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Ahhhh, a day off after a very busy week end…

Cleaning up the house listening to The Black Keys: Little Black Submarine anybody? The second half of that song makes me backflip and play air drums and guitar in the tub while cleaning it! Yeah, it’s that good!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdw95xR_MOY

And I wont even share the silly moves Lonely Boy will have me going for… well…maybe we do know each other enough by now… Just think Cave Man having the very first dance ever on this planet:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WcS8CcqPJcI

Now, need I to specify I don’t look this way, but my moves are pretty darn close!

It is not my place to condemn any style of music, BUT, in a world of BieberMania, good solid bluesy guitar, drum & bass done in such a crafty way that this music appeals to both younger and older generations and makes these guys nothing short of greatness…

The tea to match this music must be on the robust and strong side. Perfect occasion to try that tuocha I’ve been saving for a couple of weeks now.

The mini cake is really well put together, very hard and compressed with a smooth surface. It doesn’t fall apart with manipulation as some other tuocha I have tried. It looks like a real hard candy! Since cleaning up the house doesn’t go well with Gungfu style, I choose Butiki recommended Western brew over the gaiwan today. It is said I should brew 7 min for 18oz of water, so that’s what I do in my glass pot, but I use only 14oz of water.

To my surprise after such a long brew, the tuocha has not completely broken apart. And the liquor is not as dark as I would have expected. It’s sweet and fresh tasting and not «fishy» at all!

I know you puerh lovers out there will be outraged to read this, but to this day, I have never had a puerh that really blew me away. There are some I really like, but not in an «OMG This is amazing» kind of way.

But as I’m getting more and more acquainted with it, having tried lower and higher grades, I now find a HUGE distinction between «earthy» and «fishy». To me, not that long ago, all puerhs had some level of fishiness. This one has none whatsoever. I’m happy to see that my tastings have evolved and that I can now see the difference.

I feel a thickness in my mouth, as if it turned into a beautiful tea syrup. I’ve seen reviewers using «chewy» when I read pu’erh reviews. This feels somewhat «chewy» to me, the way you get that feeling in your mouth after biting in the flesh of a raw mushroom. Oh, I can’t help gulping it down, it’s so good! But then, something in me says STOP !

However good The Black Keys may be to my ears this morning, I have to shut them down and stop everything for a moment…there’s something it this puerh, a fragrance and taste I must identify, it’s like screaming at me to get it right… It reminds me of something fresh and powerful, it has triggered a stir of emotions in me.

And I think of the place I used to spend my summers as a kid…

I know many of you have made forest parallels with the taste of puerh. Here’s mine.

My Grand parents were farmers and therefore lived in a very rural and remote environment. They owned many acres of land and forest. Up to my 14th birthday, I have been lucky to spend almost all my summers there. Me and my cousins used to go play in the dense forest and explore. (Yep, back then, people would not freak out about how dangerous everything was for a kid, so we were lucky to have some freedom, however dangerous it might have been in retrospect!).

Some magic would happen every time! Especially when it rained…we used to lay down on the damp fertile soil, it was spongy and fragrant of the earth…we would open our mouth and try to catch every bit of raindrops that could escape and reach us through the big oak and maple trees…

….it tasted like everything it had sinuously contoured before reaching our mouths, savory and nature like.

We would laugh and then pick some authorized forest food, like «Thé des bois» in french, which is really Wintergreen in english, but if you translate word for word, it is «Tea of the Forest». You can eat its rosy-red berries, they are light tasting and delicious, but if you chew on the leaves, you get a woodsy freshness that invades your mouth. See where I’m going with this? This puerh has that fresh wintergreen feel to it. I’m not saying it really tastes like it, but there’s an imprint of that taste that lingers in my mouth and my soul after every sip. It is so vivid and reminds me of such a happy and carefree stage of my life, it has me all chocked up. Oh, am I making any sense at all?

And why do I always have to write such looong reviews? What’s up with that? My intention this morning was just to have a robust uncomplicated tea while cleaning the house, then write a quick review about it… look where it got me? Let’s face it, I just can’t write short reviews…

I guess I will never be the most prolific reviewer on Steepster, but every one of my reviews leave me with a sense of wellness, so I guess I will continue my Tea-Therapy-Writing sessions in the hopes I won’t bore people to death with all the rambling :-)

As I know there are many other fantastic puehrs out there, this one is the first that totally captures my attention, that’s what I was waiting for to write my first puerh review. And I didn’t even experience it Gungfu stlyle as I know I would have gotten all the layers it has to offer. But it goes to show everyone that you can experience tea bliss in a very simple and unexpected way… For me, it is the validation I was waiting for to continue my puerh journey, Verdant is next on my list for that…

Thank you Stacy from Butiki for such a lovely moment.. I will now call my very alert and healthy 87 year old Granny to remind her of those memories, and tell her how lucky I feel to still have her around…