Fancy tea review! 2009 Menghai Pu-erh

Tea: 2009 Menghai 1st Grade Ripe Pu'erh Source: TeaLyra.ca

Cost: 100 grams for $14.58 CAD

Menghai County is in the far south of Yunnan in China, near the border with Myanmar. The area is particularly famous for their pu'erh plantations.

The tea is loose, not a brick as pu'erh is often associated with (but is less often packaged as these days), and the leaves are nice and chunky. I thought they would expand a lot, but they didn't. Not like a green tea anyway. The brewed leaves give off the typical earthiness of a dark fermented tea, but with a really nice deep-woods scent. Somehow the smell reminds me of morning jungle from a place where I was housesitting/petsitting in Panama near Bocas del Toro in 2010.

The brewed tea, with nothing added, was dark but not as black as I expected. (What we call "black tea" in the West is called "red tea" in China. A fully fermented pu'erh is a true black, often as dark as coffee.) After a couple sips I decided to brew it for a bit longer. I didn't actually use a timer, so I gave it a couple more minutes, which it needed. Next time I'll set a 5-minute timer. Water temperature: right off boiling. You don't need to let the water cool with a dark pu'erh.

The flavour is great: sweet, smooth, woodsy, humid earth, and not at all dusty or muted as some pu'erhs can be. Low to zero tannins. I read a review where someone said it has chocolate notes. I'm not really getting that, but the flavour is bright. I can see why this tea has a nearly perfect rating on TeaLyra. It's also a really great price for how nice it is.

After a few more sips I decided to add some nut milk to see if that would bring out any other flavours. We make our own nut milk. This time it was pure walnut milk with two dates in the mix for sweetening. This nut milk pairs well with red teas and some oolongs since it has its own bitterness from the walnuts that blends in nicely with the tea's tannins. With this Menghai pu'erh, which has no tannins, the milk doesn't add anything. In fact it just dilutes the flavour. I'll drink this without any milk next time.

If you haven't bought from TeaLyra before, I recommend signing up for their newsletter. They regularly send out 25% discounts. I wait for a site sale to buy from them, and then I tend to grab teas from their individual sale list. So... double sale price! I also recommend you hit the $65 CAD target for free shipping.

Happy sipping!