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“Ok now that I have procured a kilo of this stuff I feel safe to review it. This is by far the best tea I’ve had in the buck a gram range and competes with stuff 3x that. For starters the super...” Read full tasting note
“Good opportunity to drink this one, since I had an excellent 2004 Yiwu GFZ yesterday. These teas are pretty similar in profile, but this is noticeably more “youthful”; more astringency, a little...” Read full tasting note
Cultivar: wild Puerh
Harvested by hand: spring 2003
Origin: YiWu region, Yunnan, China
Process: raw, sun dried, stone pressed as cake.
Weight of a cake: 500 gram
In 2006, thanks to Yahoo’s Tea-Disc group, there was a small contest of 3 young raw puerh. This puerh competed against 2 Menghai Factory big tree puerhs from 1999 and 2001. Despite being the youngest, my puerh beat the other 2! The number of testers was limited, but they were all very passionate about puerh.
This result confirmed the fact that, in 2003, this private order by a Taiwanese tea business was one of the best puerh produced then. The quality of the wild material is very good (lots of buds). It was sun dried in a traditional way. And the cakes were well pressed with stones. Their compression is very even, firm, but not too hard. It’s a real pleasure to flake the long, whole leaves from this cake!
Early 2000s marked the end of the CNNP’s monopoly on the sale of puerh in China. Taiwanese businessmen were pioneers in exploring Yunnan, finding new farmers, selecting their own leaves for their own cakes. Competing with old factories, Taiwan’s demand for high quality puerh created innovation and more choice. This also marked a time when puerh mao cha kept increasing in price year after year, until 2007. In early 2000, the best puerh was produced for Taiwan and this cake is among the best of this era.
What characterizes this tea is its smoothness and sweetness. It was already very enjoyable in 2003 and didn’t require a waiting period. It had a lot of power, but that energy wasn’t harsh or unbalanced. Now, after 11 years, the taste has become sweeter, softer and calmer. It still has a great, long aftertaste, but it feels much more relaxing and refined now. The scents of plum have ripened. They are now accompanied by scents of forest in the fall. There’s still a camphor cooling sensation, but everything feels softer and yet deeper. That’s a characteristic of a great puerh: on the surface it’s calm and soft, but underneath it’s rich, pure and powerful.
Company description not available.
Qi Zi Bing Cha
Feng Pai2003 Nuevo Pu-er Bing Cha
The Tao of Teaspring 2003 Raw wild pu-ehr cake, yiwu yunnan
Tea MastersSpring 2003 Raw Wild Puerh Cake, Yiwu, Yunnan
Tea Masters Blog1992 Meng Hai Qi Zi Bing Cha
New Century Tea GalleryJing Mai Bing Cha, 2003
The Random Tea Room & Curiosity ShopOk now that I have procured a kilo of this stuff I feel safe to review it. This is by far the best tea I’ve had in the buck a gram range and competes with stuff 3x that. For starters the super clean Taipei dry storage has preserved a lot of the top notes while making this tea taste much younger than it really is. In fact an Yiwu stored 2012 Yibang I recently had tastes much more aged. The soup is copper colored and exudes notes of cedar, orange blossoms and sandalwood with a touch of caramel and plum. No mushroomy decayed forest notes or dankness. This tea likes to be pushed in terms of amount of tea per ml, temp and steeping times. I’ve found it more satisfying to do fewer and longer steeps as it adds to the oily texture and bigger huigans. It is difficult to make this tea bitter. This tea reminds me of the 2013 Mansong from Yiwu Mountain tea (which I’ve only had once dt the $5g pricetag) in terms of flavor and qi. Oh yeah the qi. That’s the real kicker with this tea. The blissful, meditative full body qi of this tea is better than anything I’ve had for under $3g. I can’t recommend this tea enough. Another aged Yiwu I love (not listed here) is the 2000 Yiwu from EOT. It displays much more aged flavors (although very clean with no dankness) and much fuller bodied but less qi. I highly recommend trying this tea before it sells out. BTW this seller is a collector of amazing teas and has some beautifully aged 90s Menghai teas as well as an outstanding assortment of oolongs. His baozhongs and high mountain oolongs are incredible. The shipping is super fast too. I got my last order in 5 days! From Taiwan to USA
Good opportunity to drink this one, since I had an excellent 2004 Yiwu GFZ yesterday. These teas are pretty similar in profile, but this is noticeably more “youthful”; more astringency, a little less slippery, and less humid.
The brew is crystal clear both in appearance and taste, very fruity, sweet, active and enjoyable. Huigan is great. Leaf quality is maybe a little below the GFZ, more broken stuff, but it is “cleaner”, and less affected by storage. Maybe a state-of-mind thing, but the qi was more noticeable for me this session, this tea gives me a buzz.
I would love to own it, but the price per gram is an elephant in the room; at $0.70, I’m not convinced it’s the best value for me. If I had a well-tested storage setup that I knew would do it justice over the coming decades, I would probably pay up the $0.70/g, wallet be damned. For short-term consumption though, it falls in the “maybe, but probably not” category for me
So you bought yourself a $1000 of this tea? Now that’s some dedication.
Yep. This tea is almost sold out and it outperforms teas I’ve had that are 3x that amount. Plus I expect it to improve for at least another decade. I don’t expect the price to drop on tea of such caliber either