2016 Yunnan Sourcing "Mang Fei Mountain" Wild Arbor Raw Pu-erh Tea cake

thick soup. slightly bitter and astringent, Light color, sweet fruity smell but couldn’t taste it. Very relaxing. Great tea!

Very nice young sheng, and I don’t always like young sheng. There are pleasant vegetable notes in there and some sweetness. There’s some bitterness and astringency that wants to break through but I mostly kept it low with short steeps and 190F water instead of boiling. Very nice, and I bet it would age well.

3.5/40ml 212F
I was in the mood for bitter sheng and this sample I got from tea friend was perfect. Strong, bitter, creamy, quick huigan. Some steeps produce slightly metallic aftertaste. You can avoid bitterness with lowering temp and shortening steeps. Bitterness was fading close to 7th steep at 5min.
It was enjoyable overall. To sum up it’s manly tea. If you are looking for soft and sweet sheng this is not one.

Thank you tea friend for sharing it with me ;)

PS now it’s your turn to post. #deal

https://instagram.com/p/BXyHrwKDodN/

I normally don’t review a tea after only one sample, but I have had other years of this same tea and wanted to compare. I’m putting the rest of my 25g away to acclimate to the same storage conditions as my 2011 cake as well as to settle down as this is still a very young cake.
A solid, reliable tea. The dry leaf has an extremely strong floral scent to it which I enjoyed. Surprisingly little bitterness here, although I steeped this relatively safely. Unfortunately the lack of bitterness also warned of a relatively simple brew. The tea was very good and a perfect example of young sheng, but didn’t necessary change much between steeps or last past 8 steeps. I expect my notes to be quite more detailed and possibly different when I revisit this, but for now this cake gets my thumbs up which is all this initial tasting/review is for.