This 2006 Dragon Tea House Yiwu goes for $480 for 400g cake or $1.20/g. It’s billed as a favourite of Dragon Tea House productions…
Dry leaves have a smokey with a sweet odour underneath.
First infusion has a creamy oily rich expanding cooling sweetness. Nice oily creamy viscus taste. There is a bit of creamy sweetness that exapands in the returning taste then a finish of smoke. Nice relaxing focusing feeling.
The second infusion has a creamy oily viscus sweetness with subtel hint of floral that expands as the cooling throat sensation takes hold. Nice smooth creamy buttery sweet taste with overall rich and deeply satisfying rich oily taste. Finish is a bit smoky but still creamy oily sweet. Very oily and rich presentation with smooth mouthfeeling and deep thoat opening and deep trapped saliva gob. Strong Wave of Qi wraps around me and makes my heart expand and vibrate. I feel very spacy and out of body with mind floating sensations.
The third infusion has a rich woody resin smokey onset with some mouth and throat gripping a strong saliva producing feeling. Strong Qi pushes me into a sweat with face and head numb and spaced out feeling. The cooled down infusion has an almost melon floral creamy sweet onset with a touch of astringency and smoke. Nice saliva producing in the mouth and strong Qi.
The fourth infusion has a milky chocolate that is more milk chocolate than dark chocolate. Nice rich chocolate milk taste with chalky creamy full mouthfeeling. Very nice full creamy sweet taste. Nice mouth salivating astringency from last few infusions is gone now.
5th has a rich woody almost salty sweetness that has a creamy sweet backbone. Nice fully chalky creamy feeling in the mouth with deep throat opening and cooling with returning chocolate taste with subtle not really floral fruity almost tobacco subtle suggestions as well. Nice chest opening feeling and mind floating feeling.
6th has a smoke woody onset with incense- resin taste initially with a subtle coolness and some creamy sweetness returns. Overall lots of smokey taste, char more than incense. Nice mouth salivating and strong mind freeing Qi feeling.
7th is left to cool in the cup and gives off a sweet fruity taste with a smoke char finish. Nice pop of fresh melon fruity taste fades into a more dry gripping smoke that is a bit dry and gritty but mainly full oily in the mouth. Nice mind floating Qi. You can really feel it in the face too with a numbing feeling and arms are really light and airy.
8th has a rich almost coffee like taste with a bland-bitter-woody-roasty-smoke onset. Nice roasted nut sort of lingering sweetness in the mouth. Nice floating body Qi feeling. Oily saliva producing even minutes later. Strong Heart opening feelng.
9th is left to cool and gives off a sweet melon rich bitter woody coffee sweet creamy onset. There is some smoke in there and an overall resin sweet base taste. Nice pop of sweet taste and dense layered tastes. Strong Heart opening, floating head/limbs Qi.
10th is left to cool and gives off a bitter woody melon fresh fruity roasted coffee taste. Really nice condensed taste with a resin roasted coffee base taste with faint smoke. Nice dry silty mouthfeeling now. Long coffee and sweet melon aftertaste with saliva producing effect.
11th has a roasted nut and melon onset with a coffee-like bitter roast base taste. Lots of condensed strong taste initially with a returning milky creamy sweet-bitter coffee aftertaste. There is still a splash of melon taste initially. The mouthfeeling is getting more silty-dry and full with lots of saliva producing. It doesn’t finish as sweet as is a bitter-bland coffee. Heart opening chest opening feeling with floating head and limbs that are a bit heavy now.
13th infusion has a smoke woody resin onset with a smothered sweetness that can’t quite break through. There is a stronger gripping dry mouthfeeling and more of a bitter-dry-coffee taste to it. Not any saliva producing so this infusion comes off a bit rougher. Nice mind floating…
Overall this is a pretty awesome example of Yiwu! Unfortunately it’s acidity was maybe actually and truly acidic and this puerh gave me heartburn every time I consumed it. No puerh has ever did this to me. I know acidity in puerh can be quite a positive attribute, even for me, but this one is something else. The 2001 Menghai Tea Factory 7542 Simplified Yun, 2003 Hongkong Henry Serious Prescription, and 1997 Menghai Tea Factoy ShuiLanYin are examples of acidic puerh which I find to be excellent but none ever actually give me acid reflux (of course the ones I’ve caked have Traditional HongKong Storage on them and this Dragon Tea House is dry stored)! The strange thing is, I never get heartburn… damn it but I really like this puerh!
I think I would really like to try the 2004 Dragon Tea House Yiwu with the site bragging it’s power and tight compression. I was pretty much offline over the last few weeks so missed the preorder. Once I track it down there will be a good comparison tasting…
Marco’s (Late Steeps) Tasting Notes
James and Denny’s (Tea DB) Tasting Notes
Peace
This description sounds more like what you'd get from a good Mengku aged tea.
ReplyDeleteMy comments for DTH teas are generally found with the search term "hengrunfeng".
ReplyDeleteAs in, https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/sotd-sheng-of-the-day.59712/page-367#post-9157827 for the 2004.
Yeah, back then, my impression were that these were not Yiwu teas but Mengku.
Shah8,
ReplyDeleteOk I wanted to ask you about those links because I remembered reading them but searched and searched but couldn’t find them.
I think it has enough Yiwu substance in these that its pretty obviously Yiwu especially the long sweet Yiwu like aftertaste. This 2006 even has that sweet melon taste still in it that Northern Yiwu tends to carry.
However, when Marco send me the 2015 Dragon Tea House Yiwu in a blind sampling I guessed Yiwu but you can see in the notes that I wondered if it was Northern puerh - I mentioned Lincang. So I see what you are picking up on when you thought Mengku.
http://mattchasblog.blogspot.com/2021/08/marcos-2021-blind-tasting-beta.html?m=0
Peace