Review: everydayteas 2016 Nan Nuo Shan

I love to share tea and do so weekly with my Office Tea Club. Today's review is for a tea we recently enjoyed, a 2016 Nan Nuo Shan by everydayteas. This tea turned out to be quite popular among the Tea Club members, and I think it's because it's a sheng puerh that suits many different palates. It's balanced yet 'punchy' and vegetal, with a hint of something sweet.

The Company
On their site, everydayteas considers their product 'Quality teas for the daily drinker'. The site is simple, clean and easy to navigate. The look and feel is reflected in the teas they offer. I like that this clear vision that carries through to the tea.

The Tea
The tea is a 2016 raw puerh from Nan Nuo mountain, in the village of Ban Po Xin Zhai. According to everydayteas, the Puer cakes are stored here in the northeast US in a climate controlled room with 70% Humidity and a temperature of 70ºF year round. This ensures the tea won't dry out during our unfortunate northeast winter weather (my skin feels dry just thinking about it).

We were so quick to dive in to this tea that I didn't take notes on the dry leaves (my apologies!). The wet leaves smelled of steamed spinach and wet rocks. The tea itself tastes strongly of deep green vegetables. Tea Club members observed flavors of kale and cooked spinach. There is also a little bit of what I like to call 'leather', a sharp peaty-scotch essence that reminds me of a leather jacket. Not super strong, but definitely there. I think this essence plus a bit of astringency is what gives it that 'punchy' feeling I described earlier.

The Verdict
These leaves have many steeps to share. We only had a limited amount of time during Office Tea Club, and I enjoyed a few more steeps of the tea after our break was over. As I mentioned before, this tea is satisfying, and...punchy. It has the presence of a young sheng you'd expect, and it's well balanced. A good daily drinker. I can definitely see myself steeping this tea throughout the day, or serving it to friends during a long afternoon of relaxed conversation.

Thank you to everydayteas for the sample! You can learn more about this tea here, and I found out that they'll soon have the 2017 Nan Nuo from the same farmer. I have two more teas from them to share with you, reviews will be coming soon.

Tasting: Spring 2016 Sheng by Misty Peak Tea

If I could associate an image for my tea journey, I would choose a rhizome.  It's a living, growing, breathing thing that is ever expanding under the surface. Sending out shoots to climb to the air and share with the world. Knowledge and experience feeds it, and it occasionally develops a blog post that makes it to the surface. I use my tasting posts as experience for my palate, to further feed the tea journey. Today's tea is a sheng puerh. I am still very much a newbie when it comes to puerh, and I'm always happy to get the opportunity to try it and continue to grow under the surface.

The tea is a 2016 spring sheng puerh from Misty Peak Tea. The company only sells puerh, and only from one family farm. To learn more about found Nicholas and the company you can check out the interview we did in 2015 right here.

The dry leaves are quite long and twisty. The leaves span a spectrum of dark green shades. A few sniffs bring a strong apricot aroma-very sweet, as if it were cooked into a jam. There is also a slight bit of smoke.

After a quick rinse, the wet leaves smell smoky, still apricot-y, with a touch of leathery peat and forest floor. Things are starting to feel very organic and earthy.

After the first infusion, the tea is dry on the palate with hints of smoke and peat. It has nice body and coats my throat. The fruitiness is still there, but more in the background. There is a fresher, green loamy thing going on too. A gentle floral sweetness lingers, and that subtle apricot sticks around for quite awhile. Almost like an apricot compote. The peat and loam bring me to the Scottish highlands, inhaling the fresh dewy green essence while watching sheep slowly graze. There may be a bit of a light spring rain in there too.

I had quite a few steeps of this tea and although the earthy dryness still dominated, it became sweeter as I steeped. It had me craving a nice dry white wine. Before I started my session with this tea, I had an annoying headache. I was surprised to see that after a few gaiwan pours of this tea, my headache was completely gone. Could it be the caffeine? Or the peaceful images of rolling Scottish hills? Or just coincidence? I choose to believe in the magic of the sheng, while the rhizome expands just a little bit.

Thank you to Misty Peak for the sample.