there’s certainly a barnyard aroma, but it’s bringing back rather fond memories of a brief spate of horseback riding lessons I had in middle school, so I’m okay with that. I’m not going to try to break it down further – barnyard=hay/dirt/manure/horse. I’m not getting the fish that some others mentioned, fortunately. There is zero bitterness or astringency, and some sweetness. I’ll be curious to see how the flavors evolve.

2nd steep: I didn’t imagine it, there is a bit of an oily sheen on the surface of the tea, just after it’s poured. This faded as the tea cooled. Same dark red-brown color, same sweet barnyard taste, but slightly lighter in flavor and texture.

ETA: Ended up getting 5 steeps out of this, all 20-30 seconds, before it started getting weaker. My tin was very old, inherited from a former roommate and buried in a drawer, so your mileage will likely be better.

Wow this smells different than my typical black morning tea (Ceylon Sonata). This was the last sealed bag in my black sampler from Adagio. Maybe the name Dante scared me off since I didn’t want to end up in the inferno?

It steeped cloudy which startled me, has a very different nose from any other black tea I’ve tried. The smell reminds me of rain on clay if that makes sense with a hint of dust, smoke and dark spice added in, something my wife adds to the Indian curry for flavor, maybe black cardamom? The taste is fairly mild in comparison to the smell, tough to compare to anything since I’m not sure I’ve tasted something like this before.

The aftertaste is long and layered in that it starts with a black tea flavor and ends with a bit of astringency and bitterness almost 5 seconds after swallowing. All in all this one goes in the “needs further research” pile since my first impression isn’t bad, but it might need a different approach to steeping/preparation.

I used two heaping teaspoon fulls with just under 2 cups of water.

As far as I understand, this tea is not exactly a high end pu erh. I am not a pu erh expert and, in fact, this is the only pu erh I’ve tried. I have nothing bad to say about it, I really like the strong earthy flavor and aroma. I normally brew it in a gaiwan and can get 5 or 6 infusions. I normally fill the pre-heated gaiwan with enough leaf to leave it almost full after they unfurl, the first infusion is only a second long or so to wash the leaves. Then I just infuse for 10 seconds at a time until the flavor gets weaker and then double the time.

This is a good, inexpensive introduction to pu erh teas. I might experiment with other higher end pu erh teas soon.

This isn’t a great Pu-erh by any measure, but it is drinkable. It brews a deep red cup of tea with an earthy and slightly fishy aroma. The taste is more earthy than fishy. The first steep is flavorful, while the second is pretty weak. Don’t think I’ll buy it again, but if someone offers me a cup down the road I’ll drink it.

This was my first experience with a pu-erh tea. I steeped it for about 4.5 mins at about 200. It has a pretty interesting flavor to it. You can taste the earthy flavor it has to it. The smell (while not bad at all) has a small seafood smell to it. This smell does not transfer (completely) over to the taste. Do not get me wrong this is a pretty good tea, but if you do not like earthy teas this one is definitely not for you.

A standard shou. Would probably be alright as an introduction to pu-erh, but not something I’d get for its own sake. One nice thing about it is that it’s available from Adagio, which is a more popular company for Western customers than many other places which offer pu-erh. As such, it might help introduce a lot of people to pu-erh – as well as possibly to hei cha in general – who might not otherwise have known anything about it.

This is another sampler that came to me a few summers ago from Meowster’s cupboard destash, so thanks Meowster! I honestly don’t have the highest expectations, though. For one, because it is a pu-erh, the one type of tea that despite me trying again and again, it just always taste like dirt or swampwater to me and I can’t quite understand why it’s considered the “fancy coffee” of the tea world and be a “true tea connoisseur” you should be drinking expensive puerh and nothing else… when it tastes like dirt or swampwater. I’ve been okay with a few flavored puerh blends I’ve tried, but that leads to my second point… the only other Adagio pu-erh I’ve tried was their Pu-erh Chorange, which I personally found awful, like a very fake, artificial-tasting orange was dropped in a pile of dirt. So… ya. Maybe the sheer age of this sampler at this point may have improved it?

So, this one falls into the “swampwater” realm. Again, not really a flavor I enjoy, but I suppose it is slightly more preferable than the “dirt” ones. It’s like a strong, vegetal, marine/earthy taste. It isn’t undrinkable and actually very smooth for what it is. There is an earthy taste that lingers in the aftertaste, as well as some minerality. It actually is better than the Pu-erh Chorange, since it doesn’t have that awful artificial orange flavoring smothered over the top of such a conflicting flavor. But it still isn’t really a flavor that is for me. I wonder how many pu-erh samples I’ll try, trying to convince myself to “like” this stuff because proper tea-drinkers are “supposed to like it”…

oooooo funky stuff!!!
i kinda like it tho

At first, the smell reminded me of a pasture/very earthy. After a couple of sips, I get a strong grassy and wood undertone. I grew to like it a little more by the end. The earthiness can be a lot to handle if you aren’t use to it. This is my first pu’erh, so I’m slowly learning.

Huh. This was the very last holdout of my previous two adagio sample orders. I had been holding back on it because I needed a reason to try it. I didn’t want it to just be an ordinary day tea. I have heard lots of different things about Pu-erh and I wanted to make it memorable.

Well, Fast Forward to today. My grandma is at deaths door. The project it will be a few hours, a day at most. I refuse to go see her in this state as 1. she is completely unresponsive so it’s not like she would know I was there, and 2. I can’t stand to see her like this. I don’t want to be there when the end arrives.
So here I am. Brewing a very special cuppa, in honor of my grandma.

I couldn’t remember the recommended instructions I had read on here for this one. So I winged it a bit. First, a 30 second rinse. Then, a 30 second steep. I gotta say, once I was able to get a proper mouthful of this, it was like a flavor explosion in my mouth. The fishy notes I smelled on the leaf didn’t translate into taste. Instead, I get a bold, rich, earthy flavored tea with faint notes of honey and woodiness. I can definitely taste the tea itself, and it surprisingly isn’t bitter. I really like this. I was so scared I wouldn’t but I actually thoroughly enjoy this tea. I guess to sum it up, this tea is definitely a keeper. It’s literally my first cup of Pu-erh, and if this is any indication, I’m going to enjoy trying others. Can’t wait for that resteep!