#teafactory

Another new tea from Xiaguan Tea Factory but this time we’re doing a Raw Puerh. This 2022 production is Xiaguan’s “Te Ji’ grade Puerh which is a superior grade, second only to their Gold Ribbon which I may blog about later. These little 100g tuo are very inexpensive and prove that good tea doesn’t have to be pricey.

The tuo is very thankfully medium compressed and didn’t take a lot of force to break it unlike other tuo I’ve have in the past. This is actually one of the reasons that I tend to avoid tuo Puerh all together, as they are already awkward to break, and being tightly pressed makes it worse, but not in this case.

The dry leave has an obvious vegetal note backed by a light smokiness and a clear upfront aroma of fennel seeds. The smell almost reminded me of seasoned bbq vegetables. Very umami. However it did also has a sweeter finish that was almost juicy if that makes any sense. The smokiness is prominent at first on the wet leaf, but fades as the leaves cool. It has a slightly sweet acidic smell like cherry tomatoes, and a fruity juiciness of stone fruit, mainly apricot. To finish it has light grassy and woody notes.

The tea is very robust without being overpowering. An lubricating, oily mouthfeel but very smooth and clean. Umami flavor with tastes of fennel, steamed veggies and a touch of smokiness, quite similar to the scent of the dry leaf. The next few infusions were similar but became more juicy wit a cheek puckering feel, with the fennel and smoke fading more with each run until it became a balanced, mouthwatering soup.

“Tibetan Flame” is a sub brand of the famous Xiaguan Tea Factory. The factory is most famously known for their productions of Toucha shaped Puerh (bowl shaped or sometimes referred to as bird’s nest). The sub brand known as Tibetan Flame, produces Puerh meant to be sold to the Tibetan market and is used for making Tibetan Butter Tea. You can find a quick homemade recipe for butter tea in my blog.

This 250g brick comes well packaged in a tight wrapper and box for easy storage. The aroma of the brick is noticeable as soon as the brick is slipped out of it’s box. It’s got a little bit of green still present on the leaf when you look up close and still has presence of both golden downy and a little silver downy as well. It is quite a tightly pressed brick so breaking a piece off took a little extra time and care.

The dry aroma in the warmed gaiwan is rich with a sweet brown sugar and malt aroma with a smokey presence  of tobacco. Very warming and comforting on a cold days, or sitting close the the AC as the temperature her starts to heat up. The wet aroma is earthy with damp soil notes, malt, cocoa powder and a mellow but not overpowering smoke aroma, maybe even closer to a camphor smell. It also has some nice fruity notes of cooked berries, and sweet purple grape.

The first infusion comes with a thick and heavy malt, astringent, mineral rich soil, aged parchment and raisins. It also showed a very woody earthy side of cedar and notable camphor flavor. This woody side of the tea became the prominent profile on the second infusion with strong and filling notes of cedar wood, camphor, while the notes of mineral and raisin seemed to disappear. The malty flavor remained but the astringency faded.

By the 3rd and four runs the tea was all powerhouse of wood and camphor with an aroma similar to a lumber yard. Fresh cut woods of all types filling the air with a clean and comforting scent. The thick remained think and robust. A perfect sessions for a cold winter day, a weekend evening at the cottage or to compliment a juicy protein and potato filled meal. Actually reminded me a lot of Yunnan Sourcing 2020 “Cozy” cake.

What is 7572?

This number refers to a classic benchmark ripe puerh recipe made my the Menghai Tea Factory. To be more specific, it refers to a recipe first made in 1975, using grade 7 leaves, and made by the Menghai Tea Factory (factory #2). This cake was produced on the first run as we can see from the number below 7572. The “2101″ means the cake was produced in 2021 and comes from the first production of the year for that recipe, “01″

This recipe is produced every year by Menghai Tea Factory and this will be my first time trying it. I have another 7572 ripe puerh sample although I haven’t tasted it yet. Sometime in the future this year I will be going more into specifics in puerh recipe numbers, and well as reviewing several Menghai ripe recipes. But for now the focus lies here on this 2021 production.

Upon unwrapping the cake, the first this I saw was beautiful ticket inside. I haven’t seen one quite this nice or large before, but these tickets are great to see as they act as a means of authentication, as benchmark recipe like this are often faked.

As I went to the break the cake, it didn’t take long to realize that it is VERY tight compressed. It took several minutes to try and get my pick into the cake to pry off some leaves. When I do this I’m usually very careful not break a lot of leaves or break off crumbs. In this case however, I found some difficulty finding a spot on the cake where my pic would smoothly insert, and so I ended up making more of a mess than I like.

The dry leaf had a sweet aroma of aged cigar, and pipe tobacco, along with a subtle note of hard woods. I detected a similar aged cigar note on the wet leaf, but the sweetness took a much more dessert like turn. Noted a strong aroma of fudge brownie and a unique kind of caramel note. Reminded me more of a dulce de leche type of caramel scent, which is creamier and richer.

The brew is strong!

The tea has a full bodied, rich and creamy mouthfeel. It has a lingering astringency that sits right on the throat while it’s malty body coats the tongue. The combination and the strength was similar to an instant coffee mouthfeel but without the coffee flavor. The initial infusion was slightly sweet and noted the tobacco smelt on the wet leaf.

The malt got much stronger on the second infusion and persisted throughout all other infusions. The second infusion has a bit more of a strong earthy note, of what I can only describe as tree bark. After the second infusion the combination of maltiness and astringency dominated the taste buds with a very traditional, woody earth ripe puerh flavor.

The word that kept coming to my head to describe the teas “powerhouse”. The tea packs a major punch and never lets up. 8 infusions later and it’s still dominating with a strong taste and as iron fist! Rating the tea is hard because while it didn’t leave me with a long list of tasting notes like more complex puerh’s do, I can’t help but be influenced by it’s clean flavor and powerhouse energy.