From Jings Tea Shop. I remember Jings stating that these tuo,s disappeared from the market soon after it,s release evidently becoming quite the collectors item. Made from Xiaguans Imperial grade maocha. I bought some of these tuocha a couple of years ago and had never tried them, I had opened one of them up and took a whiff and I remember it having a pretty smokey aroma. Which has completely disappeared in just a couple of years. Kinda surprised by that as usually it takes a while. As you can see in the pics the surface of the tuo is covered in fairly healthy looking leaf and the smell is delicately woodsy and high note floral aromas. Of course the tuo is hard as a rock and impossible to break into without shattering it. I assume that this tea is made from a blend, I guess that,s a given unless it claims otherwise.
It,s a beautiful spring day here in Austin so I decided to take my tea outside. After a couple of quick rinses the first tea wasn't nearly as assertive as I was expecting. A nice balance of woodsy, earthiness that wasn't overbearing in any way. In fact bordering on delicate but at the same time has a nice full mouth feel. A combination I haven't had with Puerh before. Brews a clear orange / yellow cup. The floral aspects of this sheng were something a little different than I had ever experienced in a Puerh before, very bright and sparkly is the only words that come to mind, almost a perfume like aroma.
Taking a peek into my Yixing to see the anticipated bit,s and pieces of leaf I see that the color is actually a really uniform spring green with golden / green stems that are thick and soft. So far so good. The fruity acidity is also in nice balance with the wood and floral flavors. Bitterness is nothing more than a pin prick that quickly turns into sweetness in the aftertaste. Good complexity that saturates your entire mouth. On the fourth infusion the clarity starts to become compromised and turns a little cloudy, I,m not sure why. The tea,s complexity has vanished leaving behind a fairly one dimensional tea that,s not bad but not very interesting either. From my experience tea,s that start out clear tend to stay that way. Also the flavor starts to thin out a bit. So, at this point the durability isn't great but maybe that,s something that can change as it gets older, I don't know.
This tea is good but I don't think it,s a drink now tea. I can see how this tea could turn into something much better given time. Is durability something that also changes with time?
For the life of me I cant figure out why Xiaguan compresses their tuo,s to such an extreme. Even when the tea is made from nice whole leave,s by the time you have pried into them and used up one box of band-aids in the process the tea is always shattered. They made a really nice looking tuo that was for nothing because they cannot be disassembled and leave the majority of the leaf intact. I always wind up with the pile of leaf and the pile of crumbs and dust being about the same size. Another reason why I prefer beengs to tuo,s.
Since posting on this tea four months ago Ive devoured four of these 200 gm tuocha,s. Damned fine stuff. These are now impossible to find but Xiaguan just released an Imperial Tribute Beeng that uses the same recipe. I,m definitely buying a tong of those.
Taken from http://teadork.blogspot.com/
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