Reviews of Dark Tea
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Pu Erh 15 Års Lagret (Nr. 914) from Carstensens Tehandel
Style: Raw (Sheng) Pu-erh – Region: China65 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Mar. 1st, 2020
Half-litre pot at home, brewed from a tuocha, i.e. a pill of compressed fermented leaves. Pours nearly clear fudge brown with negligible brownish sediment. Clear aroma of tea leaves, with mild notes of fermentation. Bitter, but not aggressive, flavour of black tea, with leafy notes and barely discernible touches of fer...
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Style: Pu-erh Tea – Region: Yongde, Yunnan, China80 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Sep. 20th, 2019
Prepared tea from 8 g, coarsely ground, of a 357 g cake. Used 18 oz boiled water and brewed for 6 min; added 4 oz ice. Final = 2.9 g/8 oz. The tea had a strong earthy flavor, not acidic or astringent, and no mushroom flavor like some Pu-erhs. Very full bodied, and great taste! The tea liquor is black, which is why ...
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Xiaguan Te Ji Raw Pu-Erh Tuo from Xiaguan Tea Factory
Style: Raw (Sheng) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China75 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jul. 14th, 2019
SECOND UPDATE: I'm pretty sure now that this tuo is counterfeit and not really from the Xiaguan factory. I'd been drinking leaves from the surface, which were good, but just broke through to a second layer of chopped up leaves and twigs. I'm rather surprised at the amount of effort that went into counterfeiting a tea t...
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10-Year Aged Raw Pu-erh Brick Tea (2005) from TeaVivre
Style: Pu-erh Tea – Region: Fengqing, Yunnan, China85 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 2nd, 2018
I'm not sure how others determine their point ratings for tea, but for me, an 85 is an above-average everyday tea. At first, when I tried this, I didn't like it. Something about the notes just didn't appeal to me. It took getting more used to rougher, young raw pu-erh for me to really start to appreciate this one. It ...
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Fengqing Ancient Tree Spring Chun Jian Raw Pu-erh Cake Tea 2012 from TeaVivre
Style: Pu-erh Tea – Region: Fengqing, Yunnan, China82 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 2nd, 2018
When the holidays came around (and the holiday sales) and I was treating myself to one of the more expensive cakes, I picked this one out of all of those available on TeaVivre. The reason that I picked this one was that it's drinkable now, it tastes like it has potential for the future (not all currently drinkable cake...
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Xi Gui Ancient Tree Raw Pu-erh Cake 2013 from TeaVivre
Style: Raw (Sheng) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China80 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Dec. 2nd, 2018
I'd rate this one pretty high, but most of the flavor is in the breath, not in the taste itself. I think it's a matter of personal preference as to whether one prefers one, the other, or both. I prefer both because it gives more of a rounded experience. This just doesn't have enough in the taste to appeal to me. There ...
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Menghai Raw Pu-erh Cake Tea 2018 - Dog Year from TeaVivre
Style: Pu-erh Tea – Region: Yunnan, China42 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 2/5
Nov. 26th, 2018
I'm rewriting this review because I just gave the Dog Year tea another try and I was happier with it this time. Months ago, it was too smoky and unpalatable. It tasted nothing like the Monkey Year tea. But, after time, it's evolved. I had a sample and for part of the past few months, it was in the sample pouch. I event...
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Fengqing Daohua Xiang Raw Pu-erh Cake Tea 2013 from TeaVivre
Style: Pu-erh Tea – Region: Fengqing, Yunnan, China90 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Nov. 24th, 2018
When I first tried this tea, I used a Western brewing method and it came out terribly. At that point in time, I also had very little experience with the bitterness of younger raw pu-erh. Well, I let some samples of this sit around for about six months to a year and gave it another try. I was so happy I tried this again...
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2015 Yunnan Sourcing Menghai Lao Cha Tou Ripe Pu-erh Tea Brick from Yunnan Sourcing
Style: Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh – Region: Menghai, Yunnan, China82 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Sep. 12th, 2018
The dry leaves still have a little wet pile odor, but fortunately, this doesn't make it into the cup. I mostly taste wood and earthy flavors. My preference with shou is for sweeter notes of cherry, dried fruit, chocolate, vanilla, etc. I'll let this air out for a few weeks and see if it changes, but it's pretty mediocr...
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Fengqing Golden Buds Ripened Puerh from TeaVivre
Style: Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh – Region: Fengqing, Yunnan, China76 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jul. 27th, 2018
I'll be surprised if I ever give more than 3 stars for aroma in a ripe puerh review. They all smell the same to me, excluding the odors of too fresh, poorly made, or improperly stored examples. The taste, though, is something else. Each one tastes noticably different in both subtle and obvious ways. What they all seem ...
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2017 Old Reliable from white2tea
Style: Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China78 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Jul. 23rd, 2018
At first, this mostly smells and tastes like generic ripe pu-erh: wood, leaves, earth. It's sweet and syrupy, but the interesting flavors aren't immediately obvious. It does have subtle, non-generic-shou flavors that can be brought out depending on how you brew, though: caramel, cherry cola, dried fruit. Typical gaiwan...
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2017 Little Ducks from white2tea
Style: Raw (Sheng) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China86 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Jul. 21st, 2018
While the dry leaves have a rather muted scent, the wet leaves and brewed tea both have an amazingly sweet aroma, like if flowers were candy. Like the Daily Drinker, this is on the mellow side, but this one can be pushed further if you can tolerate bitterness. Brewed normally, the first couple steeps are grassy and veg...
