A PuErh obsessed friend living in Yunnan turned us on to this cake made by another producer and after one taste we snapped it up.
This ripened PuErh is Gong Ting grade which is top drawer pickings with a predominance of buds and young leaves. This gives the tea a thick texture and malty flavour reminiscent of aspects of Yunnan Dian Hong (black tea made from a lot of buds).
The leaves are picked from around 80 year old tea trees so whilst this is not a gushu like our retired Sacred Owl, it is certainly not made from garden tea and has a strong depth. The cake is beautiful and the fermentation or ripening of the leaves has been handled immaculately.
This is an easy drinking ripe PuErh. I do not mean that it is simple or basic in flavour - the tea has richness and character in abundance. I mean that the flavour profile is full of universally loved tastes - vanilla, malt, cola botanicals and wooden casks.
The effect of this tea is, as you would expect from ripe PuErh, satisfying and cleansing. It makes a great digestif after a heavy meal. However, what has surprised us about this tea is that it gives a happy, laidback and social, feel-good feeling.
We have tried to take all of our notes and impressions of this tea to inspire the artwork drawn and personally screen printed by Celine. The bull is licking his lips and ready to serve up your delicious, malted, vanilla cola floats. We took cues from 1950's American diners and British ice cream trucks.
The name? We think that this character is savvy and street smart and in London we often call guys like that a bit of a 'Geezer'. The fact that it rhymes with a famous malted confectionary is a happy bonus!
This 400g cake will give you over 500 infusions of Gong Fu tea so we advise everyone to grab it while it is around for your quality ripe PuErh sessions.
