Puerhshop Tasting Group's "Pride of Menghai""

[Salsero]

Jagori broke open a tea that is included in the "Pride of Menghai" sampler kit (though he doesn't have the actual kit) so let's inaugurate that thread with his fine, pithy review:

Tonight's tea was the 2007 Menghai Jewel. It's in the Pride of Menghai sample pack, but there isn't a thread for it yet and I didn't order the pack, so I'll just post here.

This tea was light and fresh-tasting, and quite pleasant to drink. Somewhere around the 5th steep, it suddenly got sweet and floral, like I'd added honey and a bit of jasmine. The leaves cashed in shortly after that. A good tea for those times when I want pu-erh, but I'm not in the mood for the more intense ones. I'll probably buy it again when this cake is done, unless I discover a more complex but light pu-erh in the meantime.

[Dizzwave]

2006 King of Pu-erh Tea Cake
The dry leaves on the cake are long and flowing, like a fingerprint whorl.. I'm excited about this one. Dry leaves in warm pot smell nice and barnyard-y, like other shengs I've loved.
Wet rinsed leaves are equally inviting.
I used plenty of leaf.. they don't seem very dense, so I used lots of volume. My pot was overflowing with leaf by the 6th infusion.
Brew is a nice green/yellow/amber color. Flavor is delicious! Hard for me to describe -- just tastes to me like how a good sheng should. I think of it as a citrusy barnyard flavor with green tea undertones.
The unfurled leaves are big (not huge) and beautiful, criss-crossing inside my teapot, filling it to the top.
This one was going strong after many many steeps... I ended up taking the half-used leaves home for the night. They were too good to just dump them.

Would I buy this one? $29, hmmm.... tough call. Maybe, maybe not. It would probably be worth it, but I hesitate to spend more than $20 on a piece of tea unless it's *really* good. But that's just me.
Anyway, the tea is great. I give it 4 stars out of 5.
-dave

[Deleted User #17777]

Hi all;

I have been reading tea chat for a while and decided to go ahead and join after reading about the puerhshop samplings.

I had never ordered from them, but went ahead and got the Spirit of Yiwu and Pride of Menghai samplers. They seemed more to my taste than the year of green or mellowness samplers.

I like samplers to try a large variety of teas, which I drink as a changing kaleidoscope of daily tea. I do not have a supply of 10 year old cakes to pull from, so samplers are a nice way to pass the time until my current tea cakes are “fine old beengs”.

My tastes are not so advanced to be able to name the pantone color of the sky on the afternoon the leaves were picked, and my brewing skills are closer to “slacker-fu” than gong-fu.

But, overall, I am used to a certain taste and result from the teas I usually have, so the standard by which the puerhshop samplers are judged are based on my taste and brewing. Obviously, others brewing and taste will differ, so this is opinion, and inexpert opinion at that.


And thus, with all that preamble, two results:

First, 2007 Rongzhen Imperial Concubine Aromatic Pu-erh Tea Cake.

The blurb says “UNIQUE honey sweetish and very strong floral flavor with little bitterness …..this tea cake is prime for drinking now. “

I used exactly 5 grams in a small yixing teapot. I took the loose leaves from the sample bag, not breaking anything thing off the piece of cake, but just using what naturally had fallen off.

Water at a full boil was poured on the leaves, for a 5 second wash, then poured off, 20 seconds wait.

Without bring water back to boil, I filled the pot again, let sit 15 seconds.

This I pour into a yixing pitcher, which I then fill a small cup.

The resultant “soup” was much darker than I expected, not a golden straw color, but verging on brown. My first sip did not bode well. Extremely bitter and astringent. No honey, no flowers, no love.

Working my way down to the 4th infusion, still 15 seconds, yielded the best taste. There emerged sweetness, the honey and very small floral was there, the tea had a much rounder mouth feel (body). The bitterness had subsided, but there was still a bit of astringency. I could enjoy this. The 5th infusion showed me it was spent, the color was still fairly dark, more brown than gold, but completely washed out in terms of flavor.

To be honest, this was the worst tea I have ever tried.

I will try it again, this time with leaves from cake, perhaps 3.5 grams, two 10 second washes, with longer time between. Start with a shorter infusion time. Hopefully, less leaves, not as broken, more washes, etc, will get to the better taste sooner and give a few more infusions before giving up the ghost.

