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“Brewed gongfu at 205 in a yixing. Rinse (20s): Pot aroma is surprisingly like a hojicha, maybe a little smokier. Liquor is pale/transparent orange. Taste is a bit like a rained out ashtray. First...” Read full tasting note
“Is the nose of dried grapes and visions of gyrating California Raisins influenced by the purple wrapper? Possibly. But once rinsed it won’t matter because the memories of grandpa’s cheap cigars and...” Read full tasting note
“Gongfu Sipdown (2630)! This tea was kindly added to a previous order as a free sample. Even though I do tend to really favour roasted teas, in the past, I’ve struggled with W2T’s roasted raw pu’erh...” Read full tasting note
Alienist is a blend of aged raw Puer maocha that we stored in Menghai under dry conditions before sending it to Fujian to be charcoal roasted by hand in 2023 and rested until pressing in 2024.
Bright and fruity aromatics hiding behind the flame of the roast, clean and succulent huigan (returning sweetness) in the mouth a touch of bite from the flame and the astringency of the tea. Incredible substitute for expensive oolongs as a daily drinker.
Brewed gongfu at 205 in a yixing.
Rinse (20s): Pot aroma is surprisingly like a hojicha, maybe a little smokier. Liquor is pale/transparent orange. Taste is a bit like a rained out ashtray.
First steep (15s): Liquor is more pumpkin orange. Pot aroma is cigarettes and hojicha. Taste is burnt charcoal briquette right up front with some appreciable notes in the middle and after that I’m having a hard time placing – theyre warm/toasty. I fear this tea will go the way of firebat where its appreciability is ruined by the dominance of cigarette ash notes.
Second steep (15s): Liquor: orange with a tint of brown. Pot aroma more like hojicha again. Same ashiness dominating the palate, with some warm oolong-ish vaguely sheng notes in the background
Third steep (20s): Liquor orange. The flavor is still sharp with the bite of bitter ash. The note is fading however, giving way to the mid notes. The astringency of young sheng battling for attention with the in your face charcoal ash does it no favors.
Fourth steep (30s): The ash is finally at a reasonably settled level, giving way to, honestly, not really impressive background notes that are still quite astringent
Going to give this a couple more steeps but its clear to me the experience is not to my liking, I am mostly suffering through each steep
Overall: suffers from overpowering ash notes. It’s only chance for salvation is possibly aging enough to let the base ash notes die down and hopefully have the aging mellow the astringency mellow to make the sheng portion more appriciable. Until then, it’s a 1-2 punch in the face. But some people might be into that :)
Flavors: Ash, Charcoal, Roasty, Warm
Is the nose of dried grapes and visions of gyrating California Raisins influenced by the purple wrapper? Possibly. But once rinsed it won’t matter because the memories of grandpa’s cheap cigars and grandma’s cheaper black tea will take over. And this ain’t entirely a bad thing! The tea for the children is the tea for the future, no?
Gongfu Sipdown (2630)!
This tea was kindly added to a previous order as a free sample. Even though I do tend to really favour roasted teas, in the past, I’ve struggled with W2T’s roasted raw pu’erh so this isn’t a tea I probably would have ever ordered for myself. However, y’all know I LOVE anything weird and experimental, so I was still excited to see it added as a freebie.
This tea steeps quite intensely pretty straight out of the gate. Those heavy roast and charcoal notes are very in your face and accompanied by a lot of woody bitterness as well. I tasted log smoke, charred walnut, chicory root and a TON of agarwood with a slightly sweeter and coating finish and aftertaste that was like a mix of ginseng and licorice roots. It did soften up a bit after the third or fourth steep, allowing a bit more of an enjoyable plum-like fruitiness to come through, but overall I have to say that this tea was unfortunately just not really my jam…
All that said, I’m still glad I got to experience it in a low commitment kind of way, and I would still probably encourage others to try it. It’s one of the most unique experiences I’ve had with sheng pu’erh in a long time!!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-LGDpiOG0l/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-LI98Q-rsg
