Hello Hello!!!

There’s such a large world of puer that it takes a lot of time to get fully immersed into the vast differences in companies, especially the regions they originate from. There’s too much tea to try and so little time, but you have to make time for it to truly get an understanding of it. Even at that, you’ll stumble across something that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about puer. Over the past few months, I kept hearing about Peter, a guy from the Slovakia who makes, supposedly, amazing puers. Actually, there’s a lot of people out there that press their own beengs but will Peter’s teas be any different? Will his teas help me gain a new perspective in the world of puer? I have multiple chunks of his teas and I’m about to find out.

Opening

I start my exploration of Pu-Erh.Sk with GuShu ManNuo, a puer that hails from Yunnan, China. Peter only has twenty of these beengs, and after hearing it was a good tea I had to start here. To start, I opened up my package and it smelled grassy, and relatively sweet with a humid likeness to it. The leaf looked very clean as well, something of which I’m always a fan of.

Steeps 1 - 4

The session began with a quick rinse. I used 6.5g of tea for a 96ml vessel, and let it rest for a few minutes so the leaf had a chance to open up. I took a sip of my first infusion without hesitation and was surprised by how full this teas body was, especially for a first steep. At first I was able to detect a sweet green body with an oily texture. As my infusions went on, the tasting notes of lemon peel backed up the taste of sweet green grass, and left behind a light bitterness. This tea’s texture was broth-like and lubricating. At the fourth infusion, a hint of sweet cocoa powder started to appear.

Steeps 5 - 10

This teas strong mix of flavors started to settle down on the fifth infusion, and the broth-like soup became smoother and smoother. The notes of sweet grass transformed into sweet hay and the bitterness started to embody the likeness of cocoa. However, there was still an underlying tartness that lasted through out these steeps. Along with all of the bitterness there was a second sweetness that came out along with the cocoa notes. Yet, around the seventh/ eight infusion, this teas power started really coming out. I felt my body sweat as this tea starting to work on my body. Hell, I even had to redo the ninth steep to tolerate this teas energy.

Steeps 11- 18

ManNuo kept mellowing out as it continued to unleash its high energy. My body was definitely feeling this teas broth work its magic. Around the twelfth steep though, the citrus peel tasting notes started to disappear, along with the heavy body that this tea presented itself so early on in the session. Nonetheless, there was still a smooth sweetness that left a lasting impression of cocoa, which coated my mouth and lingered for a good fifteen minutes. In the later infusions of this session all of the tasting notes came together and I could finally see the full picture of ManNuo— which was a great resort because this is when it reached its bliss point. Eighteen steeps later, ManNuo was gone.

Conclusion

I’m writing this review two hours after completing my session with ManNuo, and I still have an intense body feel. In conclusion, this tea still has a while to go. I think that ManNuo is a tea that still needs more time to tighten up from pressing, and will only continue to shine brighter and brighter as it ages. Although this tea had high energy and an array of tasting notes, it still felt like it was struggling to present them because of how young it is. ManNuo is a high quality sheng that only advanced drinkers will appreciate. Its tasting notes were very unique, but in the end, it somehow worked harmoniously. Like I said, this tea would be grossly unappreciated by new puer drinkers.

So far, my opinion of Pu-erh.sk is far from being formed. Right out of the gate this was an excellent first impression of what to expect from this company. There’s still more tea to be sampled from Pu-Erh.sk, but I hope that these teas will continue to impress. In the end, there’s only one way to find out…

Rating - 9.2