Man deals Xi Liang, Early Spring 2019 Ancient Tea Tree Raw Puer, 200g cake

Man Xi Liang is the big hitter of Meng Hai Meng Song. A few years back I tasted some nicely stored Man Xi Liang from 2014 which was pretty nice, but it took a fair bit of time exploring and a couple of attempts to come away from here with something decent. Having tasted the aged tea first gave me some impetus to persevere.

I kept this till early 2020 before pressing because I wanted to see how the mao cha developed.

The dry leaves have pepper and mushroom/leather aroma and the wet leaves a slightly herbal/menthol note.

The bei xiang is fruity-floral and honey. The broth is clear,light yellow.

The 'kou gan' is fairly smooth with a slight fragrance on the upper palate and for now it has a sour fruits fragrance with herbal/menthol notes.

The flavour is rounded with some clear bitterness and slight dryness/astringency which turns sweet quite suddenly accompanying some reasonable 'sheng jin'. The 'hui gan' is there without being very pronounced deals along with some houyun with a little cooling/menthol in the back of the throat

The spent leaves show a nice even green colour. Well processed.

The gardens are mostly above the village at around 1850-1900 meters altitude, with only very limited recent inter-planting and decent biodiversity around the tea gardens.