2006 Awazon 100 Years Old Tree Puerh 357g Raw Cake Red

Another tea from the Puerh TTB. I have never tasted anything from Awazon before, and I’ve heard mixed reviews of many of their teas. This one, I’m glad to say, was pretty tasty! It wasn’t anything special, but it was a very drinkable tea for me.

The dry leaf smelled lightly of grass or straw. After a rinse, it was full on wet hay.

First couple steeps were wet hay, almost like a wet storage taste, but not as intense – I agree with another reviewer that this has almost certainly been dry stored. The finish for these first two steeps was slightly sour and fruity. This fruity finish stayed in my mouth for a little bit after the sip – kind of like strawberries.

On the next steep, the sourish part of the finish was gone, leaving just a sweetness which I tasted as vanilla. Over the next three steeps, the tea thickened up quite nicely, with dry, sweet straw on the front with that sweet vanilla finish which, when combined with the vanilla taste, gave it a slight dairy kind of vibe.

The rest of the session was smooth and easy drinking. Texture lightened up, vanilla finish morphed into something a bit more floral, and straw note remained as well. Never really got bitter, even at the end. Pretty tasty session, but not super great. Absolutely inoffensive, tasty even. I don’t know if it’s convinced me to make an order from Awazon or anything, considering all the other nice puerh vendor options out there.

I couldn’t get past the mouth pucker and bitterness on this one. Thought it would have rested enough to have that all taken care of, but I guess not. I have about 15 Awazon samples and this was the first. While it was a sad face producer, I already found one with a sangria taste in the background and a wonderful re steep ability; will review after work.

This tea is fairly tasty. I am not 100% sure how to describe it though. It did not have any wet storage taste. It was definitely dry stored. It had not developed an unpleasant aged taste that some ten year old sheng will develop. It was not too bitter at the start, maybe a little. It had what I would describe as a sweet taste but not the apricot taste of a yound sheng. It was very smooth in general. I felt the qi of this tea by the second steep. While I cannot use the phrase tea drunk it has me very relaxed. Nice qi in general. I am not sure if I should describe the main note of this as tobacco or not. It was fairly astringent. I have no way to evaluate the claim of 100 year old trees but as that is not that much of a claim I tend to believe it. The tea was a good value at only around $40 for a bing, cheap for a semi aged sheng. It was quite loosely compressed. The color of the tea soup was dark yellow rather than red indicating it had not aged all that much. In the end I enjoyed the tea.

I steeped this tea ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 8.1g leaf and 190 degree water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min. I don’t think I will give this tea a number because I don’t have enough experience with older sheng to know where it fits but I think it was a good tea at an excellent value. So far I like what I have gotten from Awazon Puerh Tea or www.pu-erhtea.com.