2006 Yi Pin Tang "Menghai Lao Shu" Ripe Puerh Tea Cake

I purchased this tea from YS a few weeks ago and have only good things to say about it. Its a large cake for the budget minded. Being aged for 11 years, all funk is gone and i drink the wash. I have pushed it to 20 steeps (although 12-15 is about the cutoff depending on leaf to water ratio). Nice smooth and mellow sweetness with very slight cave aroma notes. Dark chocolate creeps in after a few steeps and diminishes after several more leaving a very smooth, sweet, dark amber liquor. It doesnt really punch you in the face, but its a great daily drinker for the price. I use 14 grams per 200ml water (in between fish eyes and raging torrent", in a 250ml duan ni clay pot. works for me and would highly recommend at least trying it out.

Question? Does your mood affect your tea experience?
Generally I wake up in the morning in a good mood, I am grateful for a new day and looking forward for what the day will bring. Today, however, I was feeling a little off – I didn’t want to speak and I just wanted to be left alone – don’t talk to me husband, don’t purr at me cat, stop following me around the house dog, ugh. I was feeling pretty damn grumpy. So grumpy that I actually sat staring at the wall and contemplated for quite some time about having a tea session. I finally decided on having some tea and decided to try one of the newer teas I recently purchased.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased an 11 year old puerh — which is the oldest tea in my collection – 2006 Yi Pin Tang “Menghai Lao Shu” Ripe Puerh Tea Cake – I am really trying to explore the world of ripe puerh and have been starting out with ripe puerhs older than 5 years. My thought in purchasing this tea and others was also to explore not only the age but to figure out if these price points were truly worth the investment for my tea drinking overall? Does price truly matter? (A topic I plan to explore later down the line.)

But back to this Menghai Lao Shu cake, I have to say that this first session was very uneventful. And I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that it was my mood. Not to say there aren’t bad teas or that my taste buds just ain’t feeling this particular batch – but I am telling you at this time it was the worst tea I had ever had. I was not impressed and I found it hard to touch on any flavor profile or aroma.

The flavor took quite some time for me to pull together – all I could think was it tastes like “storage” – like it has sat in a cardboard box in the back of a closet for years?!?! Which it probably has. Then eventually, after 4 steeps I got hints of wet wood — Still not something I was feeling at all. The aroma was of cardboard – dry leaf to wet leaf…I was not getting anything more than cardboard.

So again I wonder was this my experience due to my mood at the time. Will this change the next time I have a session with this tea? My hope is that it will, but I am definitely taking notes of this first session with this tea and will make sure the next time I sit with this I am in a better mood, and see what differences may come of it…..

Fingers crossed for a better experience next time around. To Be Continued…..

Instantly became one of my favorite shou chas in my cupboard. It’s in league with Green Miracle by Yunnan Sourcing and Brown Sugar by White2Tea, for sure, but it cuts differently in flavor profile, being a bit more mellow and hanging on just a bit to the fermented character, being a bit woody and earthy but certainly sweet and clean. This tea produces many steepings out past a dozen. I find it a bit hard to fairly classify specific flavor notes, but if I had to select an ideal weather for this tea, it’d be 50-60ºF and raining while the other shous I listed might be more well suited to more wintry weather. Great value for money, possibly besting the cost effectiveness of the aforementioned YS and W2T puerhs.

It is odd how you can drink a tea for a second time and get a completely different result. This time I found it was bittersweet at the start with notes of dark chocolate. After about four steeps this bitterness went away and a sweet note began to emerge. There was a little fermentation taste to this tea but not too much. It still needs five more years to clear. I am not sure how to describe the sweet note I tasted in the end, not quite fruity but almost. Overall this was a very good tea.

I steeped this twelve times in a 130ml gaiwan with 10.7g leaves and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 minutes. Judging by the color of the tea in the twelfth steep I would say there were another four to five steeps left if I wanted to continue.