This is an interesting tea I picked up at Wing Hop Fung one day—the tag on the shelf said “Many Flowers Puerh” and it was on sale, plus I could see enough of the beeng to see that there were many flowers pressed into it, and wondered what flavors they might add to the tea.
The beeng is pretty—see the photo, or see it larger here at my flickr—http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3914144873/—but doesn’t have much odor, and the tea doesn’t have much flavor. My first time I infused about 1 gram of tea per ounce of water, and it was quite bland; today I brewed up a thermos-full in my Kamjove, enough leaf to fill the upper container after it was flash-rinsed, and a series of short infusions—pour-throughs—and it is still quite bland, dilute, a bit sweet, a little vanilla, a little earthy, no smoky aged flavors, no sharp herbaceous young sheng flavors.
I’m wondering if it is sheng or shu; and what I might do to try to bring up more flavor from it. Anyone else had any experience with a tea like this?
Pictures of the wrapper with a lot of info in chinese :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3914146213/in/set-72157621660566348/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/3914932560/in/set-72157621660566348/
It says Menhuajingdian upper left on the wrapper and then Yunnan Shuangjiang Mengku Proterozoic Broad-Leaved Tea Factory, which does not further enlighten me, although the inner science geek loves the ‘Proterozoic’ in the name.