Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: Teavivre
Tea Description:
This Ripe Pu-erh Cake Teavivre choose is from the representative Pu-erh production area Fengqing. Fengqing is the original place of the world-wide famous Dian Hong Tea. And it is also a classic place of Yunnan Pu-erh. It is a place in Lingcang which is one of the four famous Pu-erh production areas. The taste of Fengqing Pu-erh is mellow and sweet, deeper than Pu-erh in other production area. And it usually has the flowery flavor of Dian Hong Tea. The tea leaves used to make this Ripened Tribute Pu-erh Cake Tea are all pure leaves hand-picked from 50 to 100 years old Large-leaf Arbor Tea Trees.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This Fengqing Ripened Tribute Pu-erh Cake Tea from Teavivre is a really lovely pu-erh. It’s a delightfully mild tea – very smooth and sweet!
To brew this tea, I grabbed my gaiwan. I broke pieces of the cake off into my gaiwan with a knife and eyeballed the measurement until it looked like about a bamboo scoop of tea. Then I poured enough hot water (180°F) to cover the leaves and let it steep for 15 seconds and then I strained off the liquid and discarded it. (The rinse!) Then I filled the gaiwan with more water and let it steep for 45 seconds.
The aroma is a little loam-y but I’m not getting a strong earthy flavor, which I’m very happy about. What little earthiness I taste is more like a mushroom than it is like ‘earth.’ Yay! The flavor is sweet, like dates and honey. I’m also getting an interesting contrast to the sweetness, it almost tastes ‘salty’ but without tasting briny or fish-like, it’s almost as if someone might have sprinkled a couple of grains of salt into my cup.
It’s a remarkably smooth tea with no indication of astringency or bitterness. As I continue to sip, I pick up on notes of leather.
Before I knew it, that first cup was gone!
The second cup was a bit more earthy in flavor than the first, tasting a bit more like the loam notes that I smell. Still pleasantly sweet, I notice the notes of leather starting to develop, and I’m also picking up on notes of raw bittersweet cacao. I’m not getting any of that contrasting salt note that I noticed in the first cup. The flavor has deepened and intensified from the first – it’s as if they’re two totally different teas!
Later infusions were less earthy, it seemed like that second cup was the earthiest of the bunch and then after that cup, the earthy notes began to wane. I think the third and fourth cups were my favorite, the flavors were deep yet mellow with notes of dark chocolate, dates, and honey. I picked up on a mid-note of leather with an undertone of mushroom.
A very pleasant cup … oh-so-smooth!
Christmas Fruitcake Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Zoomdweebies
Tea Description:
What’s Christmas without fruitcake? Not some brick of processed dried up yuck and colored cherries, but real, moist, sweet cake with cherries, oranges, cranberries, and pineapple–that’s the kind of Christmas fruitcake we tried to recreate here. And we did it, like always, with just premium organic Iyerpadi black tea and organic flavors. Enjoy!
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.
Taster’s Review:
OK, confession time: I actually like fruitcake. I’m probably one of the only people on earth that does like it. I don’t like all fruitcake, but if I happen to find a bakery that does fruitcake right – something that’s been baked in-house with good quality ingredients and that’s been doused with brandy … yeah, that stuff, I’d eat happily. That, to me, is the best way to ingest brandy.
So I was happy when Southern Boy Teas announced this Christmas Fruitcake Iced Black Tea as a flavor for the week of December 29th!
I don’t taste brandy flavoring here, so I don’t know that it was actually utilized in this flavor. But that’s OK, because this is really tasty just the way it is.
I’m really liking the flavors here. Of the fruit flavors, I think I taste the orange most. I taste orange throughout the sip and into the aftertaste. I get a nice little sweet and tart citrus note in the aftertaste. I taste notes of pineapple and cranberry and cherry, and I appreciate that these flavors are nicely balanced. I’m not getting an overwhelming, cough syrupy cherry note which is good.
The cake notes are softer than the fruit notes, but they’re definitely there. I get a sweet, cake-y flavor that is really pleasant. I taste hints of a buttery flavor. I like the way all the flavors come together in one sip: the sip starts out with a sweet orange note, and shortly afterward, I pick up on hints of cranberry. Pineapple is present throughout the sip. Cherry weaves its way in and out. The cake notes are sort of a sweet undertone throughout the sip and if I happen to slurp the sip, I get more of the cake-y sweetness (although it feels a little weird to slurp iced tea, I’ve gotta tell you.)
