Most puerh tea comes packaged in high quantity of typically 357 gram. This dates back to when tea salesmen needed to carry as much tea as possible but waste as few space as possible. The byproduct was tea compressed into cake-like-forms - the creation of our beloved puerh tea!
Nowadays it is rather cumbersome to have such big quantities for tea. Especially if one just wants to try a tea that is not known yet. Paying the full price for 357g can be quite an invest for that. More so, if your goal is to explore a whole tea growing area like Lincang or a specific manufacturing year.
Luckily most tea vendors offer samples of their tea! YunnanSourcing does so definitely. I bought a bunch of samples and I am thrilled to go through them.
This will be the start of a small series on the YS-samples.
Starting off with “2010 Bu Lang Liming”.
The first brew has the typical “Liming smell” (strong, aggressive, herbs) but begins rather boring with subtle sweetness and grassy notes.
Consecutive brews add some more interesting mineraly taste. The flash infusions are still not to strong for me using 8g - so I increase the duration to some seconds. Now the typical and direct Liming punch starts off - nice!
I really like the strength and astringency. I’ve read other voices that categorize this into “big factory”. But I actually like it!
Also some more herbal and medicine-like notes start showing up. What impresses me the most is that for the relatively low price I get some great qi from the tea! Might also be because I did not drink too much puerh during the last weeks.
Increasing the steeping time the earthiness and saltiness increases. Some notes of cinnamon and orchids mix in.
In summary it is a nicely aged low budget sheng puerh. But I have to admit I still expected more - probably I was carried away by the title having “Bulang” and “2010” in it.
Rating
3 / 5
Tasting Diagram
Statistics & Reference
- Brewing time
- Purchased for 4
- Vendor & Link