Tea reviews for tea drinkers
2018 Beneath an Emerald Sea from Crimson Lotus tea is a new pressing of a well liked 2016 cake. This puerh is supposed to have a pretty incredible stamina, a thick and creamy texture, and a nice balance of sweet and bitter. Like Crimson Lotus’ 2018 Jingmai LOVE, this puerh was pressed in 2018 but…
Yunnan Sourcing’s 2012 Impression cake is the puerh that made me want to start a blog. Scott at Yunnan Sourcing created the Impression line to compete against factory puerhs. This line has been blended for the intention of aging and at an affordable price per cake. When I started getting into puerh I was very…
Whispering Pines’ 2016 Silver Fox is the companies first (and only) sheng puerh and it was pressed in a small quantity for their fifth anniversary. They are mostly known for their shou puerh and black tea, but as sheng is what I drink the most of I figured I would pick up a cake and…
Bitterleaf Teas 2017 Secret Garden is raw puerh from a remote tea garden in Manzhuan. It’s a bit of an oddball cake in that the 2016 and 2018 pressings of this cake are from Yiwu, but Bitterleaf says that this pressing shares much of the same essence as the 2016 one. This cake comes in…
2018 Jingmai LOVE is a new pressing of Crimson Lotus Tea’s now sold out 2016 cake, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. As a quick recap, I really liked the 2016 cake and think it’s a fantastic puerh at the price. It started out vegetal and floral, with the floral qualities increasing throughout…
Silver Bowl is a 2007 “found tea” sold by Bitterleaf Teas, meaning it’s one of the few puerhs on their site that they haven’t pressed themselves, but bought off a private collector to resell. While this is an aged cake, the tuo (nest) shape ages much more slowly than a beeng (disc), so you shouldn’t…
White2Tea’s Snoozefest is a limited run raw puerh that they have produced for their last couple of Black Friday sales. Only 100 cakes are pressed and they say that they would normally sell a cake of this quality for around $40, but as a Black Friday deal it goes for $15. No samples of this…
Jingmai LOVE from Crimson Lotus Teas is an affordable blended cake that Crimson Lotus says captures the Jingmai essence. They describe this as having decent depth and body, strong honey aroma and floral taste. I haven’t tried enough teas from each region to accurately distinguish the qualities that each region is known for, but I…
Last week I received my first order from Whispering Pines and this tea was tossed in as a free sample. I should note that when I placed the order they were unaware that I was a blogger, so this is more of a nice vendor tossing in samples thing rather than a tea blogger perk….
Yunnan Sourcing’s Nuo Mi Xiang shou puerh is a bit of an oddball cake for me in the sense that I almost never do flavoured teas. After seeing it recommended many times on Reddit and watching Steven Colbert drink a sample I decided to give it a shot. Plus, if you’re going to add extra…