Official Pu of the day

[Frisbeehead]

Drinking the Spring 2015 Daqing Gushu from Yunnan Sourcing. Bought this cake last year, haven't cut into this cake too much yet. Every time I've had it I've enjoyed it - light, aromatic, floral, nice body, a little sweet, with a bit of astringency. Aftertaste lingers in the mouth quite a bit, not so much in the throat. I wonder if this would be a good one to keep in the pumidor to age. It is a bit light, and it's definitely enjoyable to drink now, but I'd like to see how it ages. Instead of buying another one to age, I'll probably just refrain from drinking it too often and keep it in the pumidor. But we'll see, still in the process of figuring out the inside of my pumidor in terms of what to keep in there for long-term, what new cakes I want to add, etc.

Jay, as soon as I have the money my next purchase will still be that 03-05 7542 you have on your site. Traveled too much recently and that's led to a cut in my tea purchases, but hoping to fix that soon. Itching to try some new stuff.

[jayinhk]

Drinking some of a sample of 2005 CNNP 7581 I received in person from BitterLeafTeas last year. The best example of this recipe I've seen on the western market, and at a good price. Chocolate and date flavors dominate with no storage/fermentation funk or camphor. I often point newbs to BLT's 7581 for this reason since it shows you what shou can be if aged correctly.

[Nate_L]

Sampled the 2017 version of Poundcake by White2Tea. one of the sweetest young raw puerhs I've had in awhile. While the main profile is sweetness, it got pretty complex in later steeps, dried fruits, hay, clean wood notes ( Tree bark maybe? ) while remaining pretty thick until steep 8 or 9.

[Frisbeehead]

Just started up a session of the Tejipin from YQH, a tea I haven't had in a little over a year. I was on a sort of hiatus over the past year, but now that I'm settled back home and school has started again, it's back to the old tea routine. I haven't bought any new teas recently, so I've just been revisiting teas that I haven't had in a while. After all the traveling I'm on a pretty tight budget, so no new cakes for a while. But it's good to be back

[fdrx]

EOT bulang '12:
https://medium.com/@fdrx/eot-bulang-2012-331834969607

[Rui]

2007 Jingmai sheng from Terre de Ciel in France. Just like the 2006 tea this one is now sweet with very clean storage characteristics.

[fdrx]

i wanted to compare this naka with a leftover of douji naka '09 brick, but it's pointless.. the douji is everything but delicate and pure, everthing but subtil and smooth... It also has some herbal and minty notes (and a bit of everything actually) and gives a good slow huigan but... no... not today ^^
i'm going to grind some super fresh castillo & caturra beans instead...

[fdrx]

Qilinhao naka '12 (sample) :

0/ rince: the wet leaves smell cat urine, red fruits and smoke
1/ the texture is extremely silky/milky... dominant cat urine flavour and some good distant smoke, the whole gives a herbal & slightly fruity aftertaste... dry tea.
2/ wet leaves: cat piss all the way... taste: hints of milk, then herbal, then cat piss. Very astringent. The texture is not so silky anymore (because of the astringency). When the soup is cold it's totally herbal with some minty notes. Slow & distant sort of huigan that transfroms the herbal notes into a slightly sour and fruity cat piss flavour... aftertaste is like before. Truely performant aroma persistency. oddly the gaiwan lid smells vanilla... very dry... there is some energy and at least some clear mind energy, but for some reason it can't focus on that today. heaviness in the stomach...
3/ it's thick and very much herbal with a hint of milk and some quiet mint, then comes the cat piss along with some sour tobacco (i think) that gives depth. There's still a touch of noble smoke too. some cooling effects that last. no much change in the herbal & fruity aftertaste and still lots of aroma persistency
4/ Very thick and i'm clearly feeling drunkness. there's a more defined fast huigan now that gives some herbal brown sugar. top taste is herbal, some leather... Length has mint, some good sourness... super astringent...
long lasting aftertaste

I'll go back to that later, i'm feeling tea drunk, i can't tell if it's only because of the tea though. So far i'm enjoying the tea a lot, and i started this session with zero hope given the lack of interest i had yesterday for their bing dao, which is clearly a blend.

5/ It's the astringency that was hiding the texture of the soup: it is indeed super silky...
still herbal and now with some more obvious brown sugar right after, the taste is savory too, i'm really enjoying the character of that tea, and i can understand why it's sold out, unlike their supposed-to-be lbz & bingdao...
6/ becoming wetter, good shengjin... some reminiscences of "that" taste in the aftertaste... the durability seems more than honorable..
...

[fdrx]

starting the day with the wangong '10 that still has plenty of flavors and decent sweetness and aftertaste to offer. It's good for the morning, although it is still very dry, fortunately this dryness does not last forever.
The hypnotic qi is more obvious than yesterday, and takes me by surprise...

