I got a sample of this tea from a friend. I tasted it with a cupping method using 5g of tea leaves for 1dl boiling water and steeping for at least 5min, leaving the leaves in the liquid to continue steeping throughout the tasting.
Dry leaves: Compressed, easy to separate. Colour varies from dark brown/blackish to reddish golden in a ration of about 60:40 against the golden tips. The material seems to be small, no big leaves. The dry leaves smell a little fishy and earthy with a hint of sourness. The smell is smooth, not stinging or unpleasant.
Warm leaves: The smell turned more earthy with warm leaves in the cup, with a hint of honey. Surpisingly I couldn‘t discern the fishy smell anymore and it seemed even milder than with the dry leaves.
Wet leaves: he earthy smell was stable compared to the warm leaves with a hint of tobacco and wet clothes. It was very mild. New in the wet leaves was a smell of wet ashes and charcoal.
Liquid: the colour of the liquid was clear and dark brown with a reddish hue. It didn‘t become much darker after 5 min of steeping. The smell on my tasting porcelain spoon was light and of wet earth, only a little sweetness and the wet ashes smell continued, on the front of the nose was the sour smell of tobacco. When the spoon cools down a fishy smell reappears accompanied by wet wood and rotten leaves. The taste was a little bitter on the sides and cheeks as well as earthy and a little sour taste of leather and tobacco. It reminded me of old dusty wood getting soaked or decomposing tree trunks. There was a soft mouthfeel and it was smooth with an oily consistency. There was just a little stinging sensation to my cheeks. Something that I didn‘t like was that I had the feeling of the tea sticking to the back of my palate like mucous.
spent tea leaves: homogenic dark brown colour, not as much difference as in the beginning with the dry leaves. The leaves were very soft and mushy such that they decay when zou touch them. The leaves were very small, in the sample I had, none of the leaves were intact and there were some thin woody stems inside. The sour leather smell was sticking to the spent leaves and a smell of wet cardboard boxes. The spent leaves did‘t have much of a taste, they were easy to chew releasing a little more bitterness but nothing much besides that. The spent leaves also had the wet ashes and charcoal taste that stuck to my throat.
If you like shou pu‘er this tea definitely has a nice mouthfeel, the taste of shou is also good and I can recommend it. It has a taste of earth and a sourness reminiscient of tobacco, with a taste of wet piled leaves. What I did not like about this tea was the sticky sensation to my throat and palate.
Flavors: Tobacco, Wet Earth, Wet Wood
