Fengqing Zhuan Cha Raw Puerh Brick 2005

Not sure that we bought this Tea for our self,quite sure it was a gift tea from somebody tho unfortunately We forget who from.
We do know that it is from Teavivre.com  here
it is out of stock now so we consider ourselves lucky to have it.
I'm not qualified to review a tea like this but I'll try Raw Puerh is not my thing really but i've been staring at this one for a long time and I figure OK I'll give it a try.
Not much aroma to the dry brick in the bag tho it does have a slight sweet smell to it, the Wet aroma tho is strong and smell like a bitter vegetal green tea to me.
It brewed up a kinda dark amber color, pretty to look at.

1 steep= It is"juicy" for the most part and only slightly astringent after the swallow, kinda taste of hay and a bit sweet, vegetal but kinda fruity too, weird. kinda spicey/peppery aftertaste.
2nd steep= Still juicy kinda sweet and hay notes, earthy with wet woody kinda spicey note, almost unpleasant but not quite,  vegetal and still strangely fruity at the same time, Weird!
3 steep= The water had cooled a bit and that made a huge difference, it was yummy good, juicy and kinda sweet slightly fruity, no astringent or bitter at all, kinda woody earthy still, very smooth, the vegetal note was gone but still had a haylike taste maybe even a honeylike sweetness, really good :)
4 steep= Hotter water but we let the tea cool a bit, Wow very good! Wood, earth, hay, honey, malt? Spicey/peppery, no bitter or astringent very smooth, very nice.
5 steep= Cooler water again, its juicy and kinda fruity again, hay notes and honey sweet notes But it got weak all of a sudden as if it is almost ready to steep out. cooler water seems to make it fruity almost Peachy while hotter water seems to make it kinda spicey/peppery.

I decided to just go ahead and stop there at 5 steeps, I have a Whole Brick so we can try it again whenever we want.
Maybe next time I'll go with a more consistent and slightly cooler water temp, we can play around with this tea a lot and I'm sure it will be very good, it's Not Bad at all...We might even say it is Complex...
Overall it was kinda smooth with No bitter at all but it did have a slight astringent after bite to me, not in a bad way tho, what we like to call a "pleasant astringency". Decent tea, We just need to spend more time with it I think.

-Eddie & Roger-
   


   

Purple Cloud Teahouse, First Purchase

This is Our first order from Purple Cloud Teahouse, but it wasnt our first taste of tea from them. First tea was a free sample that we acquired by commenting on a post in a group, it was for their "Zhong Cha -40322_ Liu Bao" which was a nice tea. We left a review for it on the Purple Cloud Teahouse website which you can view right here with this Link

Our first order We bought the Ceramic Glazed ShiPiao Teapot (140mL) Which you can see our review for on the website, We will not waste time going into detail here on the blog about it Other than We love it and it is Very pretty, Please see our review on their website Here and give it some traffic, that would be nice :)


What we will write about however are the Teas that we decided to purchase on our first order.
Instead of getting more Liubao or take a chance on something different, We decide to go with Thomas's preferred favorites, something Familiar to Us all.
We chose Lapsang Souchong and Tanyang Congou, If you know us then you know that was a "No Brainer".
These are teas that we know and love so well and have the Most experience with.
We have had and Do have So Many of these teas because they are some of our Favorites. We actually have experience with these teas have others similar teas that we can compare these teas to, They are Thomas's "Go To Teas"
The small Lapsang Souchong selection from Purple Cloud Teahouse is Superb!!!
thats all there is to it, Straight up Wonderful teas.
These Teas are NOT to be compared to the Smokey, leathery Comercial Lapsang Souchongs that we know so many are Familiar with(we enjoys those also tho).
These Tea are to Only be compared to a proper Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong that is Not smoked over and ruined.

To make it Short and sweet, These are Delicious!!!
The Wild Lapsang was quite floral and fruity with notes of longan fruit, light and crisp. It was actually Best to us when made Western style with a Long hot steep.
The Old Tree Lapsang was similar tho Much bolder a bit more floral and note quite as fruity, and actually best to us when made in short steeps, Gongfu.

The BEST of the three teas we bought was the The Congou Grade A
it was very much similar to the above mentioned lapsangs with the fruity note of Rambutan and slight floral notes, this tea is Superb!!! It is best steeped either way Gongfu style with short steep Or Western style with long hot steeps...It is even very nice with sugar and a bit of milk. It is complex and bold yet simple and smooth, A Perfect Tea!!!

Now these Teas are NOT cheap in price BUT you get what you pay for and We must say that they are worth Every bit of the Cost!
We have cheaper version of each to compare and we did compare, these are Wonderful and beat out many others.
Would we buy them again??
Damn right we WILL!!!!
We plan on buy more of ALL THREE of them if possible.

We are Very Pleased with our first purchase from Purple Cloud and We look forward to many more orders in the future.

These also make Good Iced Tea!

We will Show off the Teapot on blog since we didn't write much here about it.
You can see the Tea already seeping into the cracks in the glaze making it even more beautiful,
we've only used it for just a few days so far(yes we removed the string from the lid)

-Roger-

2006 CNNP Yiwu Wild Arbor Tea, Sheng Puerh

We don't use this teapot very often But it's now been dedicated for Sheng(raw)Puerh.
 Today we drank a nice Sheng of Yiwu Wild Arbor CNNP 2006 from finepuer.com / sampletea.com
It was quite nice very mellow and delicious. The aroma isn't much really, just like wet hay. The color is amazing and a very Dark brew.
The taste is Wonderful. No bitter or astringency at all to us, Slightly sweet almost fruity at times, woody, earthy, have to say it's kinda complex as none of these notes and tastes were very consistent, it seemed to change as we were drinking it from steep to steep, the first few steeps being Nothing even comparable to the later steeps. Slight eucalyptus notes, peach, hay even kinda honey like sweet notes.
 Delicate and Bold, some steeps even tasted almost as if we were sipping a ripe puerh but Only Almost. A damn good tea, Most Excellent, if we drank Sheng more often we would want lots more of this tea, like the entire cake to save and savor over time.
Even Best is that is has a very nice Energy to it, very good feelings, tea drunk? Maybe so, Wow this is good tea.
Also, the leafe is Beautiful, nice big whole leafes and a few stems too, dry and wet it looks very pretty to us.Forgive the sloppy first post, we have forgotten how to use the Blogger, It will get better!

-Roger-