Mei Leaf

Brewed gong fu style in a gaiwan, 205F, 20 seconds initial infusion. Dry leaves heavy on the cherry notes. Gaiwan lid sniff after first infusion came back with cherry and toasted almond flavors. Very brisk and astringent in initial infusions, it mellowed out to a smooth, rich nuttiness over time. I probably could’ve gotten a couple more infusions out of it, but I felt myself hitting the caffeine wall.

Amazing thing about this tea is the aftertaste. An hour later, I’m still breathing through my mouth to savor it. It’s like walking though the woods in autumn, kicking up dead leaves with each step. This is the kind of tea you want to drink when you feel lonely, disconnected or anxious. It embraces you.

Spring 2017 harvest.

It is not often that I drink sheng as mao cha, in fact this is only the second time I’ve done so. As the ‘young’ in the name of this tea suggests, it is aimed specifically for drinking young, so I was very interest to try it out. Because of being targeted in such a specific manner, I’ll be evaluating it based solely on its merits right now without taking into consideration any aging potential like I would normally do.

I’ve had the open bag hydrating in my pumidor for a few weeks. That’s not necessarily as much time as I typically give other raws, but since this is aimed at immediate consumption one would expect it to perform at least adequately. I used 9.35g in my 140ml gaiwan and gave the leaves a ten second rinse followed by a ten minute rest. This was followed by nine infusions, the timing for which being 6s, 6s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s and 2 min. respectively.

I was very surprised by how light the first infusion was. It wasn’t necessarily weak, but the flavors were very light and thin. I’m not sure if the tea was actually watery per se, but the flavor profile at least was very close to water. There were some young sheng flavors present and the tea was hinting at bitterness and astringency without actually being there yet. At this point I wasn’t really sure what to think of the tea so far. The second steep was still very light, but not very pleasant. The tea was losing body now. Up to this point I’d been using my standard boiled water that I always use for sheng, but starting with the next steep I decided to switch to the vendor’s recommended 95°C to see what that does.

The change in temperature didn’t bring much change in the third steep. The tea was a bit softer, but it was starting to taste nasty to me, which can happen with some raw pu’ers this young. The taste was generally quite mineraly, with perhaps some very minor underlying sweetness. Once the tea cooled it started to taste bitter. The next steep didn’t bring much change. The taste was starting to be quite metallic albeit overall the tea was less nasty than before. Although subtle, I noticed some cooling in my airways as a result from this steep.

Sipping the fifth infusion, I noticed this tea doesn’t really have the green and astringent character often prevalent in young raws, but instead it features a dominantly mineraly character with a slight tinge to it that I personally find unappealing. After extending the steeping time a bit more for the sixth infusion, the tea now had a soft texture to it. Taste-wise it was virtually identical to the last steep. It did however have a slightly mood-elevating effect.

Pushing the tea again just a bit harder for the seventh steep, there was now finally some more body to the soup. While the tea was still very mineraly, I noticed that it was beginning to taste less nasty, or perhaps I was just starting to get used to the taste. The issue is that I’m not generally a very big fan of mineral tasting teas, so it wasn’t really doing it for me. The tea was however beginning to put me in an elevated yet calm state. I also started feeling some tingling at the back of my head and behind my ears.

The eighth steep was a lot thinner than I’d expected. It had an interestingly bright taste. While it was slightly metallic, it also hinted at perhaps some fruitiness and maybe even some slight sweetness. At this point the tea started to be a bit drying on the tongue. The ninth infusion was the last one I did. I perhaps pushed the tea a bit too far too early and the resulting soup tasted a bit nasty. It wasn’t that bad but still. Still, I decided to call it here. I’m sure the tea could have gone on for likely several more infusions, but I felt I’d seen enough and wasn’t interested enough to see what else the tea had to offer at this juncture. Strength-wise the tea was still going strong, so I expect it had many infusions in it still. I’ll be getting a smaller gaiwan (~60ml) very soon, which should make sessioning these teas a lot easier and faster. Hopefully for the next review I’ll already have it.

My thoughts on this tea are mixed. I didn’t really see much reason to be drinking it for the taste, but perhaps there’s a way to brew it that makes it tastier than the way I brewed it. The mouthfeel was rather disappointing for most of the steeps, but when pushed a little it did improve in a couple of the steeps. The longevity seems excellent, but the real saving grace for me is the calm, gentle qi. This tea doesn’t have any of the intense rushiness that many young gushus tend to have, instead it is very pleasant and subtle. I could still feel the tea affecting me some time after the session and the sensation was rather pleasant while it lasted.

I’m glad I didn’t abandon this one halfway through, but I don’t think the qi alone is enough to salvage the tea. Despite how it’s marketed, I am going to save the rest of the bag for later and give the tea a few more months before I try it again. I think at least right now the tea is rather dull, but perhaps I was expecting too much. Had this tea cost more per gram than it does or not had the qi, I would have given it a negative rating, but for now I’m rating it as barely neutral. Perhaps there’s a way to brew this tea that yields better results or perhaps it will improve with some more time in the pumidor. Either way, if I manage to brew this tea in a significantly different way, I will do a follow-up review. If not, then I won’t.

