2005 Xiaguan Jia Ji (1st Grade) Pu-erh

not as great as the iron cakes i have had lately, but fun enough :) !

Classic Xiaguan tuo that is a really solid bang for your buck. It’s mostly inoffensive, and could be a competitor for a solid daily sheng drinker. The two issues I have with it is that it’s really, really hard to break apart without turning into dust (I’ve good luck with using a small flathead screwdriver and hammer) and the cha qi from it makes me feel slightly stoned/dissociated. One of the few teas that hits me in that way and due to that I can’t drink it a lot.

You can’t really get much better for the amount of aging and price. It’s got some smokiness, a bit of of tobacco and almost a tart fruitiness to it. A tea that I suggest everyone at least try once and is a good benchmark for Xiaguan to contrast and compare to their more up-scale offerings.

Finally, a nice mature sheng. This is a first for me – I’ve been trying lately to get some older shengs, however, none brought the taste and texture that I’ve been expecting. Not this one. This is how I imagine a proper mature sheng should be like.

The soup is orange, deep yellow. But the excitement is coming from the scent of the tea leaves first. The smell is smoky, fermented at first. And then the notes of berries, cranberries start to emit from the leaves. This is something really complex, really interesting.

The taste is also retain this complexity: the notes of smokiness and tobacco is not overwhelming but still remains, and then the light astringency of berries also lingers in the soup. Finally a great, complex, mature sheng that I was looking for!

good flavour

I’m no sheng expert, but this one’s good. Slightly off yellow toward orange, so it definitely has matured a bit in 4 years. It definitely doesn’t have quite the bite of the few younger sheng I’ve drank.

Prepared gongfu style – about 6g of leaf in a 5.75 oz Yixing pot. One 10s rinse and rest, then steeps at around 15s for the first few and gradually increased.