This tea was part of a couple of puerh samplers my daughter gave me for Christmas. I’m not much of a ripe drinker, but enjoyed the opportunity to sample such an old tea.
After a 10 s rinse and 5 minute wait the tea tastes very much like a traditionally stored sheng. The primary taste is wet wood, but there is some camphor lurking in the background. I’m feeling a fairly good amount of cha qi as well. Color is also sheng-like: burnt sienna, without any reddish tinge. 2nd steep): Really nice wood/camphor aroma. Brown color. Taste is slightly sweet; camphor with some fruit. Really nice finish. Later in the cup, the taste is kind of earthy/dirty and I’m finding I don’t like it as much. 3rd and 4th steeps: nose is wet wood; taste not so much. Becoming sweeter, and slightly nutty. 6th (2 m): Soft and fruity. Very little wet wood. Bumped my score up a couple of points.
My overall impression was that the tea was very interesting, but that I got tired of the wet wood flavor very quickly. Fortunately, only two steeps were really dominated by wet wood, though it was present in the first 4 of 5 steeps. My rating went up and down in inverse proportion to the woody flavor. Since I was comparing this to an old sheng, I did some tasting of the W2T 90’s Hong Kong storage alongside this tea. I liked the HK flavor better because there wasn’t much of the wet wood, though this tea was quite a bit more interesting, and had less camphor.
