Golden Buds Shu Pu'er Xingyang 2010

I am far from a sipdown on this tea. I bought some, & also received some in the TOMC awhile back, so I’ll be able to drink it for awhile, BUT I wish I would have purchased a cake of it while I could. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every Xingyang Shu I’ve tried, & hopefully Verdant will continue to unveil more Xingyang offerings. This one is lovely, sweet, & clean caramel with a hint of cinnamon. I should drink it more often.

Sipdown! I had this after an amazing meal cooked by my wonderful bf of ratatouille, rice and chicken with mushrooms in a sauce. So good! And I had a tasty beer to boot with it, a nice dark ale! Then I finished with a cup of this tea, although it had cooled off, still excellent. Also, just finished watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi, very good documentary. I need to go to Japan to have real sushi, or at least to the coast, here in AB it is not the best I imagine haha. Anyways, I might have another cup of this tonight in a while, might try a different tea before it though, oh I steeped the last bit of this Western for a minute after 2 rinses – 20s and 25s. Not bad! No milk added today. I have one shu pu’erh left in my stash it looks like, a sample of Master Han’s from Verdant. Might have to order a bit of one of Verdant’s shu’s to have on hand when I’m craving it! See previous notes on this tea :)

I come from what is fondly referred to as a half and half family—when my mother married for the second time she married a relatively agnostic jew! Life was amusing as my step-father grilled ‘jewish pork chops’ on the barbeque. Holidays were even more entertaining as he grumbled over the origin of Christmas lights and half the Hanukkah table stumbled over the musical prayers while drooling over the platters of brisket and piles of latkes… why am I tormenting you with excellent images of a multi cultural holiday table? Because latkes were the first thing that flooded (and I mean flooded…. I haven’t been able to get the taste out of my head) my latke starved brain when I opened the bag of this puerh.

Long pressed tendrils of puerh overlap in a manner very like latkes. A deep gold, smelling like a light tobacco…

Now, I go to verdant not for an alternate reality, but an expository one. Verdant constantly amazes me with the effects that technical proficiency can have on a farmed resource. How do you attain layers without adding things? Can planting crops between rows, oxidation time and harvesting early really have that much effect? Apparently so.

I love puerh. More specifically I love this puerh. It is by far the best I have ever tried. My conscience is prodding that I should converse with my wife and let her know about the infatuation. ‘Sweetheart, I find myself drawn to a shapely, golden wonder…’ oddly, I can envision her laughing in my face and walking away in amusement. Lucky for me I’ve always been told that funny men make the world go round.

Down to business. It is light, sweet, earthy and nutty. I taste no florals… but on occasion I get a hint of an echo of (and mean the merest decadent hint) a baked banana. You know, the ones that are buttered and have brown sugar and a bit of lemon juice added before you shove them in the oven… the ones that go golden and have a very slightly crisp edge when all is said and done…

Reading over this review I realize it is for the most part food porn: filled with images that everybody wishes they had on their plate. A torment with the shapes of brisket, latkes and baked bananas and their beguiling scents. I am a mean and nasty man… but it’s all verdant teas’ fault! (take it up with them)

One of my favourite teas, but my absolute favourite puerh. Thus: 100.

I’m drinking this over the course of the afternoon – gongfu style. I have trouble with some of verdant’s puerhs in that they all taste very similar and generic. I will add more later, but at the moment i am getting very little that others have gotten while sipping on this one.

Edit: yeah…future steeps left this tea closed off to me. oh well…there’s always another!

The last month or so has had me toggling between that 1992 Menghai (notes of flood damage and deep forest loam) and the 2011 Lao Tong Zhi Old Comrades (quite sweet, a second brick of which is waiting for me in a PO Box in CA, which I can hopefully recover before too much time goes by, I’m nearly done with the first brick).

Those of you who have been reading for some time know that I have developed a great love of Yunnan golden over the past few years, and the website talks of sandalwood which is one of my favorite scents, and so it is with great anticipation that I dive into this new shu offering from the great folks at Verdant.

The dry leaf smells sweet and spicy, caramel and sandalwood indeed. But get it wet and suddenly you’re in the forgotten back room of a boot repair shop. Old leather, dust, mold and old wooden tools. Despite this, the mustiness coming off of this cup is unexpected. More like a very peaty Scotch than old leather.

This is clearly a young tea. I hope Verdant has the discipline to hide away a few cakes to put back on sale in 5-10 years time. I know I sure don’t.

I got three little sample packs of this in my trail tea of the month club box a few months back. Felt like a nice pu-erh today to sorta detox after the weekend! Tasty and nutty and chasing away my sweets craving :)

Soooo upon looking in the puerhs I still have to try from Terri, I discovered that I got the sample set for the Verdant TOTM back in…March. I didn’t ever put the teas in there in my spreadsheet so honestly I’m not surprised I didn’t remember them.

So now time to taste those! Finally. I figured I’d start with this one coming from a sheng before. I also just realized that with the previous tea that was the farthest I probably ever made it into a sheng. Progress!

Very exciting: I pulled the big piece from the little packet and it was exactly 5g. No work necessary! Woo. Did the two rinses and I’m ready to drink.

Have I ever mentioned that one of my favorite things about shu is that most of them smell like pasta? I think this super low carb thing is getting to me. Also they come in cakes, cake, man. Cake.

Though sometimes w/puerh you don’t even need cake.

It’s pretty light at first, but I love that crispness to it, like champagne bubbles. And there’s caramel, of course. But it’s not too in-your-face about these flavors.

I ended up forgetting about it for over a day so now I’m back to it. I don’t think it lost anything from the wait, although I did not cover it very well. It’s still very light, although just a tad earthy, there’s a lot of mineral notes to it, and it’s sweet.

I did two more steeps but I just can’t get into it. I don’t know if the air got to it maybe? But I have some left so I really want to try the other workshop suggested steeping method with the rest.

I’ve taken some time off work and I feel like I’m on house arrest. Gotta keep watch of Octane. We got good news from our vet this weekend, but we’re still on seeing the results in him that we should.
So, with stress at maximum level I was grateful to have my tea club haul arrive yesterday. I’m escaping in this cup today, it’s fantastic, on my fourth cup, it’s smooth and sweet and woodsy. I’m in love!

Delicious, The taste of this one is the reason I fell in love with puerh in the first place i think, it reminds me of some of the very first puerhs I ever tried.
It is earthy and bold yet smooth and clean tasting. The taste to me at first is slightly sweet and almost doughy like a flakey pastry dough almost like a crossant.
later steeps are surely reminiscent of sandalwood and have a slight pleasant bitter to it, its a nice puerh to me.
I enjoyed this one very much :)

Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way.

I was really excited to try an unflavored puerh, since I’ve only tried flavored, and I thought the notes of this tea on Verdant’s site sounded good, so I got a sample. The leaf is definitely chipped off pieces of a whole cake, which is kinda cool, and new for me. I did the recommended rinsings, and brewed it western style at a 2-minute infusion. The aroma was very similar to my beloved cinnamon swirl bread tea, in that it smelled bready and earthy.

The taste, however, pretty much shocked my system. It didn’t taste AT ALL like it smelled. The first sips, I thought I got a woody flavor, and then a leather note hit me smack in the face and that was all I tasted, and it was not good. I’m sorry to say this, but I dumped that cup and brewed another, hoping the next infusion would be different. It was not.

I guess this type of puerh is not for me. I looked at the ingredients for cinnamon swirl bread tea, and it contains a yunnan-based puerh. Maybe I should look for one of those. Or maybe I should just stick to flavored for now.