2010 Menghai TAETEA "Jia Ji Tuo" Raw Pu-erh Tea

Very good value for money - beautiful Smokey aroma, clean taste and surprisingly creamy

Summary First: a really great and potent tea, lots of flavour, great transformation to sweetness, and none of the overwhelming umami of many extremely young shengcha. I will post my full tasting notes below (^_^). My brewing parameters were 12.2g; 135ml Steam Kiln Porcelain pot; 100˚C Tasting: Heated dry leaf aroma: Beautiful sweet amber raw pu'erh smell, dark humid verdant forest, a small hint of sour lemon flesh (not the overwhelming perfume of the zest oils, but rather the pleasant tartness of the interior fruit) Wet leaf aroma: Hot humid green garden after a sunshower, aroma of blanched dark chinese greens. 1st Infusion: Complex tobacco bitterness, dried green bamboo skin minerality, stir fried chinese mustard greens, enjoyable verdant bitters - not quite like angostura bitters as those are more floral and this flavour is on the greener side of bitterness, much like rapini. Liquor: Thick, viscous, oily; dark yellow-green 2nd: Approachable, smooth, creamy bitterness. Like a smooth but bitter Amaro (Italian digestif), but not quite sweet yet. Quite unique - like the flavour of bitterness but the sensation of smoothness. 3rd: Potent and complex herbal bitterness, smoothness abates for now; back of palate alcohol/liqueur perfume like sensation after having a shot. 4th: Antique woods coming through, a flavour of herbal honey-sweetness peeks through the bitterness 5th: Good Cha Qi, feeling awakened (first tea of the day). Getting this jungle-ey flavour like an old sun-baked tropical old-growth forest where the heat is causing the aroma of all the plants to double - like that, but in flavour form. Also getting the flavour of dried bamboo leaves (like the kind you'd use for Zongzi). Bitterness breaks its intensity on this infusion. 6th: Sweetness begins, bitterness fades almost completely, lots of hui gan. Brewed through to the 10th infusion, maintaining the verdant sweetness from 6 onwards. Very enjoyable and potent tuo.

This tea is a bit astringent, but develops a nice sweetness in later brews. It's a bit hard to chip off complete leaves, as it is a very small tuo, but broken leaves give a different taste sometimes. I find it really hard to chip with a pu-erh pick, being so small and pressed in a tuo shape. The cha qi is really strong, and gets my organs moving. Got me sweating a bit during a session This tea can be pushed really hard and still give off a nice flavor and aroma. Caracteristics from a factory tea. Aging will give this tea a nice round flavor. Might be ordering some more for a storage experiment. Great daily drinker, packs a punch and is really cheap.

This tuo is relatively young, and yet it is already very nice, subtle and powerful at the same time. There is some astringency, so one should preferably use short steeps, as a little goes a relatively long way with this tea. Some smokiness is noticeable, but I find it very pleasing, not overwhelming at all. No need to wash this tea, no tea dust is visible. In other words, you can enjoy it right from steep 1. The tuo itself is not too compact nor too loose, so it should age nicely in the foreseeable future. Each steep reveals a different facet, one can easily get 6 or more good steeps out of a standard leaves/water ratio. One can even get away with a lower leaves/water ratio and still get something drinkable: most of the astringency will be gone, so it will be like drinking a totally different tea. In short: good tea for drinking now, low price, will probably age gracefully. Plus, a tuo is easy to fit in your briefcase or suitcase if you're on the go. And you won't need a chisel to pry some leaves free. I bought 5 tuos, so I'll try to let at least some tuos age, but I'm not sure I'll be able to wait 4 or 5 years...

I find myself really enjoying this tea. It is mid level on astringency and is really easy to drink. I think with another year or two this tea will become really well rounded and even more enjoyable.