2012 Yunnan Sourcing Zhu Peng Zhai

Quick rinse and the smell is very bright grassy with camphor. Mellow liquid, sweetness already. Nice quiet first steep, still pretty compact since I didn’t break up the chunk. 2nd steep has mild bitterness, nice astringency, and a pretty nice texture. Tasting rice and dried grass. 3rd has growing bitterness but still low astringency. Increasing grassiness, still tastes more like dried grass than bright fresh grass. Some mineral. VERY nice body, one of the more interesting shengs I’ve had, texturally. 3th steep is very creamy and thick and sweet. Less grassy now, more rooty and mushroomy. 4-6th still good. 7th and 8th getting sweeter and slightly more boring but still has awesome body and full flavor, just flatter.

Real good. Awesome price. Will cop a cake for sure.

I started drinking this and thought to myself: Dangit, another one of the $90 cakes that I really like.

Then I looked at YS’s website and saw this is $37/400g… WHAT? You want to talk about a steal, wait for YS production sale and buy a full cake. This stuff is getting viscous and it leaves a trail of sweetness which is different than its toddler aged raw puerh taste going in.

Daily drinking material for sure!!!

This was a fairly nice sheng. There was some bitterness buy not much. There was a little tobacco in the first infusion but none in the second. It seems to have lost the taste of apricots but still had some sweetness to it. Overall this was good. Didn’t get much qi off of it, maybe a little. There was a certain amount of astringency to this tea.

I steeped this ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 8.8 g leaf and 190 degree water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min.

Getting this one out after having it a while. I am surprised I haven’t logged it yet.
I got out 9.9 grams to start with. I know a little off what I normally brew. I finally retired the old scale to the grand son for one that has a back-light to it.
I gave it a quick rinse and a wait of about 15 minutes to wake up a bit.
The first brew was about 5 seconds. The color is looking promising as it is getting closer to a light gold color. It has a heavy tobacco note in the initial sip. This one tends to hit the middle of the tongue. Some are at the tip or the end but this is at the middle.
Taken in small sips this tea is almost viscous. There are some subdued sweet notes in there but this is quick on the Ku Wei. I guess some would say its a bit astringent as of yet. This one is near Mang Fei which is known for bitterness. This one leaves a nice proactive finish after the sips.
I bought this along with the Wu Jia Zhai and I look forward to comparing it to this.
$30.00 a cake makes it a bargain for me.