2002 CNNP Little Yellow Mark Private Order Aged Raw Puerh

1st steep: Woodsy, earthy, comforting. Astringent in this steep only.

2nd: The astringency was gone, and it was smooth going forward. Tasted like umeboshi (sour plum) with smooth relaxing deep woodsiness holding it up. I feel dreamy.

3rd-4th: Smooth dirt. Barely tart mostly fruity sweet umeboshi aftertaste sinking down my throat, which turns into a sort of vanilla sweetness after a while.

5th-7th: Smooth sweet dirty cola. Well, maybe a cola / cream soda blend, there’s still a lot of creamy vanilla going on here too. Deep throat sweetness after. And now I feel the air clean and clear through my ears.

8th-10th: Smooth sweet dirt and a touch of vanilla. (It’s funny, I think this tea tastes to me sort of like how other people claim those nannuo mini shrooms taste to them.)

Then it was bedtime, though the tea felt like it still had more to give when I ran out of time. Love this sample, wish it wasn’t $250 for a cake.

Pretty amazing tea. If you are new to sheng puer (like me) and want to try what 15 years of storage can do to the taste of sheng I can’t think of a better starting example.

Goes forever (15-20 steeps). Peach (maybe plum as others have noted) aftertaste but the really interesting one is that of baking spices…maybe cinnamon and nutmeg. There is a lot of cooling that persists even after 10-15 steeps. Great mouth feel.

Qi was relaxing with decent energy but nothing amazing. It’s really about the taste, cooling and texture. I’ve never really had anything else like it.

There are two options to pick from to review, but this choice had more tasting notes.

The leaf is dark and nicely threaded together. A nice note of smooth sweet wood and light musk lift from the leaf. I’ve heard good things about this tea, so I am excited to try. I warmed my lil pot up and prepared for brewing. The leaves, once warmed up, give off a fruity spice aroma. I pick up plum mixed with an extremely pleasant tobacco scent. I washed the old timers once before steeping. The taste is incredibly smooth with a bit of tannic. The huigan is thick, full, and filled with dates. This tea is motor oil thick and silky smooth. The later steeping yields a pleasantly sour tobacco note, but the drink still ends with a candy like sweetness. A light floral orchid lifts from the tongue by the third steeping. This is a stellar tea. I’d also like to note the leaves give off an inquisitive herbaceous note that fills the tea room. The qi begins head clouding and clears to warming uplifting of the body. This is a nice “cruising” tea; I can just drift along with the brew, enjoying the ride. The brew leaves me calm and collected with a nice easy goin vibe. I really like it, almost a bit too much.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOKkHdZge2O/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

This is a tea you start to drink, and after a few glasses you end up doing a double take… What is this fantastic aroma at the back of my throat? Next cup… wow it’s coming from the tea. This tea is a late bloomer. The girl in all the chick flix that the guys don’t notice until her makeover montage.

While the first few steeps didn’t really taste like much, much less special enough to be a cake this expensive… I was shortly blown away. First by the after taste… and soon after the flavor. This tea must have had impeccable storage to maintain it’s leaf character and not just taste like generic aged sheng. This one truely differentiates itself.

What this reminds me of is Tea Urchin’s 2014 Xi Kong, but all grown up. It has that same knock your socks off meadow and honey aroma as that fresh sheng, but more intense and backed by lower bass notes. This has all the wonders of young and middle age sheng at once! And goes forever and ever…

The later steeps are sugared plums. Yumm. This tea just keeps evolving.

This tea has not acquired it’s reputation unduly… but at the same time it is still rather young for people who are into aged tea. This tea is a cougar, she might be 40 but she looks (and dates) in her 20s. It is not too aromatic or gawdy, but after a quick warm bath is gorgeous and perfumed. I can’t stop smelling the gaiwan. It’s like being transported to one of those hill sides covered in flowers from musicals. You can smell the beeswax and flowers, backed by something a little more bitter. I keep humming Brigadoon… and am taken to that land we depicted in a musical in high school.

This tea is magic. If you don’t watch out you’ll end up in a land far away from where you sit right now. A tingling at the back of my throat beckons me to sing, my whole body is buzzing from where this tea is transporting me.

This is a tea with nice power – the power of rich content. It begins with a bit of astringency and smoke but quickly they both fade away. Next, the herbal and grassy notes move forward and become more prominent with a lovely sweetness poking through. The sip becomes very smooth by the third or fourth steeping and the sweetness begins to break through. After drinking three cups, I am left with a distinct dryness in the mouth and throat. This cake is definitely made with good raw material but it still has room to mature with more age. I’m going to move this one to the back of the humidity monitored sheng cabinet and let it sit for another year or two before trying again.

2002 Little Yellow Mark
7g used

5s – Excellent – Full of flavour. Complex: Concentrated green, thick peppery-smokiness, herbal, no strong bitterness.
8s – Smooth but with the peppery smokiness it’s interesting and textured. It has a wholesome flavour.
12s – The concentrated flavour lingers on after swallowing.
20s – Floral sweetness sits on top of the concentrated green base – wow. The treble sweetness is an octave higher than the bass darker notes.
25s – It makes the mouth water and this contrasts with the sweetness of the tea – very good. The tea has astringency, bitterness, sweetness, smokiness, floral notes over a dark green herby base. It combines to something great: it sings in harmony.

Well dadgummit! OF COURSE I like $150 a cake tea. There is astringency and a not unpleasant bitterness in the first few steeps, but it mellows into sweetness. There is very little smoke and around steeps 5-6 it becomes very charming. Still a little astringency, but a sweet smoothness as well.

I have a little catch at the back of my throat and a very, very nice chi buzz. A fabulous all over body hum that is making me very, very happy. Happy to the point I may have to figure out how to afford this. Maybe split a cake Sarsy? I’m Smokey Robinson happy: y’all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI_0tQdEA5k

Holy moley, I may just go lay down and enjoy this. Happy Sheng. Of Happiness!

Maaaaaan. I wish I had $150 just laying around to buy a whole cake of this tea. It’s very good!

I was hoping I wouldn’t like it b/c of the price, but that didn’t work out for me. The aromas and flavors here are very different from many pu’s I’ve tried, which is intriguing. I love the smoked apricots I get in most shengs, but this goes beyond that. And it’s SMOOOOOOOTH, like buttah!

It’s sweet, with no real bitterness, just mellow yumz and lovely soothing feelings. It’s definitely a happy tea. Of happiness.

The only sad part is that I only have enough tea for one more date!

Got this as a sample with my recent white2tea order and was so excited to find it in my parcel, it had piqued my interest in the website. I mean, who wouldn’t want to taste cakes specially ordered, to be created for a rich collector? This is my chance to taste vault tea, one wonders what happened to the poor guy. Did he need the money and decide to sell, or is he pushing up daisies and didn’t really get to taste his made-to-order? Either scenario could be me, soon enough, at my age. Another good reason to taste this is because I am finally trying an example of the type of tea leaves a person should look for when selecting to age, for this is a powerful tea leaf.

7 grams in the Yixing with 90 ml water, all of this is loose, and still dark green. Got a small 3 grams of intact cake so I decided to brew the loose and save the 3 g for a light session. One rinse. Tea liquor shows this one has aged! Nicely amber, juicy and thick. First three steeps are bitter and incredibly astringent, which indicates the amazing strength of this leaf. This is not one of those sheng teas which are smooth early on. Yep it is turning, all right, but this has got a good ways to go.

Fifth steep and the bitterness is wearing down somewhat to floral and wood, but still astringent, very dry tongue yet. My throat is nice and comfortable, however. Sixth steep and I need to brew longer than the 10 seconds I’ve been using so far. Tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth now. Not heavily smoked, just a touch of smoke in this tea.

This tea begs to be awakened and put up wet. A couple years of more humid storage would kick start this one and it will age into a tea that will likely put me on the floor. So much potential here! What this seems to be is about as close as I will ever get to a guaranteed stunning age-er. In fact I will bet that this will be amazing if treated with the respect it deserves. Kept very dry, this won’t budge. But it is ready to turn all that power into flavor.

Of course the price is already higher than most people would want to pay at $149.50. What this price buys, however, is a quality of leaf that westerners can’t get outside China or even inside China for that matter. The price buys a guaranteed successful aging project in a rather short term, if watched carefully. I am not going to rate this because it is like rating a girl on the strength of her womanhood. Okay, I need to pry my tongue off the roof of my mouth now and pray the phone doesn’t ring and nobody needs me to talk anytime soon.