I finally settled down in my new apartment and had time to drink tea again. Cha Moods sent me some tea several weeks ago so it was high time to taste one of those teas and write about it. The tea I picked for today’s session is the 2014 Menghai Sheng Puerh Tuocha.
2014 Menghai Sheng Puerh Tuocha
The 2014 Menghai Sheng Puerh Tuocha is a tea that was made by master Zhuang Jin Li. She was a Chief Quality Officer in the Menghai Tea Factory before she retired and has over 50 years of experience in making puerh tea.
Don’t know where to buy tea online? I made a list of over 300 online tea shops and I keep updating it regularly. You can check it over here
This tea was produced in 2014 and uses material from Menghai County. It’s a blend of different leaves, but as far as I know, they are all from 2014.
Tea Tasting
- 5.2g for a 110ml zini teapot
- Water 99°C
The leaves have a faded brown color with beige/light brown buds. It’s a mixture of medium-sized and smaller leaves. The dry leaves have some hints of dry wood to them with something sweet in the finish. After rinsing the leaves, I’m getting notes of berries.
Infusion 1 (15 sec): the thing that catches my attention is the thickness of the liquor. It feels really smooth as it has subtle notes of berries at the start. These slowly transform into a warming fruitiness from the middle onwards. It’s mostly focused on the sides of my mouth. For a first infusion, the flavors are intense already. The energy moves around my eyes in this one.
Infusion 2 (20 sec): it seems the liquor is thicker than in the previous infusion. I only took a small sip at first because it was too hot to drink, but I still experienced a long-lasting aftertaste. The energy has shifted towards my ears; they feel hot while drinking this infusion. Flavors are mostly fruity with a dominance of berries. The berries become a bit sweeter in the finish and aftertaste.
Infusion 3 (25 sec): no big changes. Still fruity with dominant notes of berries. This tea really feels like a hot summer’s day. It’s sweet and fruity and it reminds me of a juicy fruit snack on a hot day in summer. The aftertaste lasts a really long time. It has been a while since I’ve had a tea with an aftertaste of this caliber!
Infusion 4 (30 sec): still no bitterness and the fruitiness is still noticeable. It’s really similar to the previous infusions.
Infusion 5 (35 sec): now I’m getting some faint bitter notes, but it’s not too intense. They quickly change into the fruitiness from before. This fruitiness has also changed a bit as it’s less about berries and more about plums. This one reminds me of fresh and juicy plums.
Infusion 6 (45 sec): some of the ‘older’ notes that you usually get when tasting older puerh are coming through, but it’s nothing that isn’t good. These flavors are replaced by fruits rather quickly and the finish and aftertaste feel fruity.
Conclusion
The 2014 Menghai Sheng Puerh Tuocha surprised me in many different ways. I usually stay away from tuocha because they are tightly compressed and more difficult to pick apart. This led to numerous bad experiences in the past…
However, this one was easy to pick apart and the leaves stayed more or less intact during this process. The flavors were intense from the start and were mostly sweet and fruity.
It started out with notes of berries and slowly changed into hints of fresh and juicy plums. These flavors lingered and the aftertaste was really impressive.
This is one of the better puerh teas I have tried in the last few weeks so I definitely recommend this one! You can buy it over here.
It’s very expensive tea!
That would be $157 for a cake. Is it a joke?
OK this site lists 2015 Purple Dayi at $398, Kingteamall lists the same tea at $285. Surely it’s a not at all funny joke?
As a blogger & reviewer you have an obligation to delve a little deeper into tge vendors you are boosting and in the case of situations like this point out that the tea you are reviewing is grossly outrageously overpriced.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the comments. I’m Yang and I own the shop reviewed. I started this end of last year to try to get more people excited about quality tea in The Netherlands. Being a smaller and starting shop, we try to do it right and we have our direct sources in China. The Puerh market has been very volatile this year and there is a downward trend especially for TAETEA(DAYI) as they seem to be branching out more to mass production (and even bubble tea business). As Puerh tea cake trading is very illiquid, we got our batch beginning this year and fixed the price then and didn’t keep updating it given the current scale of our webshop. We can guarantee though the quality and authenticity of our product. We also think this Tuocha is fairly priced for its quality.
I have not seen the website you mentioned before so thanks for that one. I’m sure I have missed many more though, I’m happy to have a chat to see how to have better price comparison sources better if you like you can reach me at master@chamoods.com
I have just written about my experiences with this tea without comparing it to what other vendors are selling it for. If you buy this tea at this price, it’s worth it in my opinion. If you can buy it for less at another store, that would be even better value for money.
I feel fine paying €45 for this tuocha myself. If I order from somewhere outside Europe, I need to pay extra custom duties and shipping as well. This one ships from the Netherlands and is fairly easy to get.
It’s possible that it’s overpriced compared to other shops, but it’s still good value for money in my opinion. I got a much better experience with this one than with most other puerh teas I’ve had in the last couple of weeks.