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2017 Daily Drinker from white2tea
Style: Raw (Sheng) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China77 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 5/5
Jul. 19th, 2018
This tea has a wonderfully bright, fresh, floral fragrance, and a light bittersweet (more sweet than bitter) taste. It's moderately astringent, so be careful with brew times. As the name suggests, this won't be the greatest tea you've ever tasted; it's called Daily Drinker for a reason. It is quite good for the price, ...
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Xi Gui Ancient Tree Raw Pu-erh Cake 2013 from TeaVivre
Style: Raw (Sheng) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China83 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 3/5
Jul. 19th, 2018
My favorite pu-erh so far out of the half a dozen or so I've tried, but it's also the most expensive. It does smell fruity (not sure what kind of fruit), but it also has a sweet rocky aroma, sort of like smelling the aftertaste of a good Wuyi oolong. Once brewed, it's strong and sweet without being astringent or bitter...
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Organic Silken Pu-erh from DAVIDsTEA
Style: Pu-erh Tea – Region: Yunnan, China90 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Jul. 8th, 2018
I was in the area, so I decided to check out a David's Tea shop. In all honesty, it looked more like a candy store than a tea shop. It had all these colorful spoons and containers and most of their "teas" looked more like trail mix or confetti than tea (some of them had the ingredients to trail mix in them). I'd writte...
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2017 Mini Jimbo from white2tea
Style: Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China74 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 25th, 2018
This was a surprise bonus in my order. Being new to pu-erh, I really appreciated being able to sample something that I wouldn't have picked out, giving me a little extra variety to figure out what I do and don't like. The first thing I noticed about this mini cake (and the other ripe pu-erh I got from White2Tea, Old Re...
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2008 Menghai Ripened Pu-erh Tea Tuocha from TeaVivre
Style: Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh – Region: Menghai, Yunnan, China80 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
May. 31st, 2018
The smell reminds me of a more "pure" version of the hazelberry pu erh tea from Adagio, and is very "woodsy" But with a more mineral of rocky taste, it is a very good value too, especially for a tea from almost 10 years ago.
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Pu-erh Classic from Rishi Tea
Style: Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China65 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
May. 17th, 2018
This is my first unflavored puerh, so I don't have anything to compare it to. Mine was aged for 3 years so it might be slightly different from the normal version, but probably not that much. I had to air it out for a week to get rid of the smell of fish. Once that went away, the aroma of the dry leaves became earthy in...
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Liu Bao Tea Cake 100g from Three Cranes and Six Forts
Style: Dark Tea – Region: Guangxi, China0 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 1/5
Apr. 18th, 2018
I had some very bad results with this tea, I'm sorry to say. It made me feel as if I'd been poisoned. The cake itself didn't smell too bad, it actually had a decent scent to it — like pu-erh, but different in a way. I wasn't sure if the scent was sweet in the way that some pu-erh can mature into having a sweet, sugar...
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Zhu Xiang Ji brand Yu Lei dark tea from ESGREEN
Style: Dark Tea – Region: Hunan, China95 / 100 Aroma: 10/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 15th, 2018
If you could brew the experience of sitting in a lush pine forest after a light rain, with a distant, vague scent of wood fire smoke on the air, this would be it. This tea has a clean, dark, wet earth note that underlies a pine note with an almost menthol-like quality to it, and a touch of smoke that comes in at times....
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1953 Fucha Anhua Dark Tea Royal Fu Tea Brick from Baishaxi
Style: Dark Tea – Region: Hunan, China80 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 13th, 2018
I wanted to redo this review because I gave this tea some time to age, suspecting that the smokiness would diminish, and it did. So, the experience of drinking this tea is a very different one now. I managed to brew it using a gaiwan, not a teapot with a mesh strainer, and there still wasn't too much sediment. The tast...
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"Ye Zhu Tang" Wild Arbor Raw Pu-erh from Yunnan Sourcing
Style: Raw (Sheng) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China90 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Oct. 10th, 2017
This sheng pu'erh has a strong taste with a thick liquor. It has a really interesting and pleasing sweet and bitter mouth-feel. This a strong tea with a powerful energy.

Tibetan Ya'an Dark from Caina Tea
Style: Dark Tea – Region: Sichuan, China90 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Oct. 5th, 2017
Tibetan Ya'an is a nice, strong dark tea. Even though it's a "strong" tea it has a very "light" and smooth more earthy flavor to it. Caina says to use 1-2tsp for about 60 seconds, maybe because I like tea to be very strong but for me best steep time is actually around 1:15seonds. They say you can re-steep the leaves on...
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Tuo Cha Pu Erh (pe) from De Theefabriek
Style: Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh – Region: Yunnan, China65 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Sep. 21st, 2017
I would love to try sheng pu-erh since that seems to be so highly regarded, but I haven't been able to find any. Wanting that, I was also interested in compressed pu-erh of any kind, and De Theefabriek has these little "nests" of shou pu-erh.
They are individually wrapped in paper in the package, but I was hit by th...

King of Pu Erh from Het Gouden Randje
Style: Pu-erh Tea – Region: Yunnan, China58 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 2/5 Value: 3/5
Aug. 2nd, 2017
This tea smells pleasantly fungal and like straw, like damp autumn leaves and moist earth. The flavour is very soft and smooth and it never gets bitter or sour. I have, in the past, forgotten about it and left it to steep for more than five, maybe even ten minutes, and it's still been smooth. Even when it's strong, tho...
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