Menghai Tea Factory (Mandala Tea)

Brews a dark coffee brown. So sweet, rich and delicious! Hard to describe but completely smooth and mellow.
The last of a sample from a tea friend last year – thank you for sending this – I loved it!

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This delicious shu offers a very pleasant mix of flavors – dates, spices and a gentle woodiness. The first two cups are dominated by a nice earthiness but the sweetness, fruitiness and spiciness build quickly throughout the following infusions. No fermentation flavors at all. Very warming cup which is full of complexity throughout the tea session. Solid longevity – good for many resteeps ( I enjoyed eight flavorful cups today). This session reminded me that Menghai Dayi definitely offers many smooth and rich shu puer productions.

This classic Menghai Dayi blend is a lighter fermentation shou and considered a standard setter. It does a good job of delivering on the typical characteristics of the well known Dayi factory shous – blend of larger and smaller leaves and pieces, dark reddish brown tea soup, appealing smooth and mellow sip with rich flavor, woody sweet aftertaste, good durability for resteeps. Already six years of aging but it has the strength of character to continue to improve with age.

I had a really nice session with this last night. The sweet date/raisin notes are nice, and the Shou is smooth. I got more sweetness from smelling the lid of my gaiwan! I really like this one, but the cake is so tightly compressed, it’s intimidating. I broke more off than I needed last night just so I wouldn’t have to next time. It was kind of therapeutic, ha!

This is probably the oldest puerh I’ve tried so far. It had such great reviews and was very affordable, so I picked up a cake in my last order. It comes beautifully packaged…almost didn’t want to break the seal and keep it that way like my husband likes to do with some of his collectors items. I used to think that was ridiculous, but I can see it now (don’t tell him!). ;)

I had a really rough time picking pieces off this cake to brew….and yes, there was blood, from my little pinky! I also ripped the nice paper! Nooo! Note to self: get a puerh breaking tray.

This brews up super dark. The minute I poured water over the leaves I got this hit of sweet raisin in the aroma! Ooooh!

The taste is smooth and dark and the sweet raisin/date notes come in at the end of the sip in the aftertaste. Yum!

Definitely more dominant sweetness of raisin and dates in the 5th steep. So good. Very glad to have this in my cupboard, but I’m a little scared for my next cake breaking session!

another day….another puerh. :) This one comes from Boychik I chose this one to drink today, while i putter around the house getting ready for this afternoon’s meet up. Bonny is visiting here so a few of us are getting together this afternoon to hang out. :)

So far this has been a really smooth journey. This isn’t BOLD, in your face sort of puerh…it’s a mellow, soothing, relaxing sort of drink. more to come likely once i get home.

Delicious shou! Completely funk-free with some nice raisin notes. Very nice stuff :)

This tea was pretty good, as to be expected from a Dayi shou. I used 8g in my 185 yixing for a nice since I wanted a strong tea this Sunday morning. Strong dark liquor, almost black (I love it when a shou comes out dark black!) with notes of leather, raisin, cocoa, and perhaps a little sawdust (or at least the texture was reminiscent of sawdust in some way, maybe not the taste… I don’t want that to sound bad as sawdust is not particularly yummy lol). I noticed a little cooling on the mouth after drinking which lingered for a few minutes, and not terribly strong qi but present. I probably didn’t like it as much as others here but it is a good tea.

Yummy yummy. Menghai makes some good tea.

I tell you what, I think this might be the best Shou I’ve tasted so far. There’s different kind of Shou for different kind of folks.

For me, this is what I like. No funkiness, very little wood, slight hit of sweetness, smooth and creamy.

Wet leaves are just like freshly polished shoe leather. You get a little bit of that in the flavor. Cake is real tight but I got off a nice couple chunks with a knife.

This is all good and a quality product from Mandala.

YUM! boychik has sent me some of the best shus!

This one is smooth and SWEET. It is lightly earthy and has a dark fruity note floating around. I did a long-ish steep and I’m really enjoying the bold flavor :)

Thanks to mrmopar for this sample. It’s a mellow and woody tea with a hint of cinnamon. The liquor is rich and dark, like coffee. There is some earthiness there, and no off flavours at all. I would say that this is a very comfortable tea to drink, and I have been very comfortable drinking it since yesterday.

I believe Bonnie wrote the definitive tasting note on this one two years ago. As I was writing my own review for my blog I kept noticing how nearly identical my experience was to hers – minus the sexy dating analogy (wow, hot stuff). For me this was a necessary session to overcome yesterday’s over indulgences. Way over did it. This one helped calm the stomach and left me with a pleasant calming peace that was remarkable spiritual like. I have never thought to actually use puerh in my private devotion time but maybe I will give it a go one day soon. Anyway, starts mellow with mineral, cedar, and horse tack notes. Blossoms later with bold flavors of browned cedar and horse tack. Then drifts back into more mellow but pronounced mineral and cedar, and ending with pleasant leather notes. Excellent cha qi.

I have spent the past few days drinking this tea and I have enjoyed it. The dry leaf is musky with camphor notes, while the liquor is mellow and dark with hints of cedar and allspice. It is a warming tea and one to keep you going on a cold winter’s night (or through the endless travails of revision, as I am doing at the moment).

