2019 Yunnan Sourcing "Ba Da Mountain" Ripe Pu-erh Tea Cake

This 2019 Ba Da Mountain ripe Puer from YS is an “older brother” to the 2020 material which I previously reviewed. It is very similar to the 2020, but not quite as complex in its flavors. YS’s description is pretty accurate. I really like it (which is good since I have a full cake of it).

I gongfu’d this session across 12 steepings of 30 seconds each, in succession, using hot alpine spring water well-off the boil (measured at 85°C), poured on 5g leaf in 3 ounce porcelain espresso cups (pre rinsed in the same water for 10 sec), using a stainless steel infusion basket. The earliest infusions were very dark brown liquors, lightening as I proceeded. See them all in the attached photo, going diagonally from left to right. You can see that a few jumped in intensity, because the wet leaf rested a minute between steepings as I heated more water (#6) and fetched more cups (#9). The flavor and aroma were remarkably consistent across all 12 infusions.

It is possible that additional flavors and slight bitterness might have been noticible had I used boiling water, as usual for Pu’erhs, but I was wanting to try and achieve a higher level of smoothness in this session. And I think it was successful in that! In the future I’ll go back to western-style steeping because the effort of all this just isn’t justified by the result (nevermind all the washing-up!)