This 1997, 590rmb, is an unblended black tea composted; not the best leaves from puer, but my entry point. Taste and nose with a heavy complex like french wine. Called a ten year puer, by the third steeping opens into dark layers, shifting not unlike a dark within dark brown guiness with hints of red black. The taste is heaped in peat and earth and wood and stone, sticks, cavernous yet still - i apologize for these words but i'm trying to describe something rather ethereal. Please tell me if you have other ideas, criticisms or impressions. Not exactly a thinking tea, but with still solid energy without the buzz of coffee. More athletic, a lazy man, myself, after the first afternoon drinking, went to swim where normally two laps has me winded, swam twenty and without fatigue. Drunk in the afternoon can keep one awake.
Those for sale now have gone downhill. The 1999 lacks complexity and has a single reddish earth note, not entirely pleasant.
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