Xingyang 2008 KT952 Shu Pu'Er

I have had this sample sitting around for a while, but I don’t get too bothered if a puerh sits around because usually it is just getting better!

I have had two endoscopies and two esophageal dilations in the past three weeks. This tea came between the two procedures and I was drinking it because I needed the power of puerh. I was put on max dose of Nexium and got cocky and thought maybe, just maybe, I could eat the crust on fried chicken.

Lies. All lies.

What actually happened was that with the high dose I apparently didn’t have enough stomach acid to even remotely handle the delectable skin and crunchy seasoned heaven from the outside of Ashman’s dinner. (I didn’t steal it, he doesn’t eat it. Honest.) Gastric distress ensued and puerh came to the rescue.

It has a very strong aroma of barnyard, which I like. I love the whole farm vibe of shu. Where some of the golden tip shu has a cedar oil taste and oily mouthfeel, this one lacked the sharp high cedar and was less oily. It did, however, have lovely mineral notes to take the soprano line. There is also the aroma of dried pecan leaves that crunch underfoot for the mezzos and maybe a hint of orange. I really wasn’t feeling well and drank part of it hot and saved some to drink cold later. It was great both ways. I only did two western steeps and I am really regretting that I didn’t do more, but I just didn’t feel up to it.

This is one I would definitely buy to enjoy, and as medicine, I am convinced I began feeling relief pretty quickly as I drank this. Puerh always seems to help me with those bloated “you really shouldn’t have eaten that” moments.

I have made time for some new teas, and this was amongst them. I drank it a few times throughout the year, though I took sparing and woefully incomplete notes. Still, I can at least say the following:

—> It did have quite noticeable fermentation odour, on opening. I know that, like stinky cheese or similar such things, you can’t really avoid it in classically made shu puerh, but I’d be lying if I said I still didn’t find it slightly off-putting :p

—> I did a quick rinse at around 90C, but it did smell quite lovely. Sweet and caramelly, with a nice earthy background.

—> I then did several short steeps (5-10s) at near-boiling. Each infusion was lovely and tasted just as it smelled; rich notes of caramel or chocolate, with a lovely and balanced earthy background. It was a beautifully smooth drink, with a gentle lightness about it, particularly in the aftertaste.

—> I then carried on with a group of longer steeps (I think the final one was around 30 seconds, and it was probably steep 9 or 10); the tea was still going strong, though it was obviously a little lighter in essence by the end.

I did all of the brewing in a porcelain Verdant Gaiwan (v. thin walled and lustrous); aesthetically, I doubt I’ll ever find a teaware set-up I prefer, but I do appreciate it’s probably not the best for such a classical shu puerh that ought to have a more tightly controlled high-temperature. I’m still on the look-out for a nice, small yixing pot that I can use for shu puerh (as the two I own currently are seasoned for other teas and, for my liking, are a little too large for shu puerh).

Last night I decided to do something a bit different. Rather than continue my recent oolong binge, I mixed things up a bit and broke out a pu-erh for the first time in months. Though I like pu-erh, I do not drink or review it that often because: a.) there are so many people here on Steepster that have so much more experience with pu-erh than I do, and from what I have seen, these individuals have much more of an ability to properly describe the experience of drinking pu-erh than I do, and b.) the recent surge of interest in pu-erh has left me with the perhaps false impression that other quality teas are being neglected. With this in mind, I tend to focus primarily on green, black, and oolong teas, and will throw the occasional white tea in for good measure. I tend to drink these types of teas more frequently anyway, so it makes sense for me to review them more often as I have more experience preparing and drinking them. To condense all of this rambling, pu-erh is like a once in a blue moon thing for me and I lack the confidence to review it with regularity. Anyway, all of that being said, I do really like this shu.

I prepared this tea using a slightly modified version of the gongfu method outlined on Verdant Tea’s website. The suggested temperature of 205 F seemed slightly low to me. On the rare occasions I prepare and drink pu-erh I tend to keep the temperature around 207-208 F. That seems to work best for me. For this session, I set the temperature at 208 F. I also increased the suggested amount of loose tea from 3 grams to 5 grams because I only had a 5 gram sample of this from a recent order and what am I really going to do with 2 grams of tea anyway? Honestly, I like my pu-erh really strong, so I decided to make it really strong. Otherwise, I pretty much followed Verdant’s suggested brewing method. I performed a total of 8 infusions. I probably could have carried on, but it was late and I was already tea drunk, so I went to bed.

The initial infusions left the impression of a very earthy, savory tea with aromas of forest floor, sauteed mushrooms, old books, wood, molasses, must, and moist earth. I picked up the same flavors in the mouth, though I also detected slightly herbal, spicy notes reminiscent of a mixture of anise, licorice, pine, and perhaps juniper berry. Later infusions saw the earthiness fade and spiciness and sweetness come to the fore. I noted that flavors somewhat resembling dark chocolate and caramel began to emerge. I also began to note what I can only describe as a lemon peel flavor on the finish that really outlined the lingering notes of herbs, wood, and spices.

As stated earlier, I really like this shu pu-erh. On the rare occasions I drink pu-erh, I tend to prefer sheng over shu, but lately I have been leaning a little more toward shu. I kind of like the earthy, musty funk and it’s fun for me to try to identify contrasting flavor elements as they emerge. I’m thinking of buying more of this so I can tinker around with my brewing methods a little more.

Apologies that there is no photo nor proper write up on this tea, as it isn’t on the Verdant website yet. It just arrived as part of January’s TotM ph-erh selection from xingyang about which I am very excited.

I was flat on my back with flu-like symptoms from Monday mid-day until yesterday morning. Once able to be on my feet without my heart racing or my vision going black for more than 30 seconds at a stretch, I went ahead and decided to fight fire with fire and pulled out this tea to start cleansing the system.

I have a full brick of the Xingyang 2008 golden buds that I haven’t even gotten into yet, but I did review the 2002 a few weeks ago. This picked loose KT952 is a shockingly mellow cup that packs a massive chi wallop. The caffeine, the chi movement and the woogy flu symptoms got into this like cage match event and I was just kind of along for the ride. But 15 steeps and 6 hours later I was functional enough to go to my ballroom dance lesson.

I don’t want to talk too much about taste, as my tongue is a disaster when I’m ill, but the cup was extremely pleasant, and didn’t contain any obvious, strong or “stuff you get used to” type flavors that tend to keep a lot of people at arm’s length to pu-erh.

Side note:

A former co-worker with family in Duyun has begun sending me samples of their local green tea with the hopes that we may, at some point, be in a position to sell it. Stay tuned.