1113 Tasting Notes
It’s always interesting when you have multiple people try a tea and they all say something different, but each person provides positive feedback of different notes.
I went back into this tea for the 3rd or 4th time hoping to get those greener notes with fruit as some have found… din’t find it. Got a lot of nutty notes with undertone of sweet potato and roasted veggies over water.
This stuff brew out quite a few more steeps than I thought it would have and it has much more roast to it than it did months ago… I wonder if my storage amplified the roast and the green aspects have begun to die down… hmmmmm…
Overall, this is something that I really enjoy and since it’s almost gone I have to decide if I want to keep the rest for myself or not; it’s actually a hard decision to make :/
It was 8:30pm downtown Philly and I was smoking hookah with two wonderful ladies talking about the experience we were about to have. In roughly 30 minutes we were going to drive into New Jersey to drink some serious teas; YQH, Chen Shen, private pressings, and some old oolongs I brought along. When we arrived, we knew… 9:15pm was only the first page.
Starting up the night with a roasted oolong because it was chilly out and I didn’t want to jump right into aged raw pu’erh. The 30 year old TGY from Verdant was a perfect choice because it provided a way for us all to taste a tea that has settled down over years to become something worth tasting and talking about among the 5 of us. The dying roast was like the depth of a tree slowly fading away as a new one replaces it. Mineral notes hidden behind a caramel coated roasted twig from a fire pit from a few weeks ago.
My memories of this night are hard to write about because we drank steep after steep of some YQH right after…. This session lasted until 2am in which I had the task of driving tea drunk, exhausted, and in a town that I don’t know. It was great.
Nothing like being tea drunk with people you don’t really know, but trust because all you want to do is drink until someone passes out.
This was also the session that got someone drunk for the first time in their life. This person has drank tea for more years than I have been alive, so it was a magical night to share this experience with them. Much laughter. Much happiness. Much peace.
A beautiful night that sparked something inside me to host these type of drinking experiences.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMdClHRAznM/
Solid ripe. There’s a reason nobody has rated it below 90.
This ranks in my top 5 ripes that are on the sharp notes with fermentation as opposed to the woodsy/dirty ones.
Highly recommend purchasing it, but feel free to read reviews and contemplate all the ripes out there; but know that this is one of the best options out there for the higher end pu’erh. The price of $22/200g is wonderful as well
Gift from Life in Tea cup : )
This is such a beautiful raw with the ability to brew at such length with depth and development in taste throughout.
In the beginning it was like old wet forest grass at night, but by the end it was like wet bark laying on a forest on its last few weeks before the season ends.
The brew was gold in color. The storage taste very clean and dry, but its nice that it brews up like its been humid at one point in time. Overall, this was one really pleasant tea that I brewed for 10 minutes during the later steeps to enjoy that dark tasting raw puerh that comes about over time.
Really glad that I was able to steep this 15+ times with multiple people at my place : )
Slowly getting around to the Pubertea teas and really wish I had more time to drink through them as they all have such depth.
This one brews so easily, with subtle hints of dead fruit lingering on the back of the palate. The color doesn’t darken for a good eight brews and around that time is when the old taste comes off and is replaced by fruit rind that has been sitting around.
Don’t believe I’m picking up any mellow feeling or high energy, but the taste is wonderful. Quite a bit of room for the tea to develop as it doesn’t get bitter. I did a 90 second brew for fun on the 11th steep . The brew came out darker and the taste was a bit more wide ranged throughout the mouth with a semi salt taste to it. Quite pleasant to be honest. I decided to end the last steeps with 2 minute brews because they turn out wonderful.
(this was an extra cake from the Pubertea sold to a few who wanted more tea. The YouLe is a different tea. If I’m correct, this is Nannuo?)
Friday night and I finally had time to dedicate to a brewing so I pulled out the Pubertea teas. Heard some talk about this and pulled out the 4g I had left from everyone and knew I had to be careful with the brew.
The leaf has a good rustic look to it and a decent smell. This was one of the cheaper aged shengs surprisingly, but I choose it for what it is to Sunsing and all; it’s also my first Sunsing tea : )
The first brew was a bit murky with some real smokey notes coming through and a little grit. It might be the dust I brewed with, but this tea seemed like it was going to be a journey through the sand. The next few brews still had some rather strong smoke for the age it is, but it is clear that this has been stored more dry than humid as the tasting goes on. Sides of the mouth have decent dryness going on but the aged taste that comes through makes it enjoyable.
Around the 8th steep and I’m getting use to the taste to which each sip comes with a cooling taste at the end as if I ate a warm cucumber… if that makes sense. Still not the best in taste, some depth still there, and slight smoke. No qi, oh well. For what it is: There’s plenty of room for this tea to develop based on how it is stored from here on out. The price isn’t so bad either compared to others, but it really does need some airing and a little humidity to bring it to life and maybe even add some legs to it because I feel as if something is holding this back. The leaf is quite beautiful and I am curious as to what Sunsing’s own Yiwu pressings are like.
Drank this during the late night Google Hangouts at 9pm on Monday.
This is not the kind of Dancong I was wanting : (
But, anyways; This tea strikes me as a dry liquor sort of tea in the way that it’s got this hint of rye or some sort of dry wheat to the taste that makes it unique but also for a certain type of drinker. The liquid comes out a bit darker than would be expected, but it’s the taste I’m after. Solid resteeping value here as you can pick up on the more cologne notes rather than the perfume ones being of floral notes. I find myself thinking of a refined leather while drinking this. While it is my personal preference here, it might be possible that those who like higher roasted, dryer, and more astringent teas might find the subtle notes that I’m unable to pick up because of my sensitive tongue.
Talk about a unique raw…
This is literally condensed mushroom soup with some type of herb in it. Very contrast tasting to about all other teas and as a raw it goes on for awhile. Hints of moss, weird smelly things in the forest, and some herbs as well . It’s really hard to even describe to be honest because I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into so I wasn’t ready for this… not any of the three times I tried it in fact. I am glad to be able to share this with others because it offers such an odd taste profile that some other wild may eventually have.
Going to try this again sometime as a soup base : )
Acquired this through that sale Marshaln randomly had.
Tried this three different times and I find it quite unique which was unexpected. This tea smells semi medicinal. When brewed it easily gives off a semi aged, semi old smokey, semi ripe and semi raw smell. The taste had an old mineral taste with some dark earth notes that ripe teas have wile being a thinner liquid that has a few high notes in the first steeps.
As those semi ripe notes came through I decided to hit it with hotter water so the 95c came out.
Going further, it had a much smoother taste that was welcoming but it did leave a dry mouth feel with each sip. Easy on the stomach, clean storage, and contrasting to many other teas from within a 5 year mark that I’ve had so it made it more enjoyable than being as similar to others. Maybe a few more sessions and I’ll figure out these dry mineral notes that seems to come out in each brew.
There’s all this amazing tea around me and what do I grab? A sample sent from a friend of course, even if I want to go through the Pubertea or 2016 Verdant line up that’s looking right at me…
10g of some 2013 Nan Jian raw
Strong steeps from a lot of leaf as I go 100ml of water that is steeping in 10g of this rather tannin like leaving my mouth hard to keep tract of as I try to identify what’s going on. Not much to really say about it; this will keep me up though :)
Tomorrow I’m going to a tea and wine event where wine is mixed with tea. I have a mead that has had the wonderful 2015 Iron Ahrat in it from Yunnan Sourcing. Really dang excited to try it tomorrow : )
