PBM: Barrel Stored Purple Maocha

From beerandbeancurd, thank you!

Wonderful zijuan sheng pu’er with all those right red-wine-barrel-storage notes right off the bat to complement the personality of purple leaf.

Notes be damned. I would need another session or two to bury my nose deep in that pot and adequately wrap my tongue around these tastes.

Incredible energy — after peeling myself off the floor (seems to be a common theme) from the first 2 pots, I repotted all my outdoor and indoor root-bound plants. That’s where it’s at with me and tea. Does it make me feel good? Oh baby you, you got what I need.

Song pairing as I steep out the last bits of flavor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etviGf1uWlg

I debated with myself whether to try this tea today. This was the tea that was the catalyst for the swap between beerandbeancurd and myself.

I have tried only a few sheng puerh teas and most of those were not enjoyed. One from Wymm Tea stood out and was declared my favorite and one or two from Crimson Lotus have been very nice, but quite a few have been as fun as trying to drink nail polish remover, and the kids had one they called “murder tea”. So when I said I was jealous of beerandbeancurd’s experience with this tea, it was the experience I was jealous of – the peel myself off the floor tripping on tea experience.

The morning was cool but sunny and then clouds rolled in. Gray. Cozy in the house, or bleak, depending on where your head is. And after my first students had come and gone and then lunch, it hit me that I wanted to go ahead and try this tea. I only had one hour until my next students and the whole time I was setting my gong fu tray in the spare room I was telling myself, “You shouldn’t try this. You don’t have time. This is dumb.” But I did it anyway.

Three Stracciatelli truffles from Lindt because I usually do a little something special with gong fu and if it was murder tea I would need the sweet.

Didn’t rinse. Warmed the teaware and placed leaves in the warm gaiwan. Noted that the stiff, deep green leaves reminded me of the Purple Sencha I just finished from Postcard teas, a tea that turns a truly beautiful shade of purple that I couldn’t capture in a photo. Allowed the leaves to rest in the warm, damp gaiwan.

Sniffed gaiwan lid. JUNIPER AND ALCOHOL. Sniffed gaiwan. Less alcohol scent than lid, so the boozy smell must really rise on the steam. Mostly juniper. Forest. This is promising.

First steep – 30 seconds. Trees. Injured pine that fell in a storm and shattered and filled the air with its scent. Sap everywhere. Juniper. There is as much juniper taste in this as there was juniper aroma in the actual juniper tips tea beerandbeancurd also sent. That tea smelled strongly of juniper but the taste was milder. This is full on juniper.

Second steep – I don’t need the truffles but I am eating them anyway. Half a truffle, melting in my mouth while I mentally count out the next steep. This time 45 seconds. Again, trees. Now the cedar chest with the sweater Ashman never wears but won’t give away and the ten pairs of gloves he bought for just in case children come over and it snows (almost never) and their hands are cold. And the christening gown found in his mom’s house after she died, handmade. Who wore it? Who made it? It must be sixty to eighty years old, or more, might even have been hers. Digging around in the cedar chest to see what is there.

I don’t want to have just 45 more minutes. I want to sit here on the floor, and feel my soul, and look out the window, and sip the tea.

Third steep – boozier. Tongue and cheeks are tingling. Maybe I lost count? So good. Getting giddy. Losing track of time. I turn off the music at 1:59 especially to hear the chimes from the Catholic Church a half mile away and at 2:01 realize I didn’t hear them. I guess I was distracted. Music stays off.

Steep four – seriously, just read beerandbeancurd’s note. It isn’t an exaggeration. The flavors are spot on. Only for me add that there was a fleeting flash of high quality vanilla that came out of nowhere and surprised me.

I peeled myself off the floor. I went to the living room to prepare for the next students. I tried to use the burglar alarm remote to turn on the electric candle in the sconce on the wall and caught myself. Shook my head and grabbed the right remote off the piano. I feel like I downed a beer quickly. I feel like I am BUZZING and need to put forth a lot of effort to appear sober to these kids. I am, no doubt, more animated than usual. Teacher is having an especially extroverted day. (I am NOT an extrovert.)

About twenty minutes into the first lesson, I start to feel more normal. I have never had a tea high this strong. Derk gave me a Ruby 18 white that sent me to peaceful fields for a good couple of hours, so deeply peaceful. This one is giddy, tipsy, dizzy, giggly. But also, I might need a nap.

What a tea, and where can I get more?

Thank you, beerandbeancurd! Wow.

Y’all. LOL.

I peeled myself off the floor after this session.

Dry leaves smell like dry oak barrel. Steaming leaves open up to fermenting red fruit, grapes, wet wood, musk, mint, and camphor. Whew.

First pour is largely transparent gold — honey, minerals, hay, and funk on the nose. Spiky in the mouth — tastes like a barrel, like alcohol, like tea tree, like grape skins, like sucking on green hardwood. Sandpaper astringency on the back of the throat.

Wet leaves now smell like opening an old cherry chest of drawers, like getting lost in the basement of an antique store, like fruit must and weird dessert liqueurs only your grandparents drink. Medicinal fennel, Jazz Age toothpaste, peppermint schnapps, dark oily incense, a dusty crystal and tarot shop. My upper lip is tingling from being pressed against the pot to inhale.

Second pour is slightly more opaque, thickly golden, with a nose of tingling and ethereal hay vapor. The barrel taste is morphing from wine barrel to bourbon barrel. Dandelion smear, pilsner, Spanish wine cave, tropical fruit, brut champagne, varnished pine. GOOD LORD.

Back to the wet leaves is back in the basement of a Midwest antique shop, a cherry chest of drawers inside a cedar closet, creamy menthol. Third pour smells of yellow cake, dry summer. Sipping produces astringency reminiscent of carbonation and booze, a mouthfeel I’ve only ever gotten from alcoholic drinks. Hops and iodine and green wood. Where this started off tasting dark-and-brooding boozy, it’s now light-and-crisp boozy.

Back to the pot. Resin and wood oil. What the 1950s and 60s smelled like in my imagination, when everything was made of wood and hard work. Liquor off this pour smells like melon, a wet clarinet reed, yeast. Tastes of white grapes, crisp astringency, green wood essence, menthol, beer.

Feels like I’m getting indulgent at this point, but I can’t get enough of these shifting specters. Wet leaf has become the most fantastical basement you’ve ever smelled, the wardrobe to Narnia. I feel heavy and not even here. Pour smells of white grape, fermented gardenia petals, champagne. Mouthfeel is still drying but not sharp, flavors have started persisting rather than transposing. Here is cup-captured nostalgia, curiosity, history, wisdom. I am absolutely floored, brain and body both.

Mushy cantaloupe rinds and German lager. The end.