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Wild Monk Showdown!
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The 2012 offering of Wild Monk was one of my first shengs that I have ever tried. That being said, I was spoiled earlier. Since then the taste has lingered around in my memory as an amazing experience so I wanted to compare the three together.

This time I started with newest to oldest.

2015 has the largest leaf and lightest pressing. The taste resembles a lightly fermented fruit; I will add the remark that it is quite interesting to taste something that isn’t fully fermented, the gentle sweetness in the background is hard to notice if you don’t allow a second to let the taste sit. The leaf takes a great beating and keeps its slight bitterness which is to no surprise as a 2015 offering.

2014 makes me question the claim of this being Wild Monk cake. The entirety of the steeps, which I lowered to 4 seconds, were all quite bitter. The taste was hard for me to detect because of the bitterness from the leaf which is pressed more firm than the 2015 with smaller leaf within it; though such things don’t change the taste as far as I know. The liquid was quite dark with this one which was something I noticed and linked to the bitterness (which isn’t a real thing)

2012., this highly compressed dark ugly leaf looks like the trash monster from Sesame Street had his hair wrapped in lettuce and left in the bottom of the can for awhile. Ultimately this is a beautiful tea that steeps and steeps a cup of wild comfort. The liquid is smoother than most sheng, with some bitterness left in there, and brews a medium thickness tea broth that has brought an experience to many.

My concluding remarks come to think that the 2014 material is not the same as the 2015 nor the 2012. I’m not entirely sure how to justify comparing them as a the same product if they taste so different. Of course there are storing techniques, processing differences each year, climate changes, and maybe a whole bunch of butterflies decided to fornicate on the tea plants in 2014 while the farmers thought it was pretty so they did nothing. Shoot, I don;t know… I just miss my 2012 Wild Monk.
No worries though, I have found some wild variation sheng that are close in taste with leads on others that are said to get me tea drunk in a way that makes the Marvel and DC universe merge inside my conscious.