2013 Yunnan Sourcing Autumn Wu Liang Mountain Raw Puerh

I’m drinking this from a loosely compressed sample of mostly nice, intact leaves. It smells pretty dry and not fragrant. I’ve been “storing” my sample in a cheap plastic bag in a cabinet so that’s probably not been great for this tea. Oops. The warmed dry leaf smells like tart apricot. After a quick rinse, the smell on the gaiwan lid is spent smoke/ash. Same thing for the wet leaves. Uh oh, hope this one tastes better than it smells.

The first steep is a cloudy, pale yellow. It tastes herby and a bit vegetal with a background of smoke. Steep number two is darker and thicker but tastes mostly the same. The aftertaste is tart apricot.

Three steeps in, I’m noticing more and more char at the bottom of my cup. That would explain the residual smokey taste happening here. The brew is still quite cloudy but it has gained some honey sweetness as well as astringency.

Fast forwarding to steep ~7 now. The tea is basically static except it’s developed a strange soapy finish/aftertaste. It’s still pretty strong and hasn’t lost its potency.

10 or 11 steeps in I’ve started to arrive at the vegetal/stewed greens stage of this tea. Still pretty strong, but the flavor has changed significantly.

Unfortunately, I think this tea is a miss. It could age into something really nice but I wouldn’t drink this young.

Our final stop on our tour of Yunnan regions. We return to where it all started – PUER…

Region 4/4: Simao/Puer. Location 1/3: Wu Liang

A fairly vegetal and herbal experience, this one. There are some pleasant honey notes, which I found fairly thick, but they are in competition with the overt vegetal notes.

There are also some noticeable char notes in the nose, but the smokiness and ashiness are not particularly strong in the actual taste.

Overall, I would say this needs to be aged to a more appropriate puerh drinking age. The flavors are still a bit unsettled, underdeveloped, and rough around the edges. But, the price is reasonable and there is certainly some initial strength of flavor that has promise for the future.
*
Dry leaf: fresh dill, parsley, pollen, mesquite smoke, hint of honeysuckle, wildflower honey

Smell: green vegetal notes – spinach, zucchini, squash; char; dark honey

Taste: herbal/parsley, vegetal, some notes of char/ash, straw and hay, and English breakfast tea. Finish of fairly thick honey notes and pleasant tannin. Aftertaste has a cardboard or linen-like driness and taste.

Pu’erh TTB 2015 Tea #14

You could convince me that this was made in an ashtray. While the smell and aroma from the tea were both kind of nasty, I ended up drinking and liking this more than the 2003 Mengku I drank before it. Not really sure how the smell is different than the taste, but this ended up being an alright pu’erh. A light dry taste to it but not unbearable.

Another sample from Dexter today. I have a large number of samples from her and companies to get through. This one is more towards the green side than dark side, as i’ve come to expect with raw puerhs. However, this isn’t overly green and vegetal . There’s a slightly smoky scent to this one, though over the course of a few steeps, it’s really only a slight smoke taste – nothing too strong. There is no bitterness to this one that i noticed, just a generally smooth brew,heavier than some but sort of middle of the road in terms of strength.

Thanks for letting me try this one dexter!

Spending some time with this sheng tonight. It’s pretty good. Not too green, not too bitter, not astringent, petty mild, gentle.
I haven’t explored pu’erh as much as I want to, and I haven’t really spent too much time with sheng. I have a couple that I really like, but most I think are too green and too bitter. I’m wanting to explore them more – but in my heart I think I’m a shou girl…

GCTTB

I enjoyed this pu’erh but can’t remember the details of it as it was a couple days ago. I find with most pu’erh teas they just keep getting better and better on the later infusions. I brewed this one in my yixing pot but it imparted a bit of clay taste to it so I had to do some more soaking of my pot. I do remember this one being silky on the tongue with a decent apricot flavour.

This is a fairly straightforward tea. Medium bodied, the light flavor is mostly wood, with hints of smoke. Not at all bitter. Solid, but not special; a good everyday tea.