1996yr Yunnan Menghai FangZhuang Puer Tea Brick 500g Ripe

I didn’t expect much from this tea. Bought it from Fengyuan Tea Shop on auction. It was an impulse buy. I’m not entirely sure how to rate this one. It probably is not as good as the average ripe Dayi from 1996, but then again I can’t afford the average Dayi from 1996. I won this on auction for only $24 when they sell it for around $45 or so. I can’t even be sure it’s actually from 1996. However, it has completely cleared. I thought I detected fermentation flavor for a second or two but that was just the thick tea soup of the early infusions. I thought I would encounter storage taste so I gave it two rinses. There was a fleeting taste of wet wood for only an instant then it was gone. There was a sweetness to this tea like perhaps few other teas I have tried. In the second steep I’m fairly sure I detected notes of prunes of all things. That didn’t last into the third steep but the sweetness persisted. In the end I gave it eight steeps. It was sweet to the end. You really don’t need sugar in this one but I don’t mean sugar sweet. There is also something I can’t quite put a finger on, something I vaguely disliked about this tea. There was just an unquantifiable negative too, amongst the positives. Maybe it’s just that this tea seemed to bother my stomach when ripe normally doesn’t.

I steeped this eight times in a 180ml teapot with 10.4g leaf and boiling water. I gave the tea two 10 second rinses then gave it a ten minute rest. I steeped the tea for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec.