2008 Menghai Raw Puer

I found this puer to be pretty one-dimensional. The dry and warmed leaf smelled very strongly of stewed prunes. Rinsing revealed the aged aroma of the leaf. The thick, amber liquor was mostly dark-honeyed plums in flavor with a little mineral sneaking in. It aslso possessed a dark warm, woody quality but was not woody in flavor. Due to some astringency, I’d suggest starting off with steeps around less than 10s for the first handful and after that it really needs to be pushed because it can lose its flavor quickly and thin out, devolving into something sour but not unpleasant by any means. Aftertastes were light and range from smoked meat to dark honey, fading into unripe stone fruit. Bitey in the throat later on.

The most notable quality of the tea for me was a moderate warming/cooling effect in my chest. The energy was felt in my facial muscles and I also had this weird wrinkled-nose dog smile going on which made me laugh a little. Definitely feels like a post-dinner drinker for me.

I think this tea might be best for someone with proper storage to keep it aging along and to keep the astringency and sourness in check. Makes me wonder what higher humidity would do. Seems like a pretty average aging sheng but might turn into something a little more interesting in several years.

I got this with the tea club, and have tried it 3 times so far, with 3 very different experiences.

1st session: Drank it with a friend who’s not really into pu, didn’t take great notes. Mostly I remember that I thought it was fairly bitter during the sip, with a fairly sweet aftertaste.

2nd session: This was after I broke it up and left the bag sitting open airing out in my super dry apartment for weeks, then sealed the bag up again and forgot about it for weeks more. It smelled wonderfully fruity, like roasted red grapes and peaches, but the taste was sour plum with emphasis on the sour, some surprisingly unpleasant bitterness (I usually like bitter!) and astringency, and a sort of gross vomitous note that made me stop after the 4th steep.

3rd session: This was after I let it sit in my new pumidor (a plastic tub with some 62% boveda packs) for a while. And oh, wow, it’s really lovely now. The flavor is all plums and resinous incense, in varying proportions. There’s some sweetness in the throat afterwards, some dryness/astringency in the mouth (but fairly mild, totally fine by me), and some lingering plum breath. There’s more roughness in the back of the throat in later steeps as the intense flavors start to wind down, but it remained solidly enjoyable overall. Which I would never have predicted! I’m honestly not sure why I even tried it again, but I’m so glad that I did.

I think the moral of this story for me is that storage matters even in the short term.

Nice enough sheng, but a bit boring. Bitterness is at a nice level, but the astringency is crazy! Mouth is dry for hours afterwards. The aroma displays hints of what could develop into a nice aged flavour, but I feel the storage might have been a little too dry here. Would not buy this myself, but it might be to other peoples taste.