(August 2022 tea club)

2007 Mengsong – A tea from our storage, this is an early spring production of Mengsong tea from 2007 that we bought in 2017 or 2018 or thereabouts. I can’t really remember, because I am truly a degenerate tea packrat. Originally, I bought this tea for the long haul, planning to sell it when it was 25 or 30 years old and become a billionaire, but after trying it during a recent warehouse dive I decided I could spare a few samples for the tea club. If you’ll remember my July club rant, Puer regions are often more difficult to pin down into categorical boxes than most people are comfortable with and Mengsong is no different. Mengsong as a region is also very diverse, with hundreds of villages and a long mountain range that has a wide variety of teas. Some villages within Mengsong that you may have heard of are places like Naka, Huazhuliangzi, Baotang, and Nansen, just to name a few. Each of those villages has its own character, with teas and styles even varying from household to household. Suffice it to say, Mengsong is a bit of a generic term, even though it may sound specific. Who the hell knows which villages are in this blend, though it was likely just small bush material from several less famous villages mixed up together. If you are trying to pin down the region, Mengsong is a classic area for raw Puer (big factories and brands often used their material pre-1990’s and even into the mid-2000’s , though they rarely purchase Mengsong now because it’s too expensive and they use cheaper more industrial scale material). Mengsong is usually known for its astringency and sweetness when young. With aging, it mellows into a reliably sweet and delicious brew. The fragrances of this tea at 15 years old has drifted further towards a wood and spice profile with a honey sweetness in the mouth. You will likely be able to experience the astringency and bite on the young tree material even with fifteen years of age, which means to smooth it out we have to age it even further. It’s a wonderful daily tea to experience a bit of aged character. Obligatory beating of the white2storage drum, we really put a lot of thought into our storage when we set it up in Guangzhou many years ago—thrilled with how teas like this are turning out!

Brewing instructions: Gongfu style, with roughly 6g per 100ml in your vessel and fast steeps. Use boiling water for the 2007 raw Puer.

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