2007 Aged Raw Puer Tea (Basics Set)

A strong flavor and medium body with first notes of smoke and leather. I do not like these types of flavors at all so this tea was not for me, but I think whiskey fans might appreciate the profile.

A pretty strong tea that kept producing flavorful infusions for a long time. The tea has some astringency and the flavor profile leans towards earth, leather, books and the like. Nice bitterness which sits in the mouth for quite some time.

Strong, medium heavy and balanced with hints of wood but very astringent.
Images and more at https://puerh.blog/teanotes/2007-basic-aged-w2t

Wet Leaves: musty old books, leather, dried apricots, camphor, baking spices. Nothing smells quite like a middle-aged sheng <3.

Early Steeps: Brews up a bright orange, surprising bitterness develops into a fruity, leathery flavor that is already lingering on my tongue.

Middle Steeps: Flavors deepen, brews becoming more astringent. Fruitiness is starting to dissipate.

Tail End: Flavors faded pretty quick. by steep 7 or so there wasn’t much left but bitter water.

Verdict: Tasty middle-aged sheng that peters out relatively quickly. I’m biased to sheng of this age, but I still feel like this is the strongest cake in the basics set.

Breaking off 7g for my ~80ml gaiwan was pretty easy with this cake. I managed to get mostly whole leaves. Dry leaf smells faintly apricot sweet and just a bit musty. In the warm gaiwan, it smells of lightly smoky, maybe grilled, apricot. After a rinse, the gaiwan lid smells of musty books and the wet leaves have a mulling spice aroma to them.

I typically prefer younger shengs but I do came back to this mini-cake quite often. It’s smooth and hits the spot when I don’t feel like drinking a more recent production.

The first steeps of this tea yield a pretty cloudy, amber ale colored brew. It’s immediately sweet with some mild bitterness and a hint of smoke. The apricot that the young teas in the sample set have is still present but the harsher characteristics of the tea have mostly aged out. The bitterness and smoke leave pretty quickly – it only takes a couple steeps before the smooth character of this tea reveals itself. There’s still some slight astringency but it’s accompanied by a decent salivation effect.

Into the later steeps, the tea continues to mellow out and the astringency fades in and out. Some sweet minerality makes an appearance in the last half of my steeps. It’s an easy to drink, tasty tea with pleasing semi-aged character throughout.

From the Beginner’s Pu’erh TTB.

Brewed with a ceramic gaiwan. Steeping times 2 x five, 5 x five, 8, 10, 10, 15, 18, 20, 30, 45; 1 min, 2, 4, 10.

The dry leaf on its own smells of tobacco, clove and fennel; resting in the heated gaiwan bowl, of fresh leather and red grapes. The wet leaf aroma evolves throughout the session. Beginning: grassy and muscatel. Middle: tobacco-y, smoky. End: very grape-like.

The soup color starts off as light orange but is deep yellow by the end. Thick texture; creamy at certain points. Cup 1 is very bitter, tasting of sour smoke. 2 through 7, unexpectedly, taste like smoked salmon. I need a bagel and cream cheese to go with this!

After this, there is a turning point: a grape note appears with menthol, replacing the salmon. Feels cooling in the mouth. The soup continues to become sweeter and fruitier. No more bitterness. At cup 16, the grape note is traded with apricot, and the menthol stays as an aftertaste.

The last of the Basics set! I finally get to try an aged sheng. :) This cake has the darkest leaves so far, and the leaves (both dry and wet) have a musty aroma so you can definitely tell it’s aged. The tea brews up darker in colour than the others, more amber than yellow/gold. That musty note is definitely there – not the wet earth / forest floor impression that I get from shu puer, but something that reminds me more of old books, like the smell of a second hand bookstore. In early steeps, there are hints of that fresh zingy quality from the fresh sheng, but muted and smoothed out. It has a definite coating sensation in the mouth and throat, but that is also smoother and gentler than in the other cakes. It’s a bit warming in the stomach, and makes me feels relaxed. In later steeps, the bitterness and astringency ramps up, more similar to the younger teas, but the musty, aged quality is still there. There is a bit of sweetness or something in the aftertaste, but I don’t really get any fruitiness from this one at all. The back of my throat feels really coated, but my cheeks don’t feel all dried out from the astringency. I’m starting to get that mineral flavour that I remember from later steepings of the fresh sheng as well. Neat.

In conclusion, this “intro to puer” tasting set has been super interesting and lots of fun. I definitely recommend it for any puer beginners out there. :)