17-Year-Old Gong Ting Pu-erh

Our final "new" pu-erh is even older--it's a loose pu-erh sold to us as "17-year-old Menghai Dayi Gong Ting Pu-erh."  Like our unwrapped 2003 brick, this tea comes to us without formal packaging or pedigree, so we've got to take its provenance with a grain of salt and pay attention to our senses to determine its quality.  "Gong Ting" refers to the erstwhile tradition of the best teas being gifted to the Chinese imperial court.  Today, it's often used to describe loose cooked pu-erh of the smallest grade.  One look at the leaves of this tea and it seems to be a fair appellation--they're tiny!  The tea seems to be almost entirely composed of buds, too, which range from dark brown to golden in color.  I can see this grade being included in a blended cake, but it's hard to imagine a cake made of leaves this small--it seems like it wouldn't manage to stay together!

2003 Menghai Ripened Brick

                      

Our next "new" pu-erh has actually got some age on it--it's a 250 gram brick from 2003.  Like our '09 7452 cake it's hard to start talking about this one without raising some common confusing aspects of the pu-erh experience.  For starters, the brick is called "Menghai," and as the last notes mentioned, this tea was created in Menghai county, Yunnan province, but not at Menghai Tea Factory.  Secondly, you can see that this cake is a different shape--indeed, it's not the standard 357 gram bing (disc-shaped cake) into which the majority of pu-erh is pressed; it's a 250 gram rectangular brick.  Though this shape is not the #1 norm, it's relatively common and 250g is the standard brick weight.  You may also notice that these bricks have no wrappers (aside from the bamboo wrapper that holds multiple bricks).

New Pu-erh! 2009 Menghai Factory 7452 Recipe

 

It's been quite a while since we've had new ripened (cooked) pu-erh offerings at Miro Tea; a few months ago we sold out of the last of our 2007 Chang Tai Red Crane cakes, and shortly after our 2006 International Tea Expo Memorial cakes disappeared--a lot of customers have asked after the teas, wondering when we'll be restocking them.  Sometimes the unfortunate thing about the aged pu-erh world is that once something is gone, it's really gone--our supplier sold out close to a year ago, so all we have of those two cakes is memories!  Fortunately, though, it's also an opportunity to try some new teas, thanks to our new partnership with Yunnan Sourcing!  We have three new (to us) ripened/cooked pu-erh cakes that are already available at Miro for your tasting pleasure--Jeannie has introduced a couple of them at our weekly tea tastings (Saturdays at 1 pm) and they've gone over quite well.