Ripened (Shou) Pu-erh

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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.