Since I never learn from my mistakes, I tried the 2007 Bulang Spring Tips Pu-erh Tea Cake today. (Rongzhen was last week)

No scale today, but added what looked by eye to be the “right” amount. I used same teapot and techniques as above, 5 second wait for rinse, and 15 second first brew. This is my usual routine, so I wanted to test against the standard way I make my tea.

Once again I used the loose tea in the sample bag (I ain’t gonna throw out half the sample). There seemed to be a lot of twigs there.

The first pour showed a dark liquor, once again darker than I would expect. There was some bitterness and a lot of astringency. First taste told me it was a better tea than the rongzhen, despite the bitterness etc. Third infusion had a taste of “orange pekoe” tea – funny having a tea taste like tea. 4th was the best taste, starting to be more complex, sweetness emerging, astringency diminished, rounded mouth feel. The first few infusions gave me noticeable energy, so the Qi is strong with this one. I drink tea over the course of several hours, this one gave out at about the seventh infusion, 8th hour.

Overall, much better than the Rongzhen, but still not to my liking. The same caveats for the second tasting would work here too.

What concerned me about both of these is the balance seems to be off. I think a good tea might be strong on first infusion, and while it changes over the course of several infusions, it’s basic taste is not dramatically changed. I think of it as the volume on a stereo. The music you are listening to is completely discernable at a low volume, the bass is there, the mids, and high, just at a lower volume. Turn it up, bass has more punch, perhaps some instruments become clear or apparent, but it is basically the same.

These teas seem to be rumble at the beginning and hiss at the end.

I am sure more complete leaves from the cake and changing brewing parameters will help. One assumes that even a small amount more aging will help mitigate the bitterness and move these towards a more balanced tea

I will hold off on rating until I have tried each a few more times. but as this might take a few weeks, I wanted to post intial impressions in this new topic.

[Salsero]

... my brewing skills are closer to “slacker-fu” than gong-fu ... To be honest, this was the worst tea I have ever tried.

Thanks for posting, T-V.

I love "slacker-fu." You may want to trade mark that name! There's a lot of us out here.

Also, I would probably rate a lot of teas "the worst ever," but I have had so many bad ones, that it would be too hard to select just one candidate for the title.

[Jagori]

I haven't tried the two you reviewed, but today I think I burned the Menghai Jewel with full-boil water on the wash. It started off bland and sour, and it took about four steeps to get back to what I was expecting. It seems it deals better if I let the water stop boiling for the first couple steeps. It's possible that I just got a potful of crappy leaves, since I don't specifically remember letting the water come off the boil previously, but it sounds like something I'd do with a really young sheng. Either way, it was way worse than my last four sessions of that tea, which were all pretty good.

Also, I mentioned this in another thread, but it bears repeating here: I found the Menghai Jewel to benefit from short steeps. I've been giving it a ~15s rinse, and then starting the steeps at about 15-20s and working up to around a minute towards the 9th or so. When I let it steep longer, even towards the end, it gets extremely drying.

[Salsero]

Well, after TomVerlain's post, I had to dig into my Pride of Menghai trick or treat bag and try the 2007 Rongzhen. After all, how could anyone resist a tea called Imperial Concubine!

Forwarned is forearmed. After T-V's experience, I kept the brew times ultra short, 13 s to 25 s including the pour in and pour out times. The liquor I got was pale straw to light honey and the taste was very light. It seemed at every moment to be threatening excessive astringency. It did have a nice aroma, the weight in the mouth was moderate, and it made me sweat (qi?), but I can't say I enjoyed this session. I am seriously wondering if (despite Jim's comments on Pu-Shop site) it needs at least a few years age to be drinkable.

** My rating "I didn't like it"

[Dizzwave]

my brewing skills are closer to “slacker-fu” than gong-fu.

I love that!
Welcome to TeaChat! I liked reading your reviews, and now I'm looking forward to trying the teas you mentioned.
-dave

[Jim Liu]

I read your notes on Rongzhen Imperial Concubine Aromatic Pu-erh Tea Cake with disbelieve, so I brewed up a cup to try - I had not tasted this tea for months.

The most statements you made were true, I appended the following on the product page:

Update on May 13th. Above taste notes were written when the tea was just arrived. Apparently this tea is in its worst state into the aging. Guess we have to wait patiently for a while before this tea becomes good again, let Nature do its wonders.

[Salsero]

I read your notes on Rongzhen Imperial Concubine Aromatic Pu-erh Tea Cake with disbelieve, so I brewed up a cup to try - I had not tasted this tea for months.

