Thursday, March 10, 2022

A Beautiful Aged Puerh Experience - “1960s Loose Leaf”

This is the other controversial offering from Enlightenment Tea/ Puerh.uk.   It is now sold out.  I must admit I was going in very very skeptical with this one and basically went in with the thought that it must not be true to the description … but then the tasting experience really surprised me…

Dry leaves smell of sour musky dusty odours.  They do in fact smell quite old at least 90s… or even older…

First infusion pours quite reddish.. there is a creamy sweet talc cherry taste that comes with dry storage for some time.  It is quite light and creamy sweet subtle peat notes with an old dusty book taste.  The mouthfeeling is tighter feeling.

Second infusion has a creamy sweet onset with a tight quick moving mouthfeeling that kind of chokes away the sweetness rather quickly and leaves an old musty taste lingering in the mouth.  Faint cooling at the back of the throat.  Subtle mild relaxing.  The tugging dryness of the mouthfeeling sneaks down the throat a bit and seems to cause some salivation that pulls an old book and creamy sweet cherry taste even minutes later.  The cooled cup is creamy rich sweetness with strong old musk peat with some throat cooling.  Very nice experience here.  Even 10 mintues later there is this creamy sweet and old musty taste.



Third infusion has creamy milky shu puerh tastes with creamy sweet base taste.  Nice lubricating mouthfeeling and old musty underneath taste.  The gripping feeling of the first few infusions is gone and so is the longer aftertastes with just faint glimpses now you can almost tastes subtle BBQ notes in the aftertaste now and less cooling and much less sweetness.  I’m thinking this is a 90s shu puerh production from the refinement, old taste, and hinting towards shu profile rather than Hongkong Traditional.  Nice relaxing feeling with some scalp tinging Qi.

The fourth infusion has a creamy milky sweet onset of shu puerh tastes there is a smooth mouthfeeling with the faintest cooling with old tastes mainly disappearing and a very faint BBQ and milky finish.  Smooth older school but refined aged shu suggestions here.  Really nice relaxing feeling Qi.

5th Has a simple straightforward shu puerh creamy milky taste with faint cooling, even more faint smoky meaty taste and some creamy milky sweetness.  There is a woody BBQ faint finish with not much old musty taste left.  Some scalp tingles, mild relaxing vibe with an emerging warming energy.

6th has a creamy milky woody taste with edges of woody BBq smoke.  The meaty, woody, BBQ smoky almost mesquite taste is now the dominant one.  Reminds me a bit of the 2005 Yuannan SourcingHuangyin but not at all harsh… quite smooth actually.  Strong warming Qi now that is really nice.  There is a very faint mild dry feeling with a thick textured lubricating feeling.  Nice deeply relaxing feeling now.  It seems to me now that these might have some aged sheng leaves in a blend of mainly 90s shu leaves.  It is common that vendors clean up their cakes and remove the loose leaves from the tongs and wrappers and collect the leaves together.  That’s what I suspect this is… how knows maybe some 60s leaves are in here? But the leaf quality is very high- no dust or fannings but this is primarily 90s shu with some aged sheng that is more apparent in the 6th infusion here? Maybe?  You can see some olive green leaves and some darker brown and even some brown black leaves in the pot.

7th infusion has cooled down and now offers up a creamy milky shu taste with an emerging fainter woody bbq under taste.  Some slight oily texture over a slight dry tongue.  A warming focusing energy.  Woody BBQ faint taste minutes later.

8th Oops I left the water in the pot for a few minutes now… this will be a stronger infusion here… nice thick creamy smokey woody taste very oily texture with nice warming and calming feelng.  Slightly more drying and full.  Relaxing Qi, calming not as warming.   A bit of astringency felt in the body.

9th another really minutes long push gives off a woody creamy bbq sweet oily texture taste.  Nice calming and warming.  Very woody finish less sweet.  Smokey ash taste in mouth minutes later.  Calm but less warming now.  A nice calm.

10th is another long infusion left to cool nice milky sweet shu taste with a slight woody BBQ smoke finish.   Nice oily texture.  Smoke finish minutes later.  Calming Qi.

11th is left in the pot over night… night rich milky shu sweet taste upfront with a thick oily mouthfeeling… a touch of faint smoke wood in the finish but milky creamy aged shu tastes throughout.

I mug steep this one hard for the next few days and the wet leaves give off the most pleasant camphor sweet odour… inciting….