Overall, a really good, fruity, fun iced tea.
And please consider supporting this small business with their Indiegogo Campaign! They’re looking to reach new heights with their company and they need your support!
Chocolate Mini Shu Pu-er (2000) from White Two Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: White Two Tea
Tea Description:
The 2000 Chocolate Mini Shu Puer bricks are so named for their small shape, rather than their flavor, which is more of a fruity sweetness. Each tin contains 100 grams of tea, which brews up dark and smooth. We recommend breaking the bricks apart and giving them a rinse, as some still have very tight compression and take awhile to open up.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
These little Mini tea cakes do look a little bit like a square of chocolate! They don’t really smell like it though. Dry, the aroma is earthy. The brewed liquid has a softer scent, still earthy but the aroma is not quite as strong.
To brew this, I grabbed my gaiwan! I broke the brick off into layers with a knife – this is a very tightly compressed brick! Using 195°F water, I did a 15 second rinse and discarded the liquid, and then I filled the gaiwan with more hot water and let it steep for 30 seconds. Ordinarily, I would steep it for 45 seconds but after 30 seconds, the liquid was quite dark so I decided to go ahead and strain off the tea at 30 seconds.
And I’m glad I did! This first infusion was perfect!
The flavor is sweet! Just as the description above suggests, the flavor has a fruity sweetness. I taste notes of sweet plum and even a hint of peach. The sweetness is profound, with notes of molasses along with the sweet fruit tones.
The flavor isn’t really chocolate-y. There are notes of earth – but they are far more subtle than the aroma of the dry leaf and even than the brewed tea might lead you to think. It’s a gentle earthiness that evokes thoughts of mushroom. It’s a very smooth tasting tea with no astringency or bitterness. It has a pleasant mouthfeel.
It’s a really enjoyable pu-erh.
And of course, with a pu-erh, I’m treated to many wonderful infusions! The second infusion I steeped for just 30 seconds as well, and it was a very deep, full taste. Very mellow! In later infusions, the earthy flavors developed and I started to pick up on some woodsy flavors that evoked thoughts of the damp wooded areas up here in the Pacific Northwest.
The plum and peach notes seemed to subside a little bit, or maybe I should say that the fruit flavors developed into more of a date and fig flavor with notes of dark raisin. I liked the way these sweeter fruit flavors tasted with the notes of molasses. It was quite an enjoyable experience.
A really nice tea with which to spend an afternoon!
Menghai Palace Ripened Pu-erh Cake Tea (2008) from Teavivre
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: Teavivre
Tea Description:
This Menghai Palace Ripened Pu-erh Cake Tea 2008 comes from the typical production area of Yunnan pu-erh: Menghai, Xishuangbanna.
The extraordinary natural environment here not only makes Menghai a renowned place of producing pu-erh, but also brings the unique tea tree here: the Yunnan large leaf species. Our Menghai Palace Ripened Pu-erh Cake Tea 2008 is made of selected tea leaves from the Yunnan large leaf tea trees on Bulang Mountain.
The large leaf species are excellent material for making teas. Plenty of golden buds can be found in this Palace pu-erh cake, which was made of large leaf species. Thus, in ancient times, pu-erh teas of this high grade were limited-offered as tribute to the imperial. Being renowned from the palace, this kind of pu-erh tea tastes quite mellow and full-bodied. The tea was then given the name as Palace Pu-erh.
With the elegant aroma, soft taste and golden appearance, this 2008 Palace Pu-erh is worth trying.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Nice! Really, really nice!
I’ve mentioned (many times) about my trials and tribulations when it comes to Pu-erh. But the simple fact is that I do appreciate most pu-erh teas that I’ve tried. I’ve liked more than I’ve disliked. Unfortunately, the ones that I disliked, I disliked early in my ‘tea drinking years’ and so the haunting memories remain.
Back then I didn’t know how to prepare pu-erh properly. Now, I know how to prepare it. I don’t know if it’s the proper way to prepare it according to customs or whatever – but I found the way to prepare it that works for me: I grab my gaiwan and for this particular pu-erh, I ‘eyeball’ measured the leaf after breaking apart some of the larger chunks from the cake into smaller bits. If I had to venture a guess as to how much leaf this actually ended up being, I’d say it was about a bamboo scoop of tea.
