2006 Fengqing Raw Pu-erh Tea Tuocha 100g

So after realizing I didn’t buy any raw puerh earlier in the day on Cyber Monday, I really wanted to try some and so here we are.

This is the first puerh I’ve had off a cake of sorts, this coming from a tightly packed, oversized tuocha. Man, it was hard to get things rolling. I felt like a monkey that’s probably gone along forever like, who needs tools, dudes, and then a scientist thinks it’d be funny to give me a pick.

But I did it! One rinse later, I have my first cup (20 sec steep). It smells so good. Kind of like how white teas have that hay smell, but on tea steroids.

Wow I have no idea what is going on with this tea. My first instinct is to shun it. There’s so much! The hay, woods, fruits, astringency, sweetness, dry mouth, the feeling like I just might have had a sip of juice instead. The flavors are ridiculously cool though but it leaves this weird thick, dry mouth feeling that makes me feel like a dog that just got some peanut butter.

I will probably come back to this later but right now I need water. I assume it’s the small pieces that ended up in there in the process of me figuring this whole separating tea to use from the whole, so eventually they have to all end up out of the gaiwan, right?

2nd steep, 25 sec: it’s a bit better, still astringent to the point of dry mouth feels, but it is so much sweeter and fruitier. I’m taking tea to a friend tomorrow and asked if there is anything she wouldn’t like and she said she’d try anything so I feel like I should give her some of this and see what she thinks. All she’s had so far I think are flavored teas so this is probably a bit mean at this point. I must say the dry mouth is a lot more tolerable, though it reminds me a bit like hay is stuck in my mouth thanks to honey. Oddly this tastes better than it sounds.

Thank you Teavivre for this sample.

The tea itself is a mixture of dark brown and light brown leaves compacted together into broken cake pieces. They have a sweet and earthy smell equal to most raw Pu Erh. I shall be steeping with a table taken from the Teavivre website.

Teapot Gongfu Tea:2pieces 4 steeps:30s,1m,2m,3m 100ºC/212ºF

Once the tea is rinsed it bears a much sweeter and woodier scent.

Steep 1 – Yellow in colour. A slight smell of fresh cut wood. The taste is sweet and slightly smoky and vegetal. Even though it’s light it’s also on the rich side.

Steep 2 – Darkening in colour to become a little golder. The flavour has increased to double the first steep. Now it’s very rich but still remains sweet. Also picked up floral and perfume tones but on a subtle basis.

Steep 3 – Much sweeter with a dry perfume after taste. The richness has also increased along with smokiness but it manages to stay refreshing.

Steep 4 – I do like that the sweetness has continued all the way through and now that it’s settled it’s become woody again. It tastes like a forest, it has the sweet wood, the green fresh leaves and the rich soil flavours all in one.

Overall I do like this Pu Erh very much as it remained consistently good throughout the 4 steeps. It’s also fairly strong and potent which I have to be in the right mood for. If I was going to say anything negative it would be that the tea left my mouth bone dry and it had that strange perfume taste that gathered at the back of my throat.

This is the 4th pu-erh toucha I have tried over the last two days, and the second from a sample pack I bought through Teavivre this past November, 2013.

Age of leaf: July, 2006.

Brewing guidelines:
Ceramic 4 cup teapot, no sweetener, 5 gram toucha, ~1 cup of water, 5 second wash.
……….1st: Just under boiling, 2.5’
……….2nd: Boiling. 5’

Appearance and Aroma of dry tea leaves: Right away, I could tell this tea was a very different type pu-erh than the last three I have brewed up. It was loose (as a sample, I am assuming it is broken from a larger toucha), and of a much lighter color than the last three pu-erhs; ‘spicy’ was one of the first words the came to mind. The aroma was also worlds apart: milder, lighter and clearly fresh. My initial impression of this one over the other pu-erhs: I like it better.

Aroma of tea liquor: mild but pleasant aroma.

Flavor of tea liquor: clean, light and spicy.