[fdrx]

YS wangong autumn '10:

0/ pale and purple-orangy broth, pasty water, i throw that rinse away.
1/ the broth is orange. The wet leaves smell leather, grape, with a hint of cooking oil.
lengxiang has an appealing vinager. Some seducing yet non-invasive sour leather/grape aromas start filling the room.
It tastes quite bitter, not dark chocolate bitterness like bulangs can be, but surprisingly bitter. It is thin. the length blooms almost immediatly, the aftertaste will have lots of depth. Medium sweetness. It delivers some fast but short cooling effects in the mouth, somewhat above standards. Some bitterness settles at the back of the mouth. So far it's dry: the astringency easily wins the game against the saliva, only the tip of the tongue will escape.
Very nice houyun that stay deep in the throat, it's been quite some time since i'm having some good little retro-olfactive sensations.
2/ still quite watery, the bitter taste is slightly less intense.
3/4/ The mouthfeel is now thicker and pretty textured. the tea is still dry; it's becoming to taste rich and delicious. Sweetness is pretty low, no real huigan. The length is complex with some bitter-wood & tobacco layers and perhaps even smoked notes, top/mid taste has a sort of sophisticated sour mint along with a distant floral note and mushrooms, and it's becoming more vegetal at round 4. Some of that good sourness will remain and help promoting the salivation a little. The aftertaste has several kind of tobacco layers i would say. The whole is not 2d at all.
5/ (perhaps 6...) that was not a continuous session, and i've pushed the tea, so it's already starting to be less interesting. Regarding the energy there was something perhaps hypnotic, but nothing crazy.
...
The tea was lazy at the beginning but it ended providing what i was looking for.

[fdrx]

jianshen xigui '12 tuo:

aromatic dry leaves, they smell leather and brioche, you want to eat a piece
0/ the wet leaves smell red currant jelly, leather&mint
the first cup has a spearmint top taste, then comes some hay or grass.. fast huigan, sweet and minty flavours in the mouth but no much cooling effects.
1/ and 2/ now the wet leaves smell very much floral (i was wrong for the red currant?), there is still some of that minty leather. it's oily, the bitterness is weak, the taste is very slightly sour. The soup has mainly a floral flavour, and a hint of grass... unfortunately i'm not really able to describe that floral component accurately but i believe it is something between orchid and lily... when the soup gets cold is tastes more like spearmint tea... fast huigan and you can follow its move easily. The aftertaste has that floral component, leather, spearmint; in fact the sweetness is pretty low. It's a bit like raw mango actually and it's also slightly spicey. A bit of astringency and salivation at the time.
The floral aroma persistency is really impressive, it's still very present after a long while, not just a past yun.
I can feel some energy that affects the head and give stoney feelings
3/ i forgot i was brewing, and for a long time... but the bitterness disapears as soon as it enters the mouth, so to speak.. that floral element is still very much dominant.
...
lily, spearmint, leather, length and qi

[jayinhk]

90s 7581. Bought in Taiwan two years ago when the smell coming off the brick was just too enticing. It sprung back into life in HK and started tasting alive (it brought out a hint of fermentation flavor), but the sweetness and date aromas returned. It still tastes alive now but has smoothened out and softened and sweetened over two years. I bought the brick on a cool January day in Taiwan and it'll be interesting to see what this tea is like this winter. Right now it is better than when I bought it, but with a slight funk from active aging since it's summer here and this tea is most certainly alive!

[fdrx]

Quanjihao manzhuan autumn '11 mini-brick:
clean & transparent broth, the wet leaves smell something floral & licorice root
Drinking this tea is like drinking hot water with a floral top taste, a milky mid one, and some herbaceous base. The floral element is not a high floral one, it's subtle like these big flowers that smell almost nothing
After sipping, a sweet aftertaste emerges from nowhere and coats the mouth progressively, and for a long while, that sweetness comes along with some of the floral note. low astringency, low bitterness, little shengjing, pretty flavourless but good huigan.

[fdrx]

xiaguan baoyan mushroom '08:
quick grandpa session. It's basically red tea and wood, like oak barrel or something like that
decent woody aftertaste that lasts a while and has some fruity notes
it's not bad at all, but in the red tea competition i find some darjeeling second/autumn flush more interesting than that

[fdrx]

XZH '11 zhangjiawan mini brick:
compared to the yibi it is less fruity and has more tobacco. This one has also some classic yiwu flavors, they show up faster. It is perhaps very slightly more red, not sure though, but the biggest difference is that this one comes with an elegant and fairly present sourness. The aromas are also much more sour.
The huigan behavior is similar for both, the length is pretty weak here too, but the aftertaste starts with more depth (less than the mahei) and it leads to a lasting and obvious sweet houyun. The mouthfeel is more persistent, there's a little shengjin here.
The soup is slightly oilier in the mouth. It looks less durable, maybe not, i will not check that tonight.
I like its sourness even if maybe it makes it feel less dynamic, but it is also quite unique and nice. This one has more nobility, i like both.