Edit: I’ve had another session with this tea and changed my rating from neutral to not recommended as a result. See the comment I’ve left below for more.

An intense black tea with the taste of cooked apple, yellow wax beans, toffee and a hint of smoke.

Interesting but somewhat incoherent taste.

Nicely delicate but somewhat weak tasting tea.

A March 2017 harvest from Xinchang, Zhejiang. A deliciously fresh and somewhat savory green tea.

A beautiful fresh Tie Guan Yin.

A delicious and comforting black tea.

Beautiful complex but still coherent aroma with a long aftertaste.

Very mineral rich and interesting tea. Drinking this is like a roller coaster in your mouth!

Beautiful leaves with a pleasant but somewhat short taste

Very pleasant sheng puerh for a beginner. No bitterness, gentle astringency, fresh notes of hay and camphor. No complexity.
I’ve done many steeps, all were pleasant and refreshment.
I can highly recommend this tea both for a newbie to puerh world and experienced one whose quest is in fresh puerh in ‘green tea’ style

I heard a lot about this tea and was very curious to try it. So I ordered two packages. I tried a lot of different Long Jing teas before. Some directly from China, some from local distributors. Price range between 15 – 25 € per 100g. The tea from Meileaf is rather expensive.

The first steep was overwhelming. It was very distinct, very special, very tasty. Others talked about it already, nothing else to add. Highest leaf quality.
Disappointment comes at latest with the third steep. The taste disappears almost completely. This makes me wonder why? Is this tea scented?

This tea is not suited for long Gong Fu Cha sessions. Not only because it’s too expensive for only two steepings, it’s also very dissatisfying. This is the first tea I ever tried, that looses taste so quickly.

Upside: Very interesting nutty taste
Downside: Holds taste only for the first two steepings. Third steep, almost no taste at all.

Bottom line: I prefer high quality Long Jing teas, with a rather “normal” taste, but on a very high level, good leaf quality and a long lasting taste. This tea has an unsusual taste, you may like it. But he can’t hold it, which seems like a fraud.

So this is something a bit different: a roasted raw pu’er. At first I thought I was a bit too much of a purist to give this one a go, but ultimately the artwork compelled me too much; it’s just that fantastic. Originally I was just going to order a sample to start, but when it came time to place my order the samples were temporarily out of stock and I ended up just picking up a cake instead. That way I get to enjoy the artwork anyway.

Is this from Lao Man’e? Is it gushu? I. Don’t. Care. I don’t care. What I care about is quality and taste. If you can’t enjoy tea unless it’s absolutely from 300-year-old trees from Lao Ban Zhang, you may just stop buying tea. With that out of the way, let’s get to the tea itself.

The smell of the dry leaf is absolutely fantastic. Truly intoxicating. It’s really hard to grab hold onto any specific notes, but the best description I could come up with is this sort of burnt lemon scent. The scent in the preheated gaiwan is even more enchanting, reminding me more of lemon licorice. These small cakes are tightly compressed so you will have to use some force and you will end up breaking some leaves, but just aim to break off larger chunks which should make the few leaves you break negligible. The leaf quality looks good to me, with plenty of gorgeous buds.

I used 8.66g in a 130ml gaiwan, so a ratio of 1g/15ml. I’ll also note at this juncture that I haven’t been storing this tea in my pumidor, but instead been treating it like a roasted wulong and keeping it in the sealed ziplock bag it came in. Anyway, I gave the leaves my standard ten-second rinse followed by a rest between five and ten minutes. The wet leaf smell was shockingly different from the dry leaf aroma. Gone was the lemon and in its place was a dryer, dirtier super potent sharp aroma that reminded me of some sort of unpleasant food maybe made from leftovers or something. It was an interesting smell, but not necessarily very pleasant and sniffing it too much might give some people a headache. Fortunately this smell didn’t translate to the taste in any way.

I did a total of twelve steeps. Pay attention to these steep times, because they are not at all how I normally brew pu’er: 6s, 6s, 7s, 9s, 12s, 15s, 20s, 25s, 35s, 40s, 45s, 50s. Yes, twelve steeps and I never even got to a minute. This tea brews strong and like with Chaozhou style brewing every second counts. If you are new to gong fu style brewing or not confident in your ability to pour fast, I would absolutely recommend starting out with a lower ratio of leaf than I used. This will give you more room in terms of brewing the tea.

