This tea is stone pressed and apparently from the Yi Wu area of Banna. I don't believe that I've had a Banna pu-erh before.
The Puer Shop mentions that the Yuannian website recommends a higher leaf amount and longer steeping time than "normal" for this tea. Accordingly, I brewed 8 grams in a "Da Hong Pao" yixing pot with about 4.5 oz of water @ boiling.
It's okay, monkey! You can look... it's a beautiful cake.
The beeng has a very light scent and large leaves across the surface. The vendor notes say it is stone pressed, and you can definitely tell there's a lighter compression -- it's easy to pull apart by hand. It has a light sheng smell, typical of pu-erh.
I rinsed the leaves for 20 seconds and discarded it (okay, I did take a tiny sip... but it was much weaker than what would follow). My first infusion was for 20 seconds, and you can see the results in the picture above. The tea had a medium yellow color with a twinge of amber. Its aroma was what I've come to associate as a typical green sheng, with maybe a hint of smokiness? I have to admit here, there are qualities of odor and flavor that sometimes I easily mix up. Meanwhile, the taste was nice and strong, a typical young sheng, from my limited experience. I thought I could tell some smokiness or perhaps it is something else I confuse w/ smokiness.
I then got 7 more infusions from it (8 total) at times of 30s, 30s, 30s, 30s, 60s, 60s, 90s. I could have taken it much further.
By the 4th infusion, the amber twinge had left, leaving a still solid medium yellow tea. The astringency really ramped up by the second and third cup, and I had the usual mouth-draw/astringent/dryness mixture. By the 5th cup, I was feeling a bit buzzy, which normally I don't notice. I admit here that I was really dragging before I had tried this tea, and right now, I'm feeling quite peppy. In fact, now I'm a little worried about getting to sleep. I should further note that I don't normally notice this type of effect in tea...
By the 8th cup, I was still getting a solid cup of tea, with a good sheng flavor and a persisting dryness/astringency. I'm sure I could have taken it another 4 or 5 cups. Here's a picture of the last cup with some of the leaves (one was enormous):
In the end, I can't say that I tasted anything "new" with this tea, but it certainly gave me an enjoyable series of cups. I would have to track down pu-erh that I've had with similar flavor profiles and do side-by-side testing to see if I could taste any difference. But all-in-all, I rather enjoyed it, and I will be very interested to see how this one ages.
But these fly by night factories that some are in favor of , well that is a different story.. Trust me, they wont be around for long. Btw CNNP is not a factory and Haiwan has been around for decades.
