90

OK well… this is a weird tea. Remember, I’m new to different types of pu.

This tea is one of the best shous that I’ve ever drank except that its a sheng!! Here’s the story.

I am a shou lover and still working on the sheng lover side. I got a sampler from Crimson Leaf which included this sheng. The first cup I made, I realized that I grabbed the wrong tea because there’s no way a sheng is this dark, with this earthy of an aroma. So I checked the wrapping and it was definitely a sheng. I wrote a comment on a tea forum stating that if all aged shengs were like this… I was an aged sheng lover!!! A nice gentleman from that forum sent me several samples of old shengs to explore and I"m taking my time with them. The first gifted sheng I tried tasted like a sheng to me with a green fresh flavor and light yellow liquor. I tried a sheng that was older than this sheng and it steeped the same: light greenish liquor with a grassy taste. So I realized that I messed up and went back to this 2003 Changtai sample, made another batch of tea and again drank one of the best tasting shous that I’ve had. I started wondering if maybe the wrong tea was placed in the wrapper so I contacted Glen at CLT to ask and he assured me that it was a sheng. All I had to do was read the description on the website… so I bought two tuos to enjoy.

Glen also stated that aged sheng is supposed to taste like this, which sort of makes sense as the wodui fermentation process for shou is intended to make shou imitate aged sheng. However, I have yet to taste another aged sheng that comes close to the taste of this sheng. Hopefully the tuo tastes as good as the sample and I can find more aged sheng as good as this one.

I’ll add more comments on flavor when drink from the tuo.

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I’ve been drinking tea for a long long time. Mostly loose leaf as it let me determine how much tea I wanted to brew. I like my tea strong and have been having a hard time accepting that short steeps are a good thing. Just got into gongfu cha style of brewing and am focusing on puer (real stuff not the stuff that I’ve been drinking for 20 years that I thought was puer). I really appreciate the fermented teas, such as shou puer and xei chas.

My ratings… well I don’t think I’ll ever give a tea a 100. If I do give a tea a 100, you won’t be able to buy it as I’ll have gone out and bought all of it before writing the review. LOL. An 85 to me is a tea that I appreciate, has good value, I’d buy again. Anything more than 85 is better tea… anything lower than 85 is well not better tea.

I’m also a scotch drinker and while there are so many similarities one could make between drinking scotch and tea (especially puer) the one big difference I’ve learned is once a 2013 tea is sold out… well you’re not getting anymore. A 10 year old single malt from your favorite distillery will be available just about always.

My tea pet peeve…. all the different spellings for puer. So I’ve given up and am just calling it pu. It’s what I do.

Location

Central Ohio

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