Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: White Two Tea
Tea Description:
Repave was made with aged puer tea material from 2007, which was stored in Menghai for 7 1/2 years prior to being pressed in November of 2014. The soup is already a dark bronze color, sweet and soft. The material is from Hekai. This is the second and final pressing of this material. Some of the wrappers were stamped incorrectly as 2006.
Learn more about this tea here.
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Taster’s Review:
Smooth! Really, really smooth and mellow!
That’s my first impression of this tea.
To brew this pu-erh, I grabbed my gaiwan and heated the water to 190°F. Then I eyeballed a measurement of leaves – what looked like about a bamboo scoop of leaves – and put them into the bowl of the gaiwan. The leaves of this sample have been cut from a cake that probably looked like the cake in the photograph above. Some of the leaf pieces are individual leaves, but most of them are chunks of several leaves that I pried apart carefully with a knife.
Then I poured enough of the hot water into the gaiwan to cover the leaves and I steeped it for 15 seconds. Then I strained off the liquid and discarded it. This is the “rinse.”
I’ve found that this simple ‘rinse’ procedure is the big difference between a cup of pu-erh that I can enjoy drinking versus a cup of pu-erh that I would rather discard. So, if you find pu-erh to be too earthy or just off-putting, I recommend trying the rinse! It really does make a HUGE difference!
Then I filled the gaiwan with more water and this time, I steeped the tea for 45 seconds and strained the liquid into my favorite “little” teacup. It holds one gaiwan-full of tea. How much is that? I don’t know. I’ve never actually measured it.
My first cup is SMOOTH. Mellow. It has a lovely sweetness that is somewhere between a deep molasses and a buttery caramel. It’s earthy – but it isn’t an off-putting or overwhelmingly strong earthy flavor. It’s beautifully mellow at this stage. There are distant mineral-y notes. This first cup disappeared quickly because … I really enjoyed it!
The second cup is just as smooth as the first. The flavor is deeper this time. Still very sweet and that sweetness is still very molasses-y/buttery caramel. I taste less of the earthy notes that I tasted in the first cup now, but the distant mineral notes are still there. This cup seems to be all about the sweet and that’s quite alright by me.
This tea just seems to keep on getting sweeter with each infusion! The third cup is even sweeter than the first two. With this cup, I am picking up very little earthiness (an occasional earthy tone here and there) and the aforementioned mineral notes are softer now. This is just SWEET.
Later infusions offered the same sweet, molasses-y taste, and I liked that the earthiness mellowed out significantly by the fourth cup. I don’t know if it’s that my palate has become more acclimated with the sweetness of this tea or that the flavors are just now emerging, but I am starting to discover some soft floral notes.
A truly lovely pu-erh – this is one you’ll fall in love with!
