Menghai Aged Raw Pu-Erh from Bana Tea Company
When I first started drinking wine, one of the things that I most enjoyed was the feeling afterwards, once the wine had coursed through the throat and into the stomach. That warmth. It was amazing to me to feel how the body responded to the drink.
I had a similar experience this morning with tea. The tea is an aged pu-erh tea from Bana Tea Company, a Menghai factory raw (sheng) pu-erh that has been aging since 1996.
What struck me about this tea was how refreshed the mouth felt after drinking it. Just like you can feel the wine burning in your chest, I could feel the tea coating and cooling my mouth.
I had steeped the tea according to Linda’s (the owner of Bana Tea Company0 instructions: start with two rinses, followed by a 10-second infusion; increase it by 10 seconds for the next three infusions; then infuse it for a minute, and increase it by a minute for every subsequent infusions. I am now on my fifth infusion, and the tea still has plenty of juice to give. In fact, many of the leaves have only just now begun to unfurl. I’ll be drinking this all day.
Dry, the tea looks impressive. Big, lush leaves, with some bronzed tips. It smells of earth, as you would expect from a pu-erh.
This is a very earthy pu-erh. But perhaps the most notable flavour I have found is a citric tartiness. This becomes more pronounced as the tea cools, and it has also become much more obvious with subsequent infusions.
Menghai Aged Raw Pu-erh is available in cake form from Bana Tea Company. Linda still has a limited supply of the loose leaf pu-erh, so if you’re interested in that, email her directly. Browse and compare more pu-erh tea from different merchants in the Tea Finely Brewed marketplace.
Disclosure: Bana Tea Company is a current advertiser on Tea Finely Brewed. This tea was sent to me as a free sample.