Overall: Generally speaking I prefer my tea to be light, natural, and fresh (that is why I mostly drink Chinese green tea). This ‘raw’ pu-erh is a refreshing change to the last three ‘cooked’ ones I had. I am now beginning to think that first two touchas I tried yesterday—the SpecialTeas one and the one from Taobao—were ‘cooked’; the color of the last three was very dark brown, almost black, and this one is orange and much lighter in color. I liked the flavor; the second steeping was a little bitter, but still enjoyable. Overall, I like this tea.

Fortuitously, I kept a little of the second steeping of the last cooked pu-erh and heated it up so as to compare it side-by-side with the flavor of the second steeping of this raw pu-erh. Its obvious now how different the two are: the cooked is fishy, heavy; the raw is spicy, light, perhaps woodsy. It’s hard to say which I prefer. I like each one for different reasons.

I’ll leave off the numeric rating until I try it with shorter steeping times and possibly in my new Yixing.

Another free sample from Teavivre. Thank you. This is the last of the most recent batch of samples I was sent.

I bought a sample of this tea some time back and really enjoyed it, although I did not remember this until I came to write a note about this new sample. Last time I found it to be a powerful, full body experience. So, how does it fare this time around? The initial impression is woodsy and smoky with a strong, pleasing kuwei after a 5 second steep. Further perusal and steeping suggest prunes or muscatel, and hay notes in the aroma, but less so in the tasting. The aftertaste is sweet with a little smoke and a mild astringency. Like last time, I can feel this tea in my legs first and then the relaxation spreads throughout the rest of my body. I avoid getting tea drunk, but the possibility is definitely there. This is still a powerful tea. I reckon it will really help me through the working day.

I must sincerely thank Teavivre (Angel) for the opportunity to try this. I’ve been reading loads and loads on pu’ercha recently (and working through quite a bit of samples), and I would definitely recommend this as a learning experience. Recently I had a (very long) session with this sheng over a couple games of weiqi with a friend who was also impressed with this tea.

I would probably not consider Teavivre to be a go-to vendor for pu’ercha, but what they do have seem to be of a great quality. I’m strongly considering purchasing a tuo of this sheng to age further, because I feel it has great potential and is already quite good as it stands. I may instead go with the 2006 Fengqing cake they sell, which from what I have read has similar properties to this tuocha (at least from what I can compare) and is thought highly of in the blogosphere. I have of late been leaning towards the acquisition of tuochas, though, as they are quite convenient for me: smaller amount of leaf compared to the standard 357g cakes, allowing multiple to be purchased for close to the same price as one cake (which means variety and less per cake on “tuition” costs if I end up making an error in judgment), but still enough leaf to age for a while.

Anyway, back to the sheng at hand. The compression of the tuo is extremely high. The sample bag containing an intact chunk was like a rock and refused to be broken up cooperatively until after a rinse of near-boiling water. The compression shows in the wet leaves, which are a right mess of fragmented leaves and small pieces, but the resulting liquor proves mature, although somewhat murky in early steeps. In fact, both the leaves and the liquor are noticeably dark for younger sheng. Midway through the session, the coloration becomes a dark amber with a faint, but nonetheless noticeable lighter meniscus. All together, these signs seem to point to good storage and a decent bit of aging.

The liquor, while not entirely “complex” in flavor, provides a very smooth mouthfeel that translates nicely into a sweet aftertaste and a cooling huigan. Later on more of a sparkling texture is apparent mid-sip. To add balance, there is a strong, enveloping kuwei (bitterness) in the throat that is not at all unpleasant and lingers expectedly. Based on so many fragmented leaves, the taste is actually far less bitter (and far sweeter) that I would have expected. Sewei (unpleasant astringency) is minimal and mostly detected upon the tongue tip and lips. There are light notes from the fruity spectrum to add depth and touches of tobacco flavors that provide a robustness, separating it from the youthful sheng with grassy, floral complexions. Sweet floral and caramel aromas are trapped under the gaiwan lid, while added deep fruity scents show up in the empty cup.

By the third steep, a developing cha qi is present and becomes quite strong. Good bursts of positive energy that linger even past the 15 or so steeps that this tea can easily last for. Really, I’m quite impressed. This has become one of my favorite younger shengs that I’ve tasted.

