Hello hello!

This week tea mail arrived from Moychay, which is a tea company from Russia. I reviewed some of Moychay’s in-house ripe puers last year, and drink their tea on occasion. This year though, Moychay went to China and sourced a wider variety of shou puer, including Sheng Puer. They also got an artist to help them design their own puer wrappers, which turned out beautifully well (by the way, Moychay is looking for artist to design more puer wrappers for them, so send me a message if you’re interested). One of Moychay’s newer teas is NanNuo Shan, which was released in their shop earlier this year. So how does their new raw puer compare to last year’s ripe puer? Lets find out!

(click images of wrapper and beeng below to enlarge)

Steeps 1 - 6

For this session 4g of tea was used in a gaiwan thats 60ml, and I used water at a temp of 185ºf. Anyhow, this tea started out with a spicy forefront with a broth-like body of sweet wood and moss, and left a sugar aftertaste lingering on the tongue. After the tea began to open up, the notes of sugar began to disappear as the wood body base made itself more predominant. This tea’s body became thicker, and left a calming warmth in the mouth. The wide array of tasting notes were pleasant and meditative to the tongue.

Steeps 7 -12

As the steeps went on, the tea’s soup became thicker and thicker, which best resembled a broth. The broth base brought forth the strong tasting notes of sweet wood, which trailed the notes of mushroom behind in its wake. Surprisingly, as this tea’s body began to settle, the body became more mouthwatering as it left a faint sweet undertone of stevia. As the steeps continued, this tea’s body became more mouth watering, as its mushroom and wood body took on a velvet-like texture, and lasted until the very last steep.

Conclusion

Overall, I think that NanNuo Shan is an exceptional sheng puer in terms of taste, quality, and quantity (for the tea that you get). One thing that I was very pleased about was this tea quality because for the price point, it was very clean and clear throughout. Each individual leave looked healthy, which helped this tea become fuller in taste and body. Another aspect l liked about this tea is how complex it was because it seemed like that after every steep, the tea was evolving just a little bit more. Overall, I think Moychay did a fantastic job sourcing new sheng for their shop this year. I can easily say that their sheng left a pleasant impression and definitely holds up to the shou that they’re known for…

disclaimer - This tea was sent to me by Moychay.