The first steep had a very light body. Right out of the gate the flavor profile was very interesting. Citrus fruit, specifically grapefruit, with a touch of sweetness in the finish. The note I got in the strong aftertaste was different and that of citrus zest to be specific. The second infusion had slightly more mouthfeel and felt perhaps even a bit oily. At this point it was already clear that this is a very nice tea. It is one you want to stop to savor and explore after taking just one sip. The grapefruit/citrus taste had developed and the overall taste was very complex and rich. Letting the tea cool down a little brings out a bit of a sour note, but it’s not a bad kind of sourness. The tea really coats your mouth and you can taste it long after finishing your cup.

For the third steep I extended the steep time by just a hair. The body remained quite light or maybe light+. The taste was immediately sour upon entering the mouth. I could also now taste the mineraly roast following the initial sourness. The grapefruit from before could now be found hiding in the aftertaste. In the fourth steeping the mineral taste was moved to the front joined by some sweetness, while the sour note moved to join the roasted note in the finish.

The fifth steep ended up being quite strong, but not overly so, just bold. The central flavor was still formed by a mixture of the sour note mixed with hints of the roast and citrus. The tea was almost refreshing in the same way that a green tea is, but it didn’t quite get there. My notes say, “Nice.” The sixth steep ended up being perhaps just a tad too light. This was accentuated by the flavors starting to become lighter in nature and the contrast to the boldness of the last infusion. I’m not saying this tea couldn’t be considered friendly towards newcomers in terms of taste, but this was a point where it started becoming noticeably more amiable. The tea was sweet, but in a subtle, elegant way, not in a bold, sugary manner at all. This was the first time when I could taste just hints of the typical young sheng character peeking through. My tongue was also left feeling just a tad astringent by this steep.

Despite the flavors themselves becoming lighter in character, the strength of the seventh infusion was fairly strong. It tasted sort of sweet, sort of sour, with maybe a hint of coffee bitterness in the finish. It is my thinking that the sourness and most definitely the coffee association come from the roasting. The oiliness made a small return in the eighth steep, with your tongue getting hit with a lot of roast when the tea entered your mouth. The finish was mineraly and it was sometimes possible to detect hints of the young raw flavor when swallowing. The tea tasted almost like a roasted green tea like hojicha, which makes sense. This is just my personal opinion, but I think the roast in this tea has been done really well. At this point I went to buy some groceries and I could taste it in my mouth for a long time.

I pushed the tea a bit too hard for the ninth steep by extending the steep time by ten seconds (the shock!). It ended up being quite strong, very pungent. The flavor reminded me of blood orange, but with some of your typical mineral sheng sweetness underneath. The tea wasn’t actually that overly pungent once you got used to it after a few sips. For the next steep I succeeded much better with the steep time. The tea was still strong, but the flavors were now starting to become thinner. Despite this, the brew was still very rich with much more complexity and depth than you usually see from most teas in their late steeps. The taste itself was sour, citric, maybe a bit mineraly. The roast was still there in the finish.

Steep number eleven was similarly quite strong. The flavors were becoming more simplified and some notes were starting to drop off, but the tea wasn’t one-note yet and still had multiple things going on. Grapefruit, roast, mineral. The flavor was bold and the balance between the notes good. The last steep I did was similar and still not quite one-note. You got the mineral and roast on the front and the citrus in the finish. The leaves could have probably steeped for god knows how much longer, but I think I’ve drunk enough tea to know when I’ve seen practically everything a tea has to offer and so I decided to stop here. If you wanted to get absolutely everything out of the leaves, I’d recommend tossing the leaves in your fridge around this point to see if you can make some nice iced tea out of them. I don’t personally practice this, but it’s worth considering instead of continuing with gong fu brewing.

And there you have it. This tea isn’t cheap, but I found it to be high quality and very unique. Perhaps most importantly it is perfectly ready to drink right now. I don’t even know if and how this tea would age and how you should store it. The strength, longevity and aftertaste are all exemplary and the flavors were enjoyable even to someone like me who isn’t necessarily the biggest fan of roasted teas or citrus. I think the roast complements the tea very well right now, but if you absolutely can’t stand tasting the roast in your teas, it should come down over time. A lot of young raw pu’ers in this price range aren’t in my opinion necessarily worth the price unless you intend to age them, but with this tea I would say that the price is reflected in the quality.

I definitely recommend giving this crazy tea a go while you still can!

Tried this the first time today. Too early to evaluate it and give my thoughts.

Lovely honey and fresh alfalfa hay taste. Rich, full mouthfeel. Soft floral notes in the aftertaste. A bit like drinking the sunshine in a little meadow. Holds up pretty well to higher temp brewing but can get a little dry. Cold brews like a dream!

I am a puer newbie, so for a newbie, this is a pretty neat puer. It tastes like apricots. It is an apricot hammer. Apricots and a little sugary sweetness. The finish is super long and sweet, and the body of the tea is quite thick compared to what I usually drink. I imagine it might be a little on the plain/boring side for a puer connoisseur as the taste doesn’t change much throughout the infusions. I did manage to stick with this tea for 10 infusions, and it seems to be pretty forgiving; it didn’t get bitter or dry on me until the end.