Chuan Cheng Yin Hao Tuocha

Today I'm reviewing a 100 gram, 2004, sheng puer tuocha (生普洱沱茶) that I purchased several years ago from Silk Road Tea. It is called Chuan Cheng Yin Hao (傳承銀毫) (Inheritance Silver Tip).

Here's the wrapper.
(I'm betting that symbol in the middle represents a leaf bud.)


And here's the tuo!

The compression is very tight but I still managed to flake off a reasonable amount of dry leaf using my puer knife. As I often find with similar tuo-cha, I ended up with a mix of small broken leaves and little leaf clumps. I used very short steeps at first (5 to 10 seconds) in hopes that they would balance the potential astringency of so many tiny broken leaves.

I covered the bottom of a small gaiwan with leaf and began my session with the customary (though not mandatory) short rinse. The now steaming leaves had a familiar camphor and incense aroma.

My first infusion was 5 seconds long and poured orange and fragrant. Because the resulting liquor's surface had tons of sparkly oils and many long lasting bubbles floating upon it, I gave this tea an A+ for appearance.

I prepared my palate for astringency and took a sip. It was smooth... and it had an amazing ripe cherry note that really lingered.

All ten of my infusions tasted nice (even the ones I slightly over-steeped) and the tea had consistently good body and complexity. The smooth start and the pleasant cherry note transformed into some drier champagne- and Darjeeling-like flavors. Still quite enjoyable.

This puer tea gave me a very focused, high-vibration energy. I felt a little buzzed and my feet and hands kept tapping or shaking. I have found that I'll often get this feeling when drinking a lot of sheng puer made with lots of silver or white buds. It's time for some food.