Meng Zhr Pu’er is an Autumn 2012 harvested, unfermented (sheng/raw) pu’er from South Yunnan, China. This tea is from Jalam Teas.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Jalam Teas, they have a monthly tea club. For $19 a month they will send you a 100 gram pu’er cake, with lots of information, photos or videos on the work that was put into making your pu’er cake. Each tea is hand sourced and in limited quantities.
Before I crack into my sample pu’er cake, I gotta mention how much I love the card that came with Meng Zhr Pu’er. Gorgeous photography!
Dry Leaf
Meng Zhr Pu’er is tightly woven bundle with a grassy scent. A change of pace from other unfermented pu’ers I’ve tried, which have more of a dry scent.
Steeping Instructions
I find the instructions interesting. Go heavy on the leaf, longer rinse time, and longer steep time. Jalam Teas recommends that since Meng Zhr Pu’er doesn’t get astringent, you can be more generous on steep time and leaf, giving you more flavor. I used 6 grams of dry leaf, with my small yixing tea pot.
After the 15 second rinse, the tea had a glowy golden rod colour with a super fresh, vegetal and almost peppery spice scent. Quite unique! For all steepings I used boiling water, starting at 30 second steeps, adding 10 seconds per each infusion.
Tasting of Meng Zhr Pu’er from Jalam Teas
First, Second and Third Infusion: Meng Zhr Pu’er sips in light, but quickly bursts to a strong level of flavor. The flavor is crystal crisp, clean and sweet vegetal. There vegetal here is strong and quite sharp, but not grassy. The closest vegetal I can compared Meng Zhr Pu’er to is green peppers. My tea tastes like biting into a freshly picked green pepper that is still warm from the summer sun. It’s sweet, crisp, bursty refreshing flavor, with a hint of strong bitter vegetal skin. With that said, there is a “healthy” flavor to this tea. Again, Meng Zhr Pu’er is not grassy or astringent. No fermentation or smokeyness either.
Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Infusion: Really good infusions here. Each steeping the vegetal sharpness mellows out, paving the way for more sweetness. That sunny, crisp, vegetal sweetness gives me an invigorating feel with each sip! Very nice! What I find interesting with Meng Zhr Pu’er is the aftertaste. It’s a little vegetal, maybe coppery, but it doesn’t stay due to the lack of dryness.
Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Infusion: I’ve discovered that Meng Zhr Pu’er gets better with each infusion. At this point the strength of Meng Zhr Pu’er‘s flavor is reducing, but the intensity here is similar to a first infusion of a raw pu’er (not the 8th!). These infusions developed some more personality – along with the crisp, clean vegetal flavor, there is also a bit of a wet stones and copper mineral flavor. A bit of astringency has finally appeared in these later steepings, adding a longer aftertaste similar to other pu’er, a stone fruit and floral note.
Eleventh and Twelfth Infusion: Meng Zhr Pu’er became very light here, with just a little vegetal sunny flavor with some light astringency.
Comments
Overall, Meng Zhr Pu’er is a very refreshing and radiant tea. I quite like how each steeping the tea got better and better, mellowing out and developing extra character. This tea tastes healthy – on a similar wavelength of drinking freshly juiced vegetables, but in tea form. Meng Zhr Pu’er can be a strong, intense tea too if you add extra steep time.
If you like a green or green oolong that has a strong flavor, but not grassy, that can be resteeped many times – Jalam Teas‘ Meng Zhr Pu’er would be your tea! Be sure to check out their monthly tea club!
(tea provided for review)