A solid little cake. Nice full body, deep fermented taste. A touch of bitterness disappears after a few infusions. I have the 2009 and 2010 versions as well, only tried the 2009 so far and it is at least as good. It seems like these are pretty dependable cakes for a good price. Lots of infusions so it is a good deal. I got mine from tuocha.com.

Today I “broke open” a new cake – the cake compression is heavy so I struggled to get it started. I ended up with tiny, tiny chunks and a bit of tea dust. Taste is rather smooth with no real astringency. Flavor not that distinctive – think I might have overleafed this time. Plan to turn these next few infusions into iced tea to drink in a day or two. Another time I’ll try breaking off another chunk from the cake and start over with the gaiwan so I’ll save my rating for later.

I figured since i was having purple rhyme today, i’d have red rhyme along side it just for kicks. this one is different from the other puerhs i’ve enjoyed from mandala…it’s smoother almost. more to come as i go through more steeps

Finishing off my sample of this, swiped from the Here’s Hoping teabox!

Man, being sick sucks, but my yixing pot is loving it! I’ve been steeping pu’er for like 3 days and the pot isn’t flavor sucking now. My yixing pot is having a grand time spending time with me, with the other pots getting all jealous.

Man, this is good, I could buy more of this pu’er. Maybe next Mandala order!

Oh man, this is good!

I snagged this tea out of the Here’s Hoping Teabox. This pu’er is really mellow with a sweet cedar taste end of sip. There is a lingering aftertaste of earthy that is really good. No fermentation taste, not mushroomy or smokey. I could be convinced to buy a cake of this, crap, and I just did a Mandala order too. Oh well, next order then.

My husband (he doesn’t like tea) said this one tastes like overly strong chinese restaurant tea. LOL

This is not the first time I’ve drank this, or even the 2nd, but apparently it is the first time I’m logging it here. It is very nice, with flavors of semolina & perhaps a dark dried fruit, like raisins or prunes. It’s very smooth, a nice depth to it, & doesn’t have any of the compost pile flavors that some Puers feature. It’s a little late at night for me to be drinking tea, but I’ve had a busy couple of days & I feel that I deserve some Shu, plus it doesn’t ever seem to keep me up, so I’m enjoying my last cup (steep # 8, I think).

BUM BUM BUM! Another one bites the dust! That’s right, this is the end of the end of my cake of Red Rhyme.

I made it Bonnie style, steeping a pot of hot puerh, putting the leaves in a glass glass container and cold steeping for several days, and drinking it over ever all more. So refreshing and delicious!

But now it is gone! Many thanks to Garrett and mrmopar for their assistance last year when I placed my “big” puerh order! It will soon be time for another…

Pi Day is also my birthday so we have been celebrating! LOL! Well, it is probably a lot more subdued than most people’s celebrations, but that’s how we roll. Hubby took me out for steak, and although I love it, I rarely eat red meat. We have been eating a lot of vegetarian meals lately, we always have but we have increased it over the past few months. I knew I wanted to have puerh tonight just to make sure my tummy stays happy.

My cake of Red Rhyme is almost fully depleted now. I think I will be able to make this one more time. I made four steeps of 22 ounces each with what I broke off the cake tonight, and my hubby and my son and I drank it while playing game after game of Dominion.

Even though I had chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting AND filling – with strawberries on the side – after dinner, my tummy isn’t complaining. Oh, and there was buttered and seasoned popcorn during Futurama as well.

Even the fourth steep was plenty dark. Each steep was four minutes because we like a good strong puerh when it is high quality and not fishy. This one had a clean, slightly metallic or mineral fresh taste tonight that kept me pushing my cup to hubby for more.

I told him we are getting quite low on puerh, but he assured me that he knew there were ways to make more appear. LOL!

I chose this tea for an experiment today. The first company I ever ordered puerh online from was purepuer.com. My husband noticed that they were going to be on NPR and tuned in. Later, I went on their website to look around some more.

I found a video there and discovered that they are selling chia seeds and recommend combining them with puerh. I bought some chia last time I was at Whole Foods in Raleigh, so I gave it a shot. My son joined me for a big mugful.

I made two steeps western style of this puerh, three minutes each. I stirred in about two teaspoons of chia. That may not have been enough, as it didn’t float like the ones I saw in the health food store, but mostly sank to the bottom. Still, there were a few in the bottom of each cup of tea that I drank.

My son really liked the tea, and didn’t mind the chia. I found the tea to be just as hearty and smooth as ever, really dark and earthy. I don’t mind the chia but I think I might enjoy it more another way, like just mixed in with my granola.

I made seven steeps of this tea tonight! I pried off about a teaspoon of leaf and put it in my eight ounce porcelain pot. This was infused three times and poured into a larger pot. The fourth steep was poured directly into our cups and was the first steep we actually drank. Hubby remarked right away at the strength of the tea. Amazing for a fourth to taste like it could be a first steep.

We drank the whole pot of tea after that, and I really wanted more. I went back to the kitchen and made steeps five, six, and seven, once again combining them into a larger pot. (We were watching Lord of the Rings.)

The seven steep at last shows some lessening of color so I stopped there, and we have finished off the last three steeps now. These leaves have had a good run.