I think it could age very well, however. This is only a 2007 cake after all.

[Deleted User #17777]

I'd like to start this review with two comments -

1) This tea stands head and shoulders over the two I just tasted

and

2) I know it is difficult to be in the business of selling tea or wine or other commodities that change with age, as well as being difficult to BUY teas to age. Some will be best now, others, best later. It might be unfair to rate a tea now, when it's intended consumption is really years away. But, I am looking for teas I can drink now, and not interested in spending hundreds of dollars on really fine teas that have stood up over time. So, there may be some teas I don't like for now, that might be wonderful later. I can't rate them on later, so it is the "right here, right now" review.

Now on to 2006 King of Pu-erh Tea Cake. The cake did not appear too much different than the other two, tightly compressed, with some loose bits in the sample bag.

I broke apart part of the cake to mix with the loose bits, and weighed out 5 grams.

10 second flush, let sit 60 seconds. 15 seconds with water that had been sitting (not fresh off boil)

First infusion was strong, but not astringent or bitter. Color was dark, like "vintage bamboo". I found a hint of smoke and some "medecinal" quality, both of which I like. Not sweet, and not as "round" of a mouth taste as more aged teas.

About the 4th infusion the color was much lighter, more honey in color and some sweetness was aparent.

I continued to 7 infusions, and the tea, though diminished in strentgh, had a nice consistant flavor through out the day.

The leaves which I took out of the pot were very broken and a bit "twiggy". On a whole cake, I would expect there would be better leaves to use. I was surprised at the lack of bitterness even though these leaves looked like they would brew very bitterly.

This is the kind of tea I like, and think time will only improve. Perhaps as it is a 2006, that extra time has already worked some magic. This definately moves it into the "nice" pile.

[Dizzwave]

Hi T-V,
That's interesting that you had lost of twigs and leaf bits -- my King of Pu-erh sampler is basically a piece of the cake -- long flowing leaves that pull nicely off of the chunk. I guess it was the luck of the draw. Anyway, my slacker-fu setup here at work doesn't include my camera, so I can't post a picture at this point. Maybe later.
but -- nice review! I enjoyed reading it.
-dave

[Salsero]

So far I have tried two sessions with the 2007 Rong Zhen Imperial Concubine Aromatic. While I love the name, I found the tea to be weak and uninteresting.

Initially, I found the same with the 2007 Nanqiao Tea Factory Menghai Jewel. In the first session weak, uninteresting, watery. But about the 4th steep of the second session (more leaf than the first), it seemed to take off for me. I found a nice viscosity, an aftertaste that encouraged me to go back for another steep, maybe a tad too astringent (a good sign for aging, however), a honey and mushroom aroma became dominant. Now I am thinking this tea may have real aging potential. I wound up going a full ten rounds!

[knix]

I am trying to review all the samples for this tasting kit. So to start here is two for ya. Just follow the link to my blog. It is reviewed there.

http://knixtea.blogspot.com/2008/06/200 ... ubine.html = Rongzhen

http://knixtea.blogspot.com/2008/06/200 ... de-of.html = King of Puerh

http://knixtea.blogspot.com/2008/06/200 ... -cake.html = Bulang

[Dizzwave]

I finally tried the Concubine today, and... I was surprised! It's fairly decent!
With low expectations, I did it up thermos-fu for my bus commute. (method: 4-5g in a 150ml teapot, do 4 or 5 infusions as I normally would, but dump them all directly into the thermos. So on the bus I end up drinking a blend of the first 4-5 infusions. Note that I wouldn't do this with a primo tea, but I thought it would be a good way to start using up all these samples I have lying around.)
There is a little astringency, a little bitterness, but overall the flavor is fairly thick and.. gosh I'm not good at coming up with the right tea words.. But it does have bits of that sheng flavor I do like. Let's see if I can do it, stream of consciousness, here I'll take a sip...
"Round"...good aftertaste...strong.. a tad sweet...thick... see I'm not very good at "flavor" words.
Anyway.... Would I buy a cake for $21 + shipping? Probably not.
I'll have to try this one again (preferably for real in a yixing pot) before coming up with a "star" rating, but preliminarily let's say 3 stars. "I like it, but won't be buying a cake for that price."

[Salsero]

I have been pretty happy with virtually any sheng brewed Euro style. Gong fu is the acid test, but Euro gives the "also rans" a useful niche to fill.