2006 Ming-Yuan Hao "Yi Wu - 858 Puerh Museum"

Even with the spring knocking on the door, it’s still dark outside when I come home. As I took photo of church outside my window, I noticed, that its clock isn’t adjusted. The weather was today sunny and warm, so I wanted to try some tasty tea today. So I ended up with sample of Yi Wu tea, that was produced by Ming Yuan Chung Guang Tea Factory with cooperation of 858 Da Yu Pu-erh Museum following traditional processing skills.



The leaves of the sample are nice, still green and young with few yellow buds. Some of them are quite hairy. The sample included lots of stems – it’s a good sign, at least the good teas I drunk before were full of stems. I’m not sure; maybe they give power to the tea broth.

The broth is dark orange, much darker then I could expect from less than two years old tea. One fact is important – I have this sample in airtight small plastic bag for about 4 months by now, so the tea can be affected/aged a bit more than a whole beeng would.

When I washed the tea with boiling water, it gave up a bit metallic smell. Later I used about 95 Celsius (205F) water. The broth smelled a hint of tobacco (a rare smell, at least in my teas), little smoked with very gentle touch of apples. The taste was free of any smokiness; instead it was sweet with acidic ending, very fruity and refreshing. There was no mouth-drying effect at all.



This tea is very pleasant to drink. If prepared properly you can serve it to guests that are not used to powerful and harsh taste of some of the pu-erhs. It’s more like a real pu-erh gentleman, with good manners and behavior.

I already got one beeng from HouDe (thanks, Guang!) and maybe I will purchase some more to store. This tea was created from sun-dried and stone molded mao cha to pursue and re-produce the glory of 50's Hong Yi cakes and it behaves like that.