Changtai "Yi Chang Hao" 2003 Raw Pu-er Tea Cake of Yi Wu

This tea is disgusting. Literally tastes and smells like dirt. Not petrichor, mineral, earthy, damp wood, etc….no it is straight DIRT.

a little Chinese herbal licorice and some ginseng on the finish. Otherwise this is disgusting and I don’t often say that about a tea.

There is a whole story of a dystopian scenery going on in my imagination while drinking this unique aged fellow. There is always a certain similar aspect to wet stored and dried stored aged Shengs somehow. But this goes a different path one that leads us to the end of our modern days where nature takes over again. I imagine with grass, trees and o

ther plants covered streets where nature took back what once was theirs. Asphalt broken off with deep rifts all over the place where nature is breaking through. You can hear birds and other animals everywhere within those streets where only daylight brings some brightness between all this overgrown Buildings, street signs or former traffic lights. On one sight of the street hidden in shadows I discover an old from baroque times abandoned theater. The entrance door is covered with moss and soaked wet. Pushing this door nearly breaks it apart because of its withering condition. Inside you can smell a mixture of old with velvet covered benches row after row some quite good preserved, some overgrown by moss and some just soaked wet. Taking a glimpse at the ceiling a hug chandelier once shiny with all its crystals now covered with vines and other stuff nature spread its tentacles around. A wall on the the left totally collapsed and formed a small water stream leading into the building with some kind of a waterfall at the top of it which ends into a with water filled area which once were parts of the first rows thousands of people sat in watching plays from one area in history to the next. Now those seats and parts of the collapsed stage are sunken under water and only the upper parts here and there are to be seen on the surface of it. Birds build their nests in dark corners or overgrown parts of this majestic hall. You can hear their songs as once people heard complex composed classics within this venerable walls.

There are still those scents of those former glorious times within the atmosphere – of old wooden furniture, dusty camphor scenting curtains, worn out fabrics and watercolor painted stage designs. The atmosphere of countless evening premiers with actors waiting for their entrance while a scent of white make up covering their faces lies in the air. Those aspects are mixed flawlessly into a new natural wet soaked up woodsy moss atmosphere. This is a masterly example of how deep a tea can take you a long on a journey that’s not have been written yet.

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Got this tea as part of the “Guangdong-aged pu’er sampler” from Yunnan Sourcing in late 2017. 6g went into my favorite 90ml clay pot.

Delicious wet-aged sheng smells, a lot of smells of dried fruits and hints of a wet forest.

A quick rinse at 98C came out a delightly light orange, but right away the first 5s steeping gave a more rich, amber color. The smell became more intoxicating and perfume-y after the first steeping. Typical of pre-2006 Changtai productions, this manages to taste both dry and wet aged simultaneously.

Surprisingly, this tea passed the (literal) “mom” test with flying colors.

Stands up reasonably well to abusive brewing, with no bitterness that I could detect, just a “thinning” and less complexity of flavors. Short brews tend to be perfume-y, with dominates notes of dried fruit and some earthy tones while the longer brews seem to be dominated by dry woodiness alone.

The tea’s qi felt quite strong, mellowing but invigorating; although I also did not eat lunch.

I used mostly fannings at the bottom of my sample bag for this review, but the tea went for more than ten steepings with increasing long boiling steeps of up to minutes each in thick clay.