a touch of classical 80’s pu-erh cakes

There is indeed, today tasting again, after a few days a Grand Reserva blended sheng pu-erh from Thailand. 

There is indeed this typical old aged tuocha note (ones from 80’s). The best thing on it is that there is no hint of plantation teas flavour. I am not saying that plantation tea can not be good still there is a certain harshness, sharp note in them. 

The taste of the freshest tea (selection of oldest tea trees from 2022) in the blend is all gone. The 3 maochas (spring tea of 2016, 2019 and 2022) characteristics are slowly turning into one unity. I suppose the is gradually the fermentation getting on the same level. 

They say to speed up fermentation of pu-erh tea they would store tea cakes along with older ones. Also there is known that blending of maochas of different ages was used, maybe still is, with high grade ‘factory’ teas. 

Back to this particular note or taste, it is like smokiness with old aged notes based on a bitter base. 

So all in all the tea has a touch of classical 80’s pu-erh cakes with a very clean, pure base. Further aging will enforce the sweetness and fullness of the whole taste.