One of my earliest blog in 14 Nov 2009, was on this ripe tea brick. I had purchased this brick from Awazon, a Yunnan based tea shop. One of the reason for my purchase was its age and relatively inexpensive price ($17 - air freight inclusive). I had remarked that this tea had a red date flavor. I had bought 4 bricks in total and had stored away these tea since.
It has been about 3 years since I had blogged about this 2000 brick. I had been privileged to have access and drank quite a considerable amount of pu erh tea during this time. At about 8-10 g daily with an additional round over the weekends, I am able to consume up to a cake or brick within a month. This had allowed me to 'find my personal preference for a tea' whether I should add/reduce more leaves, shorten/lengthen the infusion times which would not be possible if I had purchased samples. I am not showing off, but to me, its really difficult to make a judgement call on a 8-10g sample. I had sounded out my thoughts on this matter to my online tea dealer friends and you would have realized that the samples now are in 20-30g amounts (hip! hip! hooray).
This 2000 brick has its own unique characteristics. Its dried fruit aroma is the most intense I had experienced in my ripe pu erh adventures. The dried fruit aroma resembled something like chinese red dates or dried cranberries. I could detect an extremely mild hint of leather in the scent as well. Overall, the tea was smooth and pleasant to drink. I found that I could reduce the amount of tea a wee bit ..... 7-8g of tea in a 180-200ml teapot and could get 8 drinking infusions of the tea. Its interesting the herbal scent and flavors associated with ripe pu erh was pushed to a distant background while the dried fruitiness aspect took centrestage. I am happy I have a couple of these bricks left.
