Tuesday, March 15, 2022

2005 Banzhang Macau Hualian Small Buds: Powerful Tiny Buds!




This was sample of Lao Ban Zhang from Paolo’s personal journey has not yet been offered on puerh.uk

Dry leaves are very sweet and fruity smelling pure dry stored smells much younger than 2005.

First infusion has a creamy malty sweet almost caramel and sort of licorice sweetness.  It’s a bit thick and rich already in a sweet and oily broth.  Sweet tastes dominate with a layering and thickness to them.  There is a cooling slightly in the throat.  Tastes like 10-13 years material.

The second infusion has a rich caramel woody oily sweet dense taste.  Mouth salivating.  The cup cools down and there is a dense rich sweet creamy caramel that has a dense sweet presentation almost licorice finish.  The layers of sweet taste remind me of a Lincang.

The third infusion has a caramel dense oily sweetness with a soft cooling throat.  The cool cup is really very sweet and layered.  Licorice and caramel very sweet finish.

The fourth infusion has a thick dense caramel, licorice taste, faint bitterness, nice full mouthfeeling with a coating that makes the gums and roof of the mouthfeel squeaky when the tongue runs across it.  Qi is very enlivening and very happy feeling.  A burst of happy energy.  There is some faint face tingles.

The fifth is densely caramel sweet.  The flavor comes all at one in one thick sip but underneath is a subtle bitter woody taste that is barely discernable under the thick sweetness a faint almost metallic taste in there as well.  Very delicious tasting tippy leaves with no astringency and feels really nice in the body but without any crazy bodyfeelings.  Nice enlivening Qi.

6th has a caramel dense sweetness with slight metallic tones and subtle menthol like taste that lingers in the mouth. 

7th has is still caramel but is becoming more metallic bitter menthol as well.  The menthol bitter sweetness stretches into the aftertaste.  Nice strong uplifting and enlivening feeling.  The mouthfeel is a full unwavering slight dry feeling that feels really nice with this sort of tea giving it something for the sweet tastes to grab on to.

8th pot clogged! Must have been in there for a good minute… stronger infusion… strong menthol with caramel and lesser bitter full strong taste. 

9th is more strong caramel menthol with faint bitterness.  This is a pretty satisfying tippy puerh!

10th is a bitter woody a bit menthol in the finish with a sweet underlying caramel throughout.



Obvious single origin likely plantation material.  Changes slowly from sweet to more bitter over the course of the session.  Strong taste and decent mouthfeel throughout.  Not much bodyfeeling at all really but nice uplifting plantation feel to it.  Seems younger than 2005 likely 2010 ish… dry storage which feels like Kunming.  I really like the experience with this one.

Peace

3 comments:

CarlosHopontopofus said...

Oh dear another fake age claim from this guy.

Paolo said...

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.
I sent some samples of tea I find interesting for a reason or another to Matt, as I've done with a lot of other friends before.

As it happens, I tried this once before sending it and it never got to the stage of verifying its age because I don't offer it anywhere, not even as part of a sample set.

Surely "making a fake age claim" requires actually making this claim somewhere?
For the avoidance of doubt, I simply wrote on the label what the cake says, I still think this tea is interesting to try (as evidenced by the post) and that's literally everything I'm saying with this tea.

I wonder what would you label this as if you sent it to someone? "I'm not sure because I haven't tried it 5+ times, good luck!" is an option, I suppose. I judged that whatever the information the cake had would be a bit more useful. I certainly prefer receiving samples marked with some kind of information.

I am open to suggestions.

Peace,
Paolo

PS: Everything on offer on puerh.uk/enlightenmenttea.org is accurately dated and verified, those are my actual opinions I'm happy to defend them.

I apologise if I don't fit the traditional image of a seller that just talks about the tea they sell, but really I'm not that - I try a lot of aged sheng, talk about 10-20% of them (as the case for this sample) and up selling just 1-2%.

Matt said...

CarlosHopontopofus,

Hahaha… I don’t know why I laughed out loud when I read this…

My understanding is/was the same as Paolo below that this is a known production and came from a cake with said information on it.

I always prefer that vendors mark the samples with the proper names of the cakes but it is also fun if you get them blind or partially blind like the 2018 huangpian I will post in a few days here.

Peace