The infusions are super sweet oily and camphor with a dusty aged feel to them… taste like really nice aged sheng here.  There are all these super interesting super old tasting notes of talc floral, old paper books, camphor woody… the floral taste in here is super interesting to me…



I have never quite tried an aged tea like this before and I am really appreciative for the opportunity!  I wonder if this is a blend of loose sheng and shu with the material likely being 90s but could contain older material in the blend but I’m not completely sure.  It most definitely tastes blended and there is both shu and sheng, I believe, and it is old but doesn’t taste like the super old puerh I’ve tired before- there are very old features in the leaves though.  It actually tastes really unique to me.  Maybe it’s the result of a shop keeper cleaning up his bings, bricks, and tongs and collecting the nicer leaves?  That’s one theory I’m thinking of.  It reminds me of the selection of loose agedpuerh at Teamasters and would be a good reference.  The result is delicious and I really enjoyed it.  The first handful infusions remind me of 90s shu then after the more shu tastes starts to drop off you are left with the depth of aged sheng with really camphor-like sometimes even floral-like aged sheng notes, must have had some long dry storage on it after the more humid stage of its storage?.  I have never quite had a puerh like this and really enjoyed it.  It would be too hard for me to imagine this as 60s puerh but rather enjoyable and complex aged loose puerh blend which is really satisfying to me!  Paolo thanks for sending me this interesting experience a very nice aged puerh one if that!

Much Peace

7 comments:

CarlosHopontopofus said...

Matt,

Would you say there is a pattern with this vendor?

The teas are OK but definitely not as described. Two examples now!

Paolo said...

Matt,
On this I'll have to respectfully disagree.

This tea has the typical flavours of a very aged sheng that you can't get in shou or accelerated-fermentation sheng. Ginseng is the way of calling one of those flavours, as for the name of others I'll have to try it again to try to put them in precise words.

I wonder how many teas of these kind you had? It's an honest question
For me, it's between 20 and 30 different teas loose and a few more as cakes, and I used to drink this kind of tea a lot.
Most of this has been in Taiwan, were I roamed Yingge specifically looking for this kind of tea.

I still have a lot of small 20-40g leftovers packages in my house and the aging of this tea is consistent with all of them.

This gentleman is also very experienced with old tea, and this was his review: https://media1-production-mightynetworks.imgix.net/asset/32615173/Screen_Shot_2021-12-21_at_12.42.55.png?ixlib=rails-0.3.0&fm=jpg&q=75&auto=format&w=1400&h=1400&fit=max&impolicy=ResizeCrop&constraint=downsize&aspect=fit

As for the source:
1) The person who sold it to me is a completely trustworthy old gentleman that's a personal friend, definitely had the tea he had since he says he did, it's his personal collection and sold me a paltry 1kg of this when I asked politely as it's his favourite tea

2) It was bought in the 80s already aged for I understand a price that was "next to nothing", kept in his storage in the US until 2021.

Peace,
Paolo

PS: I was recently told (with 100% proof, happy to share via email) that the source of the two 2003 CYH Tong Qing Hao is exactly the same person...
I wasn't going to mention, but now this gets me wondering what's really going on.

Again, respectfully, I wonder but do not know.

Paolo said...

Oh, I can't edit comments, I ought to get myself an account.

"it's between 20 and 30 different teas loose and a few more as cakes" --> here I mean with age before 1980s.
Quite a lot more from 1980s and after, as those are much more common particularly in Taiwan.

You went in with an expectation... the expectation was somewhat fulfilled.

Peace,
Paolo

Paolo said...

Re-reading right now, I can see that I focused just on what my mind reads as "negative", without properly taking in all the positive the experience had.

Thanks for the kind review, and I am glad you found some depth with it.

I do wonder if the extremely unique storage of this tea (US!) confuses all of us.

I shall take another sample round of the few loose I have around for comparison with fresh eyes and considering what you said about it.

Peace,
Paolo

Matt said...

CarlosHopontopofus,

I’ve now had a chance to sample lots from Puerh.uk and most are really enjoyable puerh. I will post them in the next days.

It’s hard for me to judge this as “60s Puerh” based on my past history of tasting old puerh but it is most definitely better and more interesting than “OK”. It’s got to be one of my favourite puerh I’ve tried with significant age on it!

Peace

Matt said...

Paolo,

I must have tried maybe 10-15? puerh from the 70s-80s most of them right off the cake only a few loose but I tried them 15 years ago so not as old and they were much more humid stored with more obvious Hongkong Traditional feeling to them. Probably not the top tier stuff either as it was Imported from Taiwan in Korea.

I’m unsure how exactly to place this puerh because it doesn’t fit with my previous experience with aged puerh it doesn’t really taste like the Hongkong Traditional stored cakes of this age but isn’t like the shu I’ve tried either. The long dry storage is obvious to me and could be what’s confounding me. The complexity and depth suggests a blend to me but also makes it pretty amazing.

Peace

Matt said...

Paolo,

Today I am drinking another overnight mug steeping of spent leaves and it’s mainly this delicious rose talc floral taste that would be more common with dry stored aged Sheng not shu.

Peace