Then I added enough hot water (heated to 190°F) to cover the leaves and let them infuse for 15 seconds. Then I strained off the liquid and discarded it. Then I filled the gaiwan with more water (190°F) and let it steep for 45 seconds.
The aroma of the first cup is nutty and sweet. The flavor is sweet, like thinned molasses. There is some earthiness to the flavor, but it’s barely there and something that I only pick up on when I slurp the sip to aerate the liquid on my palate. Otherwise, what I’m tasting is very similar to what I’d taste if I were to take the jar of molasses out of my cupboard and heat it up with some water. This tastes like thinned molasses with hints of wildflower honey.
In other words, it’s sweet. Beautifully, deliciously sweet. So delightfully sweet that before I could finish the above review of the first cup, the cup was empty and I needed to go resteep the leaves!
For this infusion, I would normally add 15 seconds onto the steep time (making it 1 minute) but by the time I reached 45 seconds, the liquid was so dark that I decided that I’d stop there. So this second cup was infused just 45 seconds.
This cup is a little bit earthier than the first cup was. It’s still sweet, but the sweetness is a bit more mild this time around. It’s a very mellow and smooth tasting tea with notes of raw cacao! Wow! Nice. I taste hints of flower in there too, but because the flavor of cacao is prevalent, it is difficult to determine what flower I’m tasting.
With later infusions, I found that the tea became increasingly more earthy. The tea is still sweet, but some of those molasses-y flavors are diminishing with each infusion. Still quite cacao-ish, I pick up on notes of leather, wood and mushroom.
Overall, an enjoyable Pu-erh, although I must admit that I preferred those earliest infusions where the tea was more like thinned molasses and very few earthy notes were detected.
2007 White2Tea Repave Pu-erh Tea from White Two tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: White Two Tea
Tea Description:
Repave was made with aged puer tea material from 2007, which was stored in Menghai for 7 1/2 years prior to being pressed in November of 2014. The soup is already a dark bronze color, sweet and soft. The material is from Hekai. This is the second and final pressing of this material. Some of the wrappers were stamped incorrectly as 2006.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn more about White Two Tea’s Tea Club Subscription here.
Taster’s Review:
Smooth! Really, really smooth and mellow!
That’s my first impression of this tea.
To brew this pu-erh, I grabbed my gaiwan and heated the water to 190°F. Then I eyeballed a measurement of leaves – what looked like about a bamboo scoop of leaves – and put them into the bowl of the gaiwan. The leaves of this sample have been cut from a cake that probably looked like the cake in the photograph above. Some of the leaf pieces are individual leaves, but most of them are chunks of several leaves that I pried apart carefully with a knife.
Then I poured enough of the hot water into the gaiwan to cover the leaves and I steeped it for 15 seconds. Then I strained off the liquid and discarded it. This is the “rinse.”
I’ve found that this simple ‘rinse’ procedure is the big difference between a cup of pu-erh that I can enjoy drinking versus a cup of pu-erh that I would rather discard. So, if you find pu-erh to be too earthy or just off-putting, I recommend trying the rinse! It really does make a HUGE difference!
Then I filled the gaiwan with more water and this time, I steeped the tea for 45 seconds and strained the liquid into my favorite “little” teacup. It holds one gaiwan-full of tea. How much is that? I don’t know. I’ve never actually measured it.
My first cup is SMOOTH. Mellow. It has a lovely sweetness that is somewhere between a deep molasses and a buttery caramel. It’s earthy – but it isn’t an off-putting or overwhelmingly strong earthy flavor. It’s beautifully mellow at this stage. There are distant mineral-y notes. This first cup disappeared quickly because … I really enjoyed it!
The second cup is just as smooth as the first. The flavor is deeper this time. Still very sweet and that sweetness is still very molasses-y/buttery caramel. I taste less of the earthy notes that I tasted in the first cup now, but the distant mineral notes are still there. This cup seems to be all about the sweet and that’s quite alright by me.
This tea just seems to keep on getting sweeter with each infusion! The third cup is even sweeter than the first two. With this cup, I am picking up very little earthiness (an occasional earthy tone here and there) and the aforementioned mineral notes are softer now. This is just SWEET.
Later infusions offered the same sweet, molasses-y taste, and I liked that the earthiness mellowed out significantly by the fourth cup. I don’t know if it’s that my palate has become more acclimated with the sweetness of this tea or that the flavors are just now emerging, but I am starting to discover some soft floral notes.
A truly lovely pu-erh – this is one you’ll fall in love with!