Yin Jing Gu 2004

The camphor aroma slips to the air already when pouring the tea to the cup. This doesn’t come as a surprise as this is a fairly young sheng pu’er. I like my teas to have character and the camphor floating in the air is a good sign. After the first infusion of 30 seconds the tea starts to open up. It is woody with some tobacco. At the same time it has this character i would call juiciness. With this i mean that it has sweetness coupled with sourness, rather like in orange juice. The sweetness is pleasant and the sourness gives a nice edge to it. A lot goes in this tea. It still retains it’s youthfulness and so there are some rough edges, slight tingling in the back and tip of the tongue. I think there are two sides to this roughness. It’s not the most elegant tea, but on the other hand, the edges give the tea an interesting aftertaste and though i am not that experienced with pu’er, i get the feeling these rough edges could round out themselfs with a couple years more aging and make this into a better tea. The best thing about this tea is that it’s not too round and boring. It’s a good tea but does fall short of being excellent.

I infused using 5 grams of leafs in gaiwan using 100ml water each infusion. Still after 8 infusions the leafs carry a nice camphor aroma.