(Note: Please read my post here regarding further tea reviews on this blog. This tea is one of a few that I will be reviewing before ceasing tea reviews.)
Name: 1999 Vietnamese Puerh
Brand: Canton Tea Co (This tea is also sold and shipped in the United States by Phoenix Tea Shop, if you live in the US, you can save on shipping time by ordering it online or picking it up in Phoenix Tea Shop’s brick and mortar store!)
Type: Puerh, cooked
Form: Loose leaf
Cost: $14.86 for 50 grams from Phoenix Tea Shop, $5.49 for a 10 gram sample directly from Canton Tea Co, quantity discounts available. (As of December 2011)
Review: This was a tea that took some getting used to: When I first brewed it, it was too light for my taste, lacking depth of flavor. When I decided to give it a steep lasting several minutes, instead of the recommended 20 seconds, I ended up with a fishy, disagreeable mess. I ended up ignoring it for awhile until I brought it out for a fellow tea lover to try. He worked his magic with the leaf, and, viola, we had a nice cup of shu puerh. Thus, I decided to try this tea again in my own home.
Like many shu puerhs, this tea is very much unlike “typical” tea: The leaves themselves are chocolate brown, somewhat long and decidedly evil-looking: I kept expecting them to take on a life of their own and attack me during the brewing process. The dry nose is dusty, sweet, and with a weird suggestion of biological activity, adding to my fear of activating the leaves by adding hot water.
Fortunately, the moistened leaves posed no danger to my person, and brewed up to an orange-brown liquor with a nose of rich, damp earth. The cup itself is smooth, with hints of fruit, particularly in the finish. Subsequent infusions produced an even richer color and smoother consistency, perhaps with a hint of cocoa in addition to the earthy and fruit notes. While my favorite cooked puerh remains 2009′s 2898 Mini Tea Brick by Long Run, this is also a very nice tea for those who are partial to cooked puerhs. Recommended.
Preparation Tips: This is one tea where following instructions to the letter is important: Short, short steeps, please, at least during the first infusions. On the flip side, once my tea friend and I put 1999 Vietnamese Puerh through its paces a few times, we actually forgot about it for about 20 minutes. We figured that the resulting tea liquor would be fit only to strip paint off the walls, but instead, the cup remained smooth and silky. Yum.
Disclosures: I received a sample of this tea from its retailer, this post is not connected to any affiliate programs.
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