I purchased a sample White2tea’s 2018 Lucky Puppy a few months after it came out. After trying a sample, I went in on a full cake. For 2018 I was determined to buy one expensive cake and ignore the rest, as that seems cheaper than sample runs. I’ve tried a lot of White2Tea over the years, so I know what I am generally getting into. I then sat on this review for half a year. When you drink Lucky Puppy there is a lot of tea drunk feels so writing and editing tea drunk writing is a feat. I then drank Lucky Puppy a few more times over the months to confirm my notes.
Leaf and Steeping Method
The dry leaf smells lightly like young puer, but then there is a back of the nose tickle of something sinister and pungent that makes my nose shout abort abort!
I used 1 gram of leaf per 15ml of vessel size, gongfu steeped in boiling water. Lucky Puppy’s hot leaf smells like pan char and your own asparagus farts. You know, your own farts as those smell more pleasant than external farts.
Tasting of White2Tea’s 2018 Lucky Puppy Sheng Puer
First and Second Infusion: I was warned Lucky Puppy is strong but so far it is on the lighter side. Lucky Puppy is a complicated tea. I get notes of like how drool tastes in your mouth and cabbage with a background of bitterness looming towards me. The texture is thick and heavily coating in the mouth. The more I sip the more it gets oily. Some sips taste a bit clover. Everything is quite balanced with nothing bad punching me in the face.
Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Infusion: The strength is building. There is something in Lucky Puppy that is trying to squish my head, so the tea drunk is at work. The tasting notes are a strange mix of clover, cabbage, and tobacco. Some sips are a bit plummy, some got some pan char. Some aftertastes are cooling. I can feel my gums getting numbed like I’m at a dental appointment.
Lucky Puppy has a lot going on, it is hard to sit here and comprehend it all as it’s a mayhem taste kind of tea. I found myself starting to get lost, sipping away, probably tea drunk spacing out.
Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Infusion: Admittedly I have been steeping this tea conservative with flash steeps up until this point due to reports of it being very strong and bitter. Lucky Puppy is getting sweeter and plummy with a contrasting bitter with some sips like sandalwood incense. The liquid is chunky thick, like half-set jello. Now I am getting the aftertaste of amazing jasmine and stone fruit. With each steep the tea gets drier and drier, making my mouth feel like sandpaper.
This tea is crushing it as my head feels like I’m on helium at the dentist, floating, heavy and strange.
Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Infusion: Overall the flavors certainly taste youthful as they all kind of float around unassertively in the sloppy body. Lucky Puppy sheng puer is quite sweet now, very plummy apricoty but super dry. The dryness has reached back of the throat level bad. I steeped it a little too long on the Twelfth and it leaned back to a savory clover bitterness. On the thirteenth infusion, the flavor was back to sweet plum and bad dryness, with a strong aftertaste jasmine I can taste through my sinus.
I have lost track of time, which is going faster. I’m late 30 minutes. The front of my head feels smushed.
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Infusion: I did long 15 minute steeps here. It doesn’t seem like this sheng wants to end. The flavor is light and fruity, quite dry. The last infusion is just softly mineral sweet before it goes into nuclear dry. I think I have milked a few more infusions in clay, but generally, I’m too baked to notice or count right.
Our final steeped leaves look interestingly quite fat stemmy. There are some weird dark leaves and a couple of crispy tipped ones.
Gut rot = high. My stomach is dying and wants to fall out. ALL THE FRIED FOOD NOW and lucky for me I got a deep fryer sitting here and lumpia in the freezer.
Comments
White2Tea’s 2018 Lucky Puppy is a complex and addictive pup with huge growth potential if you can keep your hands off it. There is a lot going on in this tea that I feel I cannot have a single session to comprehend so I wan to drink it again and again. The material is high end as it just has this incredible balance to along with a great body and plenty of tea drunkard. It did sound like I brewed it pretty well with going with flash steeps for a while as others mention this tea is strongly bitter and I got glimpses of it if I went a bit too long of an infusion.
This is a tea for types who don’t mind rolling $200+ (or over $1 a gram) per cake on crazy young complex tea. It is a good sharable group tea, I’d love to serve this one up to see what people think about it as it has a lot of talking point. As a con, I can almost say this is almost too complex as if I’m drinking a high-end gongfu waste bin. Lucky Puppy certainly one not for a newer puer drinker, but they are likely priced out in the first place.
I certainly felt like I got my money’s worth. Lucky Puppy is a 3 hour session and 16 infusions with a young sheng are crazy. Personal taste-wise, I actually didn’t like it much in the early steeps as cabbagy notes are ick, however steep 7+ I greatly enjoyed.
