Tea Type: Pu-Erh

Where To Buy: Verdant Tea

Product Description:

Year: 2003

Dry Leaf: Very dark, large curled leaf, unbroken with longer stems. Loose hand-pressed ball of tea.

Aroma: Smoke of a campfire deep in a wet forest of redwood and eucalyptus after fresh rain.

Tea Color: Small floating down gives this Chardonnay color a darker opacity that turns orange in sunlight.

Taste through early steepings: Immediately creamy with a tingling sweetness like the finest spring Gyokuro. Assertive notes of toasted walnut and hazelnut linger in the throat. As this continues steeping, cinnamon, ginger and cardamom spice with mucovado brown sugar play across the palate.

Taste in middle to late steepings: The intriguing muscovado sweetness carries through even as the intense tingling texture subsides. The spice of early steepings slowly moves towards baked apple. Very late in steeping, the texture of licorice root comes through across the tongue accompanied by notes of malt and barley.

Steeped Leaf: Enormous dark green leaves that are thick and strong with abundant buds and long stems.

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Tasters Review:

I’m very happy that Verdant told me to rinse twice 🙂

My first ‘real’ infusion – post rinses – was quite pleasant – but still full of natural flavor!  The aroma wasn’t overwhelming and the taste was a bit nutty with a tad of sweetness for a pu-erh.  There was a slight earth-green type taste in the background, too.  I ended up liking that quite a bit.

It was like camp-fire smoke from a distance toward the beginning of the aroma but then it changed up into a wild minty-fresh trying to hide underneath.  This reminds me of the great outdoors!

I did multiple infusions on this and they were equally as good.

This wasn’t bitter at all.  It is quite sturdy but oh-so-nice!