Hello hello!

We’re now tracking into November and we keep making our way towards winter. This winter may make hell freeze over, primarily since the US election is never going to end. I mean, we have 130 million people in the US, why is it that we’re stuck with these two? I’m going to wait out the drama, sit back, and drink more tea. Speaking of tea, I’m continuing my journey with Pu-Erh.Sk by exploring their 2016 GǔShù HuáZhú Liángzi! I would love to tell you how to pronounce the name of this tea, but I started seizing every time I tried to read it aloud.

Opening -

Opening this tea, I picked up on a very strong scent of chocolate. The smell alone was enough to make me want to inhale this tea instead of drinking it. After continuing further inspection of the dry leaf, I was happy to see how clean this puer was.

Steeps 1-4

I began my tea session with a quick rinse, and used 6.6g of tea in a 96ml vessel. After waiting a few seconds, I proceeded to take a few sips of this tea. The first thing I picked up on was the rich chocolate notes I smelled earlier. After a few more steeps, a rich green tea undertone made its way to the forefront of my tongue with a sencha-like deep green undertone that lingered in the mouth. I found that the earlier steeps we’re very light, but smooth and mouthwatering nonetheless.

Steeps 5 - 7

As this tea continued to open up, the chocolate and sencha-like notes became richer and deeper. This tea had a warming effect that came out around this point which felt like a warm fireplace in the middle of winter. Another aspect of this tea that started to make itself known is a delicate sweetness that kept hiding behind all of the other tasting notes, but this sweetness was rather difficult to detect throughout the bitterness.

Steeps 8 - 14

GǔShù HuáZhú Liángzi was mellowing out around the tenth infusion, and the deep green flavors progressively turned into a light tasting note of sweet grass. The chocolate notes became less and less prominent as an herb-infused spiciness made its way out of the shadows and onto my tastebuds. I thought this was rather strange because right when this tea started to fade away, a oily spiciness dominated this teas palate, and continued to dominate the rest of this session. All of this was met with a bitterness that kept growing in strength and lasted until my last infusion. At steep 14 this tea was done.

Conclusion -

This tea was another great offering from Pu-Erh.Sk! As much as I would like to continue drinking this tea to see how it further ages, I think it did a great job of standing on its own considering how young it is. I felt that this tea was still very humid and needed much more time to rest from pressing. There was this constant sweetness that kept hiding throughout my session with it, but I suspect it’ll continue to make itself known as it goes through more aging. While I don’t think this tea is as great as the ManNuo I tried previous to this, I think that this is a great middle of the road tea that will make for a great session when you're in the mood for something better than a daily drinker, but not as powerful as an old arbor.

Rating -

8.8