Ahhh, right before I was about to post this I found a bit of black string poking out from the wet leaves. No matter; that’s what a strainer is for.

TeaVivre has sent me some samples that have been just delicious and this is no exception. this is a delicious raw Pu-erh with a flavor profile very similar to a 1995 that i am wildly fond of from Portola Coffee Lab here in Orange County CA that costs three times as much. this tea is earthy and woody, slightly smoky, a bit dry and astringent with only the slightest hint of vegetal finish. there are some subtle fruit notes in the middle of the sip, but having just realized my last sip is gone i’ll have to wait till i steep another cup of this golden elixir from the generous sample provided to give you accurate notes :-)

Twice now I’ve had the wonderful experience of tasting this Sheng puer, another sample sent from TeaVivre. Both times I’ve been very pleased with the result. This tea held a special interest for me since I’ve visited tea factories in Fengqing before, but never one that produced Puer. The city is known mainly for its Hong Cha (black tea).

The aroma of the orange infusions was deeper than I expected, bringing to mind oak more than the cedar scent that I often find with young and middle-aged Sheng (I consider any Sheng Puer less than 5 years old to be “young”, and more than 10 years to be “old”). This was the first sign that I was getting a tasty cup.

Starting with about a 10-second infusion, the flavor was very smooth and round with more of that oak character. It had a dryness to it that pervaded the mouth, but it was a pleasant dryness, akin to the feeling of a Bordeaux wine. The taste reminded me actually of another one of my favorite Sheng cakes, coincidentally from the same year: the 2006 Lao Shu Bing Cha from Dobra Tea (alas, no longer available in that year).

Check out my full review here: http://someteawith.me/2013/12/06/2006-fengqing-sheng-tuocha-puer/

Venturing a little deeper into the pu-erh world is fun! This is my first raw pu-erh. I didn’t even read the label before I made it – but as soon as I saw the light, golden liquid I did! So different from the ripe ones I’ve already tried. The first steep was light and vegetal – the initial smell reminded me of canned green beans, but not as pungent. The taste was smooth but a bit astringent – just a little drying, but not bitter or unpleasant.

Second steep was sweeter – I got a distinct apricot smell. I steeped it a little longer this time (just over a minute, the first steep was probably around 45 seconds) and it was lovely.

I’m still working on my third steep but this is definitely a nice tea. I think I prefer ripe over raw, just because the flavour seemed more…blunt? My favourite thing about pu-erh is that I have experienced a mineral taste that just feels so quenching and healthy to me. I’m not sure I would buy more of this one for a while, simply because there are so many more ripe pu-erhs that I want to try, but I’d gladly drink it again :)

Sipdown 11 – 2024

Finished off a sample of this a few days ago and remember nearly nothing about it sadly.

I chose this for one of my free samples. The wet leaves are dark green, the liquor is bright amber with a slight leather, earthy aroma. The 1st steep, I got fresh hay, leather, maybe some seaweed, sweet tupelo honey, spices, wood and sugarcane with a very slight bitterness. The 2nd and 3rd steep had a much stronger bitterness but was quickly followed by sweetness so I agree with the ‘bitterness of first sip, quick sweet after-taste’ in the description. It actually fits this tea perfectly. The 2nd and 3rd steep was more viscous compared to all the other steeps, almost syrupy. Bold flavors. Sharp… Definitely not shy, mild, timid as say their Moonlight Pu-erh. The most bitter steep was the 3rd but again, a welcomed strong sweet sugarcane wash aftertaste made the bitterness ‘interesting’… Almost like grapefruit bitter, meaning that the bitter part is what makes the fruit tastes so unique, good. The following steeps the bitterness wasn’t nearly as pronounced or maybe at this point, I was used to it. The liquor at this point smelled like one of those honey-citrus coughdrops for itchy throats with camphor, menthol. When I breathed in and out, there was a cooling sensation. In between infusions, I could breathe really well out of my usual allergy ridden stuffed nose. Stone fruit, fresh hay, seaweed, marine, wood, sugarcane, honey, earth, smoke, floral, grapefruit and a bunch of other things I couldn’t decipher. Definitely a complex tea. If you don’t mind bitterness, you may enjoy this tea.