This is a tasty ripe tea with a lot of fermentation flavor left. The fermentation taste was quite strong for the first four or five steeps and then dissipated. It was initially sweet in nature and then some bitterness intervened in the middle steeps. There were notes of cocoa or chocolate in there too. It even developed a fruity flavor in later steeps. The later steeps taste of this tea balances it out. The initial steeps were thick with fermentation flavor but sweet too. It developed a nicer flavor later. According to Puerhshop this brand is a premium brand of tea. That being said I had never heard of them before and wonder if anyone else has. This small brick is the only offering at Puerhshop from this Menghai Baohexiang Tea Co. Ltd so I don’t know about their other products. This one was pretty good in the end but really needs to age a little to lose some of that fermentation taste. It was almost fishy in nature but not quite. For the price of this I am not unhappy with my purchase. It was only $13.79.
I steeped this tea eight times in a 120ml gaiwan with 9.1g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. It didn’t take long at all for the leaves to open up. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, anad 30 sec. The tea color of the eighth steep was still an amber brown. This tea would certainly gone a few more steeps, maybe twelve, maybe fifteen but I was at my caffeine limit.
Flavors: Bitter, Cocoa, Earth, Fruity, Sweet
