Today’s review is the 2013 Xiaguan FT Love Forever Sheng Puer made by Feitai. LOL this wrapper!
Like.. what is this tea? Of pretty tea wrappers of the factory variety, most have a young woman on it, zodiac, birds, or flowers, not hot pink with hearts all over the place. Despite tea here in North America seems more of a gal thing, puer is heavily male drinkers. Heck, I know my blog stats and the majority of you readers are male. I guess the target for this Xiaguan Love Forever tea is a gift for a loved one, as I did feel strange buying it for myself to drink alone.
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I first had this tea as a sample from James at Teadb. I was impressed by how sweet this Xiaguan was, and filed it into my mind to get a cake sometime. A bunch of us pitched in for a tong for his wedding gift. This goes back to what I said above and this Love Forever cake makes for an awesome cheeseball gift.
The claims on the 2013 Xiaguan FT Love Forever Sheng Puer is it is leftover 2003 gushu and Ban Zhang material, pressed in 2013. I don’t have a link to buy Love Forever as I purchased it in bulk at an auction with some tea friends using an agent. Going this way gets the best deal as I’ve seen this cake for $160+ and I paid half that.
Leaf and Steeping Method
The leaf is quite dark, very dark for 2013 tea, so that leads me to believe the maocha was older.
I used 1 gram of leaf to 15ml of vessel size, steeped in boiling water. The hot leaf smells like old pears and apples mushed and left on the forest floor.
Tasting of Xiaguan 2013 Love Forever Sheng Puer
First and Second Infusion: The texture is smooth and lightly creamy. I get notes of plums and bit of library paperback book aged essence. Some sips are a touch sour. This tea seems really light tasting for what it is. The aftertaste rolls in once you drink more, coming out as an interesting plum and floral jasmine.
Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Infusion: We are rolling! The flavor has kicked it up a notch and tastes like plums and flowers pressed into a crusty paperback library book. This tea is also dry astringency but clears up for the aftertaste of stronger plum, rice syrup, and nice contrasting sweetness that makes you step back and go wow, this is sweet. I don’t mean it is sugary sweet, but I think it’s just that the contrast of slightly aged tea and fruity sweetness gives the shock.
The texture is slick feeling on the lips, but it does have a lingering dryness, making the gums feel a touch dry. Body feel, can feel it travel down past my collar bone and smack me. It is making me awake, but I’m also feeling a slight chill and time is moving faster.
Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Infusion: Love Forever is starting to slow down and clean up. It has a crisp, dry library taste some sips, but other sips are sweet rice syrup, amber, wet stone mineral, dry floral incense, with a more floral sweet aftertaste than fruit. I got some salivation here.
I’ve been drinking this tea pretty slowly as the sweet aftertaste is quite nice, so it is a great tea to sit back and relax on. I wish I was knitting and drinking this tea instead of writing this review!
Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteen Infusion: This tea has been winding down for a while, but still has stuff left in it. The tea has boiled down to just a crisp mineral clean sweetness with some sips of sweet rice syrup (which has a malty sweet rice taste). It is not bitter at all, despite it being boiled and reboil steeped this long, but is still dry. It did not get any drier since I started, feeling some scratchiness in the gums.
I power steeped 20 minutes on the final infusion and it was also sweet and dry. If I used a dedicated clay pot (this one is glazed and my fast pour tasting pot) I could have gotten another steep or two.
Comments
2013 Love Forever Xiaguan Raw Puer is a great cake to drink now if you love a middle-aged tea that has a hint of age and sweet floral notes. It is quite dry in texture, so it might not be for some. It is certainly a great tea gift for the puer addict love of your life (a 2013 anniversary would be perfect!), or just forget about the wrapper and drink it Forever Alone style. I’m looking forward to taking my time chipping away at this cake and aging it more.
I personally have been buying so much young tea, though I have shifted more on buying ones I think will age best. It is a nice change of pace to drink a higher quality tea with age on it versus the cheap aged teas I’ve been exposed to more in the past.
Now, what we need is a puer called Hate Forever that is a bowel cleanser.
